Tuesday, February 3, 2009

"Yes, you are exactly my brand of heroin..."


Twilight. I know I may be behind the masses that have listened to Oprah and declared it a masterpiece, but I usually don't follow masses. However, a coworker had just finished and asked if I was reading anything. I was finishing up an Assata Shakur autobiography and decided that I could use a new read. Boy, am I glad I said yes. This book is amazing!

I want so badly to put in an excerpt from one of my favorite parts, but I couldn't decide. Nothing will give you the full scope of how poetic the language of this book is. But, here's an attempt.

I inched closer, stretched out my whole hand now to trace the contours of his forearm with my fingertips. I saw that my fingers trembled, and knew it wouldn't escape his notice.

"Do you mind?" I asked, for the had closed his eyes again.

"No," he said without opening his eyes. "You can't imagine how that feels." He sighed.


I lightly trailed my hand over the perfect muscles of his arm, followed that faint pattern of bluish veins inside the crease at his elbow. With my other hand, I reached to turn his hand over. Realizing what I wished, he flipped his palm up in one of those blindingly fast, disconcerting movements of his. It startled me; my fingers froze on this arm for a brief second.


"Sorry," he mumbled. I looked up in time to see his golden eyes close again. "It's too easy to be myself around you."

If you haven't read it, maybe you should. It took me back to a time when I would have a crush on a boy and nothing else in the world mattered. When my heart was so open and ready to love...hard. I miss those young love feelings. When you felt like your heart would beat out of your chest whenever someone even said his name. Or when you felt like you couldn't get through the night without falling asleep on the phone with him. Or when you couldn't seem to focus on anything but his smile. Those were the days.

I wonder if it's still possible to love with that same young heart once you've been beaten and battered by life, failed relationships and everything else that hardens our hearts once we leave the teenage years. I've never gotten to experience young love. I wish I could have because young love allows for the intense, crazy feelings that it brings. You can be 16 and cry to your man about things that you don't like or your jealous feelings. Once you get older, men would think you're crazy and they'd run for the hills.

Young love is a practice makes perfect situation and sadly, I've never been able to practice, which leaves my love life in shambles. I'm inching closer to 30 and I haven't had a chance to fall in love and mess up so that I can learn from my mistakes. I have a feeling 30 year old men are a whole lot less forgiving and tolerant than adolescent boys.

I feel like once you're in love at an older age, it's far from fantasy like young love, it's practical, comfortable and just not carefree. But, the whole point of this here blog....if you want to go back to a time when love was so pure and unfiltered, read Twilight.

I've started book two, New Moon, today. I hope it's as good as the first!



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