once upon a time

AI was on tv a coupla weeks ago and i was watching it from the corner of my eye... of course i got sucked in eventually. i've seen it before but i forgot how much i actually liked the movie. i know it didn't get great reviews... but i thought it was great. my ideal bedtime story... very sad, very touching... i cried a little at the end. and i LOVE that bear! i want one for myself. and then this week, i was reading a classic heinlein novel (have space suit-will travel) that i haven't read since i was about 12... and i almost got teary-eyed. almost. not that the story was sad in any way... just that there was this one passage that got me all nostalgic... reminded me of how much passion i had for science as a kid:

It was midday when we left; it was night as we disembarked. The ship rested on a platform that stretched out of sight. Stars in front of me were in unfamiliar constellations; slaunchwise down the sky was a thin curdling which I spotted as the Milky Way. So Peewee had her wires crossed--we were far from home but still in the Galaxy--perhaps we had simply switched to the night side of Vega Five.
I heard Peewee gasp and turned around.
I didn't have strength to gasp.
Dominating that whole side of the sky was a great whirlpool of millions, maybe billions, of stars.
You've seen pictures of the Great Nebula in Andromeda?--a giant spiral of two curving arms, seen at an angle. Of all the lovely things in the sky it is the most beautiful. This was like that.
Only we weren't seeing a photograph nor even by telescope; we were so close (if "close" is the word) that it stretched across the sky twice as long as the Big Dipper as seen from home--so close that I saw the thickening at the center, two great branches coiling around and overtaking each other. We saw it from an angle so that it appeared elliptical, just as M31 in Andromeda does; you could feel its depth, you could see its shape.

*sniff* what a beautiful description... i remember, back when i could count my age on two hands, reading about and looking at pictures of nebulas, stars, planets... in grade 4 the teacher asked us what we wanted to be when we grew up, and i distinctly remember saying that i wanted to be an astronomer. originally i was fascinated by the microscope kit my dad had sent me, but my passion quickly got me looking spaceward. my uncle used to send us a lot of books... dinosaurs for my brother, space stuff for me. at the time i knew that whatever it was i did in life, it would certainly be in the field of science.

i wonder what happened along the way to make me so adamant against pursuing anything 'science' now... i loved it once. well, maybe a part of me still does... it's never failed to wow me, that's for sure... *sigh* what a shame to see a passion like that go to waste.