a side note about Twilight — a side-light
I drive too fast. Apparently.
I work about 40 minutes from my home. I have realized that I drive too fast, since the trip does not take long enough – I don’t get to listen to ENOUGH of the Twilight soundtrack from door to door every morning. For some of you, dear readers, if and when there are any, this will tell it all. For others, not so much. For those that know me, you will know that that’s not enough for me to leave it at. I always have more to say. All you have to do is ask, and since you did {and lucky for you, I happen to be in precisely the right kind of mood to answer}, here you go…
I come to Twilight by way of Harry Potter, Anne of Green Gables, Fifth Business, The Witching Hour, Carol Shields, Shakespeare, and many many more random titles that have etched their big ideas, their turn of phrase, their heartbreak and resonance on my soul. And yes, Twilight lives there too.
There’s all sorts of snobbery going on “out there”, perpetrated by some of us who are mistakenly considering ourselves adults, grown ups, mature readers, English majors and what other pompous whatnot. Twilight gets slagged big time in this forum, although there are more than enough Twilighters and Twi-hards voicing the majority “alternative perspective” to this. It’s not like the world needs my one-more-voice. What is the sound of one-hand clapping? I am like the one-hand. No reader, no listener, just my one hand flapping around in the twilight. I need to get it out, so I am blogging it out, and wondering if life will ever be the same P.T. (Post-Twilight). I am a reader. I am a teacher. I am a thinker. I am obsessed with Twilight. These are not mutually exclusive things. These are not nonsense things. These are not lightweight, easy readers. These ARE things to think about.
Are you like me?
- Have you absentmindedly cradled a tiny tin cup of tea and murmured “Mmm. Thank You. More, yes please. Mm-hmm, delicious.” while never losing track of the gloriousness of Edward’s perfection, never missing the moment of inference, reading every marble, bloodsucker, hyperbolic word?
- Have you dociley ageed to “sit here” and do a puzzle/build a block tower with a thick black book nestled in your lap?
- Have you indulged your girls in a feast of cookies to be able to keep reading?
- Have you tucked your Twilight on top of the pages of the Guides to Effective Instruction in Mathematics before being gripped more firmly by professional responsibility?
- Have you read in excess of 3000 pages of fictional, first person narrative within a calendar week?
- Have you referenced Twilight in your professional staff meeting with 100% earnest seriousness that it belongs in the discussion?
- Have you felt the grip of your own reality loosen and sway in the breeze as the dishes stack up and you google La Push, read into the night and dream of the wolf pack or RPattz?
- Have you faced the truth that you are still nothing more than an angsty, overly romantic eighteen year old “inside”?
- Have you realized that you cannot read a book in any way that separates your “real life” and your “job”?
- Have you felt solace and belonging in the world when you realized that other grown women also admit to having Obsessive Cullen Disorder?
- Have you realized that you are so clogged up with Twilight thoughts that you need to GET THEM OUT?
You are like me. (It’s not so bad, really. You’ll be okay.)
No worries, I will not gather and inflict the full range of Twilight related obsession here. We all have Lainey for that, and the Twilight Lexicon, and Stephanie Meyer. We even have Letters to Twilight and New Moon Movie. All of whom I now love and read regularly. I will for sure link to them. I may even have to discuss Never Think here. But for me, I need to GET OUT what simply swirls around in my head about Twilight. It will be your choice how much you google and oogle Robert Pattinson (muchly, for me), but that’s not my blogging thing.
My blogging thing is this: WHY twilight has overtaken my life, WHY I read it, WHY I think twilight is a near-perfect package of authentic reading. Why do I care and what do I get out of it. That’s my thing.
My personal thing: I had a void to fill. A temporary void. Filled now with a permanent thing. My punny wonderful husband has bravely relocated to a new job in a different province, 9500 kilometers away, separated from us for a time. We will follow him in a few months when the school year is over for my daughter and I. In the meantime, I have more time and space to fill. He left on a Monday. On the Friday, I watched Twilight, the movie (Friday is movie night, after all, and I figured it was time to give in to the resistance). Then Monday I bought the book. By Saturday I had them all and had read most of them. By the same time the next week I had read all 4, some re-read, read every outtake and extra on stephaniemeyer.com and so on and so forth. Twilight is keeping me company. Twilight is defining the application of what I talk about every day at work. This will become evident when I eventually stop talking About Me and start talking about Twilight. I don’t have a Unicorn to share this with. So I share here.
a digital scrapbook layout by this girl: me
