History.

Maybe it's because I've chosen two majors deeply rooted in historical background, but lately my historical perspective has been lending itself to blurred thematic color schemes.

I've been thinking that high school AP European History was really groundbreaking.

Not just because I had one of the zaniest, intense, and, therefore, best teachers in my life, but because, up until this point in my educational career, history was this faded and staid red, white and blue. Full of honest, moral characters fighting honest, moral fights with their hard faces set, like George Washington and Harriet Tubman.

For some reason there's also been a heavy dose of sections over the Holocaust, an unfathomable gray.

And then in comes European History with its rich and vibrant golds and blood reds and bleak blacks and romantic pastels.

It's sort of this mash of years and countries and periods: heads flying with the Kings and Queens of England, Louis XIV eating cake in his gold bed in France, Russian eccentrics from Rasputin to Stalin, the art that comes out of the Italian Renaissance in that lightening-strike moment where Michelangelo's God and Adam seemingly touch, Martin Luther dramatically nailing his 95 Thesis to the door in Germany, Picasso's hard angles describing the Spanish Civil War...

My Letters degree has had me so focused on the timelessness of antiquity, classical Greece and Rome.

Stone and marble archaeological ruins bleached of all color, glaringly white.

And then come my International Studies classes where Middle Eastern history is this endless stream of blowing sand and global foreign policy is a barrage of flags beating wildly in every primary color.

Not to say that all of these historical schematics aren't interesting or complex. They are. Very. 

I don't mean to downplay the significance of any country or historical period.

It's just that I know senioritis must be getting to me when I'd gladly trade in the church challenging the legitimacy of gay marriage in California for Galileo's heliocentrics or Putin for Nicholas II and Alexandra,  just to relive the dramatic glamor of European history.

Twilight.

I read library books as fast as I could go, rushing them home in the basket of my bicycle.
From the minute I reached our house, I started to read. Every book I seized on, from "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Camp Rest-a-While" to "Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea," stood for the devouring wish to read being instantly granted.
I knew this was bliss, knew it at the time. Taste isn't nearly so important; it comes in its own time.
- Eudora Welty.








I resisted reading the Twilight series for sooooo long.
Because I was basically being a snob.
And while I still think it's important to note that Stephanie Meyer is clearly a very talented preteen girl author...


I loved every minute of reading Twilight.


Because, especially in regards to burnt-out college students, preteen girls have it right...


The best part about reading is bedside lamps and being snuggled warmly into your bed with the pillows smooshed just right, unable to keep from turning the page while stuffing Oreos into your brace laced mouth. And you giggle about the book's moments afterward with your friends, not discussing the profound religious symbolism, but giggling and squealing and wide-eyed and smiling ear to ear.

And you believe that love can really, truly be that pure and singular and universe shaking.
And there is not a doubt in your mind, this type of love will eventually and inevitably happen to you. When you're older...like, in college or something.