Finding Coolness on the Fringes
Monday, September 22nd, 2008“C’mon, someone has to know that long before the mass hysteria began, there were a couple of college students who nearly lost their grades over it.”
Remember when the term “twilight†used to mean a time of day? When the sun was setting, casting long shadows of light poles and buildings? Cars would be pulling into driveways, tired bread-winners grateful, or sometimes not, to be home for the evening. The bluish glow of the television sets would match the shades of the sky, as the sun dipped below the horizon. The muted colors of dark purple, deep crimson, and a barely there black weaved across the sky. As the night slowly gathered in, the events of the day played in the mind, creating an odd sort of recent nostalgia.
Now, of course, it means vampires. Not the Bram Stoker kind, where a waxy pale, hideous shell of a person, hidden in a coffin, waits for some buxom, idiot blond to come wandering conveniently along. Nope, this vampire is deadly gorgeous, incredibly smart, perfectly soul filled, and of course, fiction. The Twilight series that has seemed to grip the American psyche for the last year has spun out of control.
And I am fully part of it. However, in defense of my insanity, which has lead to an obsessive rereading of the first book for one month and to a compulsive day dream about becoming a vampire myself; in defense of all that, let me just say that I was blinded before anyone else. You know how some people can find the coolness on the fringes, before it becomes mainstream cool? Those people that can discover hit songs when they are still being sold for free on iTunes. Those people who watch the pilot of a hit TV show a full three years before critics, and the Emmy’s, start to care about it. Yeah. That’s my sister and I reap fully from her uncanny knack to locate the next hip thing before anyone else does.
That is why December of 2005 found me curled up in my room, lost in the life of Bella Swan and Edward Cullen. My family would ask what I could be doing, locked up like that for so long. My answer came out awkwardly but honestly. “See, there’s this book about vampires. Wait! But it’s not like that. I swear.†The excuses and excitement ran together seamlessly. I should be ashamed, right? After all this was a young adult book and I was all of twenty-two, a recent college graduate. The stacks of Faulkner and Wharton lay dusty as I picked up this addictive novel again and again. Who cares about the poetry and rhythm of stream-of-consciousness writing when I could get lost in the heated and emotionally draining conversations of Bella and Edward? Who cares that Ethan Frome is one heck of a story packed with symbolism and the sadness of rural America? All I cared was when the human who danced her life around vampires would finally become one. And then, when that happened, would it be true?
Of course not. There is a reason why we read fiction. Sometimes it is a reflection of real life but usually, it’s not. We want a world different from the one we live in but still close enough to recognize it. The world created in Twilight was not perfect – people got hurt, both physically and emotionally, not everyone was happy, and it seemed to rain an awful lot. The same things happen in the world I found myself living in and among the imperfect, I had hoped, plotted, and prayed to find the perfection that had eluded me in real life but that I had discovered in the world of fiction. My own Edward Cullen.
Long before everyone else started looking for him too.
Written by my friend Joanna who doesn’t have a blog, but she really wanted to blog about this.
Say hello to my new camera! Someday. Earlier this week Canon introduced (finally) an update to the incredible 5D from 3 years ago. Simply called the 5D Mark II, it has an impressive array of new features that I’m pretty stoked about. Everyone understand megapixels and this one weighs in at a huge 21; that’s one big picture. Aside from updating the processor and a few cool features, I’m most excited about the extended ISO range, from 50 all the way up to 25,600. To put that in simple terms, it doesn’t take much light at all to take a good picture without the flash. So, shooting at dusk, or inside with low light (like a wedding reception) this camera will do awesome.
