Twilight

So, for months now i’ve been hearing about nothing from my groups of exceptionally talented female students except Edward Cullen. Probably my most gifted student this year, who nonetheless never speaks, took me completely by surprise by running up to me and starting to babble when she saw me carrying a copy of the last book, Breaking Dawn, from the lunchroom. i disappointed her when i told her that i had just found the book left by a student on one of the tables. She went back to not speaking.

Last month i picked up Twilight in the library and started reading. i got through about 20 pages and put it back down. It sounded like it was written by a 13 year old girl. (As it turns out, it was written by a whiny, melodramatic Mormon woman, but i digress…) But just before Thanksgiving, i got into a discussion with another girl about the quintessential young woman’s novel. She says it’s Twilight. i say it’s Gone with the Wind. So we agreed to a book trade: i promised to read all four vampire books and she promised to read the gargantuan Civil War saga.

So as i waited on airplanes and in airplanes and in airport lounges this past weekend, i started reading this book. i admit, i am engrossed. It’s not classic literature, to be sure, but a quick and satisfying story, albeit a little repetitive at times. The only problem is that i dislike the main female character, Bella. i find her ungrateful, bratty, ordinary, and simpering. Oh, Edward, you’re so beautiful, I can’t live without you, make me a vampire…?!? Ech.

But of course, i am more than a little smitten with Edward. i may have swooned once or twice over this fictional, gentle predator.

i am now reading the beginning of the second book, and am once again mildly annoyed with her. Edward leaves her in the woods, saying goodbye forever, and what does she do? Stumbles around for a few minutes or hours and then lies down on the moss, and stays there until half the town forms a search party to bring her home. Now, i can absolutely sympathize with the feeling. That’s of course what you want to do when your heart is broken. i still feel like doing it now, months later. But you just can’t do it.

There have been a couple of quotes from these books that i felt a particular attachment to, encouragement from, synergy with…

“When life offers you a dream so far beyond any of your expectations, it’s not reasonable to grieve when it comes to an end.”

“Time passes. Even when it seems impossible. Even when each tick of the second hand aches like the pulse of blood behind a bruise. It passes unevenly, in strange lurches and dragging lulls, but pass it does. Even for me.”

my pain may be nothing like that of an immortal creature who must live forever with vivid memories of his only love, or even the human narrator of these romantic fantasies, but i certainly identify with these lines.

An acquaintance from a group of friends here has seemed to take an interest in me, and my new single status. The attention is always flattering, but i do think he overestimates my readiness to move on. i still feel in my heart like Bella, curled up on the ground in the forest, waiting for the time to pass, knowing that it will, but unwilling to move until it does.