Darker Circles Around My Eyes

I admit, I've been losing sleep over it. But I don't really care.
That I know more now about the French Revolution and the Rennaissance than I used to, is worth all the winks I've missed.
I look back and trace this fascination back to my days as a grade 8 student, when one of my favorite teachers, Ms. Perez, made me fall in love with Asian History (yep, map quizzes, Hammurabi and all).
But then again, no.
It actually dates back earlier than that. I do remember being in grade school and leafing through the first set of encyclopedias nestled in a long, white shelf in our living room, and finding myself glued to the pictures of the Egyptian pyramids and the paintings of Da Vinci and the sculptures of Michaelangelo, and reading about The Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the tragedy of Pompeii, the sophistication of the Roman empire. It was an addiction that stayed with me throughout my days as a student, which was refueled by the documentaries on The Discovery Channel (wherein I learned, among so many things, that what really caused the defeat of the Spanish Armada was a colossal navigational error, that Marie Antoinette never really uttered the line "let them eat cake," that Napoleon died of arsenic poisoning, that it was the Cavaliers who won in the Battle of Hastings and that its story is forever preserved in a beautiful tapestry called "The Carmen.")
And now, here comes The History Channel, which has made me topple over with excitement, that finally, there is an entire channel devoted to one of the biggest loves of my life! Its well-made documentaries have, for the time being, deviated my attention from books (I have yet to finish the one I started reading 3 weeks ago!). But it's a fair deal. That I now know who Maximillan Robespierre is, that the visual arts don't start and end with Da Vinci and Michaelangelo, that the Coliseum was originally called "The Plebeian Ampitheater," that Augustus was the first Roman Emperor and that Nero was not a rightful heir to the Roman throne, makes me feel that I have become richer.
In knowledge, not in money.
Now that is an entirely different thing (which I also lose sleep on. But come now, don't we all?)