Robert Pattinson

Like millions of others around the world, I have a serious crush on Robert Pattinson.

But why?

He is good-looking… but that’s not it. Criticisms I’ve heard include comments about squinty eyes (gorgeous by the way), strange mis-shapen nose (gorgeous by the way), silly hair (gorgeous by the way), that he’s not very tall (actually he’s over 6 foot… not that it matters), and mostly that how the hell can we all fancy him so much when he’s not even that muscular, especially compared to his co-star in Twilight, Taylor Lautner?

Added to that, he’s been in films before, notably Harry Potter, and we weren’t all making such a fuss then (well nobody over the age of 13 was, anyway.)

So what is going on?

I read the Twilight books when they first came out, before the films. And I fell for Edward big time. I thought Bella was a bit of a pissy bitch. Stephenie Meyer is good, but her writing isn’t groundbreaking, or even anything special *really* – it was the story that was compelling. It’s just teen lit. If we were being harsh, we could say it was even a bit trashy. OK that’s a bit harsh. And that’s not necessarily a bad thing – I’ve studied literature for frigging years now and the only thing I’ve learned is that the trashy lit of today is the next century’s esteemed classic lit. I bet looking back, in lectures in 100 years time, they’re going to wonder what our obsession with vampires was all about.

Which brings me to my next point, which is: vampires are sexy. They always have been. There’s just something S&M about the whole biting of the neck thing… it’s just hot.

But Edward & Chums are vampires with a conscience. They don’t want to kill humans! But it’s in their nature! But they’re better than that! You can see where the storyline goes from there. So really they’re not vampires in a traditional sense… they’re closer to superheroes really. They’re fast and strong and good-looking and successful and RICH. Seriously sexy.

When Edward comes across Bella, we all think he must hate her or something. This entire concept re-ignites our girlish fantasies, doesn’t it? The boy in school you fancied who was always a bit mean to you ACTUALLY wants you so badly that he has to keep away from you lest he BITE you to death. Yeah… Something like that. Bella is a regular teenage girl just like we were. There’s nothing special about her. She doesn’t look like this. She could be me, or you. And yet he falls in love with her so deeply, so profoundly, that nothing else matters to him. He tries to stay away, but he can’t; but then he puts her at risk, so he stays away again; but then he can’t. Imagine being loved like that.

And that’s what we’re all doing. If we’re lucky enough to be in a relationship at all, it’s fraught with argument, jealousy, insecurity, anger – in small amounts maybe, but we’re bogged down with the banal. The everyday difficulty of just being with someone. Now, I don’t doubt that we all love each other. We do. We’d do anything for each other. Honest. I do love you. But I just can’t imagine that it’s the same kind of intensity as the Robert Pattinson/Edward Cullen love. Unconditional love gone a bit mental. Of course it’s entirely unrealistic. But that’s why we are so obsessed with Robert Pattinson: he makes it more real.

Reading the books, we all imagined Edward. I can’t even remember what my imagination came up with because it’s been completely erased and replaced with the very tangible physical manifestation of him in Robert. And it’s so powerful. For me, at least, it taps back into my teenage-girl-boy-obsession mode. This is probably where we lose the boys, they just don’t get it. As teen girls, we made voodoo dolls of you. We wrote your names on our exercise books. We used numerology to see what the percentage chance of us being together was (and if it wasn’t a favourable percentage, we included middle names). We kept sneakily-taken photos of you (from a school trip or gotten via other means) in our top drawer or under our pillows. We had already decided where we would live, how many children we would have, what their names would be, even what car we would drive. We had a secret code language so that we could talk about you and you wouldn’t even know it. We dreamed about you constantly, and if we were ever put together in school for any reason we pretended we didn’t care or hated it when actually it was a bit of a dream come true and a concrete event to obsess about for weeks to come (“he touched my hand and also borrowed a pencil which he still has in his pencil case”). I am not even joking. Eventually this sort of obsession matures to include sex, but it’s basically the same thing.

Robert Pattinson is sort of a grown up version of this, for me anyway. I know he doesn’t have the body of a gym-slave Adonis, and I know he hasn’t got a pretty boy model symmetrical face, but it doesn’t matter. He’s very, very sexy (and never be fooled into thinking that women aren’t bothered about sex or aren’t motivated by it, because we are) but it’s MORE than that. As Edward he’s fantasy-perfect. But in real life, he’s even better: self-deprecating, charming, youthful, intelligent and talented. He comes across as so affable in interviews, and he’s clearly totally overwhelmed with the immeasurable lust for him, which makes him even cuter. He doesn’t take himself too seriously. I WANT.

Wow. Looks like I’ve written an entire blog about Robert Pattinson. He deserves it.

Daniel has promised to take me to see the next film (Eclipse) when it comes out in a few days. This is a treat because he thinks that the entire saga is ‘gash’, and due to him never having been a teenage girl he can’t really appreciate the Robsession. The films are the same as the books IMO, they’re not going to go down in history as cinematic masterpieces, but that’s not why I want to watch it. I am going to watch the talent bring my fantasies to life.

