09:48, Wednesday 14 Jun., 2000 Link

Revising. I can feel myself learning but it doesn't feel right. Every little piece I take in feels like it's balanced precariously higher and higher. I keep on having to go round and refresh everything, giving each equation, each bit of knowledge a bit more spin to keep all those plates in the air. Other times, when I'm learning, when I'm absorbing information through readmes and howtos and mail list archives, it feels so different. I'm sculpting. Chipping away, defining a subject by the topics around it. Understanding not by looking at the thing itself but by looking at how people relate to it. And I reread those readmes and howtos again and again and as I understand where each piece of information goes I sculpt more, completing a fractal surface. It's solid knowledge. Proper understanding. True magic, not this plate-spinning memory trick.