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Mes rêves…(amha)

When I say I’ve got loads more to blog about, what I usually mean is that I have had lots of thoughts that I wanted to share. Mostly dreams, which I don’t think I will ever cease to find totally fascinating – I dream so vividly and some dreams leave such a lasting impression on me. Jonny says he can never remember his dreams, but I know that he does dream, because he twitches about and murmurs in his sleep, especially in REM just before he wakes up.

I remember my dreams as I wake up, and usually want to tell them to someone/write them down straightaway. Unfortunately Jonny is rarely interested, friends like my best friend Sammy are the best to sleep near because she at least pretends to be interested. Sometimes I wake up early, like at 6am or something, having had a really good dream, wanting to remember it for later, and when I finally get up I can never remember it. Sometimes I can wake up, and then fall back to sleep and ‘re-enter’ the same dream.

I have loads of theories about stuff to do with dreams; some from reading on the subject and other people’s opinions that I agree with. I think that in your everyday conscious life, you collect images, sounds and smells, and even experiences, and your brain uses this as a language so that when you sleep you can express things. They reckon that you can actually remember everything that has ever happened to you, but that you can only recall some stuff, most recent stuff and then very significant things that have happened to you. This is because when you associate a memory with an emotion it becomes really strong and more important to you – I suppose this is because you can then seek out good stuff again (love/happiness/exhiliration), and avoid the bad stuff (anger/conflict/sadness). It’s also long-forgotten memories that prompt feelings of deja vu too. When you get in your car for the zillionth time, or see a face that you encounter every day, you don’t get a sense of deja vu then – because you expect things to be the same as you remember them. It’s when it’s a series of events occur that are very similar to a series of events that have occured in the past that you get that uncanny feeling that you’ve been here before. I think this is because we lose the ability to distinguish between extremely similar things; places, faces, even turns of phrase, when we are very young. So when you meet someone new and you feel like you’ve already met them, in that place and saying those things, it’s because you have probably been in a very similar situation long ago that you forgot about but is still imprinted there somewhere. And you make instant connections with this new experience and the almost identical old memory. That explains the feeling, I think. It’s not hard to imagine, we see so many things and go through so many things every day – and so much goes in subconsciously. Sometimes I try to take things in consciously: to note the colour of things or patterns or how things feel, things I see every day. You have to keep refreshing it or it loses vividity. A recurring complaint that I’ve noticed of people who have lost a close friend or relative is that the face of the person lost begins to fade in their memory, which I bet is distressing.

I think it’s these memories, their associations and then recent experiences that shape our dreams. I also agree with the concept of that repressing things can make them come out in your dreams, too. I think it’s because we need to feel certain things, go through them, learn from them, emotionally. This is why you will dream of disgusting or replusive stuff, immoral stuff, and downright STRANGE stuff. It’s like your mind saying ‘what do you think of this..?’ and ‘how would you react to this…?’. I often dream of my dad’s death, and it’s completely disturbing, I hate it. But I understand it to mean that 1) it’s on my mind, 2) I can’t/won’t/don’t need to deal with it in my waking life, and 3) I am ‘training’ and ‘testing’ my emotional responses to it in my safe place.

I also often dream of flying, or it features in my dreams as part of something bigger anyway. I have to swim through the air, and concentrate really hard. I use it to escape from situations, mostly. I can fly so high, right above the clouds and very fast sometimes. Other times I find I am trying to fly and can’t, or can’t get very far.

One of my most recent dreams was about me being in the 50s, and WW2 was on (I know it ended in 1945, shh), and I was in this unique position to change things, because I was from the present and I sort of knew what would happen. However, no matter what I did, who I killed, what events I changed, all they did was spur on a new set of events which led to the same eventual outcome. In other words, I couldn’t stop the war, or people from dying, no matter how much I tried or whatever I did. In the end, the dream concluded with the realisation that no matter what I do, things will end up the same anyway. And I can have a good guess at the ‘mental material’ used for this dream. Well I’ve been looking at vintage clothing with Mel, I read a book called ‘The Lost Art of Keeping Secrets’ by Eva Rice, I went to the Imperial War Museum. I also read ‘The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas’ by John Boyle; then watched it with Jonny when I found the DVD in ASDA.

I’m not sure I completely agree with fatalist ideas. I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve finished thinking about it. Same with time travel, as marvellous as it sounds. I’m generally open-minded. I think I would be more inclined to believe in fantastical things if something fantastical had ever happened to me before, but nothing miraculous has ever happened to me. I live in hope.

So…. that’s what I think anyway.

Back to the land of the living, so to speak, it’s 41 days til holiday and I currently have £0 in the holiday fund. I am working from 9 til 5am tonight. I’ve still got to tidy up the flat as my things are still everywhere and it all needs sorting out, but I really can’t be bothered. I went to see Transformers 2 with Jonny, Mel, Harry, Rochelle and Jordan on Wednesday – it was in the IMAX, which is always awesome, and I really enjoyed it, having accepted it for what it was. Plus I have a crush on Shia – he’s just one of those people who you can tell you’d like to have in your life.

what a lovely young man...

Also, was in the northern quarter yesterday with Mel and went past a ‘games’ shop, can’t remember what it was called, but I was sucked in by a poster of Robert Pattinson as Edward Cullen. I wonder if I am too old to have this poster on my wall.

Edward, so troubled <3

 

I think that’s all I have time for now. Maybe time for more over the weekend.

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