The changeling hour

Dusk is my favorite moment of the day.

The precious minutes when the sun has set but its departing pale yellow-orange rays can still be espied edging the horizon. And the sky is lit with the blueish-white of twilight. And the trees are black cutouts against that velvety canvas.

I can understand why vampires rise at dusk. But I'm glad they don't do so around these parts. I'd hate to be unable to walk at dusk.

It's that changeling hour where nothing seems what it is, where shapes and sounds and smells suggest mythical and mystical possibilities, when my lizard brain turns on and goes into high alert, while my homo sapiens brain waxes poetical.

On this dusk, the dogs and I walked our usual walk on the winding streets at the outskirts of my small college on the hill when sounds of disturbed dried leaves suddenly alerted us to the shadows of deer stirring in the encroaching darkness.

The dogs pulled at their leashes, seeing better than I the direction into which the deer fled and advocating for their right to give chase, to get lost in the dark in pursuit of the fantastic leaping creatures.

I, of course, disagreed. And we continued on our path, not very clear now (this time I forgot my trusty little dog-walking flashlight), but our well-worn path nonetheless.

None of us needed the fast diminishing light to tell us that we were on our way home, where we would be safe and warm behind our closed door, leaving the now full-fledged night to its nocturnal doings.

Pride and humility

"You're a great teacher," the photographer said, as she packed her gear and got ready to leave my classroom this afternoon.

That's after she had spent an hour and 20 minutes shooting pictures of me and of my students, like a photojournalist takes pictures of a news event.

Earlier today, a friend in the Public Affairs Office had asked whether I would mind having a photographer visit the class. "It would be lovely," I said.

Having practically grown up around cameras of all kinds, thanks to my dad's profession first as a governor's aide and then his avocation as a politólogo, or political analyst, I just pretended she wasn't there and did as I always do twice a week: I gave it all I have to give.

"She's so loud and 'in your face' that it's hard to ignore her or to fall asleep in class," I remember one student saying once in an evaluation.

I'll never forget that comment. To me, it was a great compliment. In fact, my style of teaching - the loud part, especially - tends to be better suited for a large lecture hall (or a stage), rather than the smallish seminar rooms of my college on the hill.

I move around a lot, I cover the blackboard with scribbles that look like oddly drawn maps, I gesture purposefully and dramatically with my hands, I make my students laugh with goofy comparisons between the literature and TV reality shows or movies, and my voice, booming as it can be, resonates through the little wood houses in this century-old college like the aftershocks of an earthquake.

Last year, I taught in another small cottage-style building with a small seminar room and some of the professors with offices in the building would come and close the doors to my classroom, reminding me silently but eloquently that I was being a bit too loud.

I don't know if there are any professors in the building I teach now. I have heard no complaints about the noise or heard anyone coming to surreptitiously close the door.

What I know is that I love what I do with a passion and a glee that is impossible to describe. You have to experience it to understand it. I guess that's what the photographer felt today.

After getting up before 6:30 a.m. this morning and moving my household and the dogs back to the little apartment in the woods by 9 a.m., I was a little tired before class and wondered if I'd be at my best. But once I walked into the classroom and saw that all my students were there, books in hand and ready to rumble, any and all tiredness, any and all doubt, simply vanished.

It's not that I'm a great teacher since there's a lot about teaching that I'm still perfecting and hope to continue to perfect until my number comes up in God's lottery. But I do know that you can't be in my classroom without being tackled by my excitement, my enthusiasm, my absolute focus on and commitment to the learning and teaching moments, and my true-believer belief in the powerful synergy that erupts, like the bluest of flames, when teacher and students work in unison to decipher a puzzle.

In my world, there is no sweeter music than the symphony composed by minds learning, querying, grappling, together.

As we continued wrestling with Rushdie's Midnight's Children today, one of my favorite students said: "Because of his relativity and his ambiguity, Rushdie is a dangerous writer."

I wanted to hug him. Indeed, I agreed. Rushdie is a dangerous writer as should be all the reading and all the learning we do. Learning should be dangerous because it should rock our world, it should shake the very cimientos of our personal foundations.

That I know how to do and that I love doing. I live to rock my own world, and in so doing, I live to share those moments with my students. That love of telluric magnitude, that seismic episode, is what the photographer captured today. That's what she was praising me for.

Because, in reality, teaching is not about greatness. Every day has its rewards and its failures. Teaching is about cultivating the humility of knowing that it always takes two to tango well. And can I ask for more? My students at my small college on the hill, God bless them all, give me, measure by measure, as much as, or even more, than I give them.

Mastering time

I've always had a love-hate relationship with time. Born among the chronically running-late, I've always fought against the 60 seconds in each minute and the 60 minutes in each hour, wishing I could expand them, willing time to become malleable, like silly putty.

But time is its own master and doesn't answer to cajoling or even outright coercion. Thus, I have been largely unsuccessful in my fight against time. That is, until recently.

For the past few weeks, I've noticed that I've been transformed from a chronically running-late person into a chronically I'm-early one. And I'm not quite sure that this is such a good thing.

It's absolutely true that it's generally kinder and more thoughtful toward the people who would've had to wait for my past incarnation. While I never approached the ranks of the-world-must-revolve-around-me late, I still always ran behind schedule by 10 or so minutes. What I liked to call "fashionably late."

Interesting to me is that fact that I have never been late to start or end my classes. I am almost preternaturally punctual when it comes to my professional commitments. Because I resented professors who kept me well beyond the time of class, oblivious to the fact that my own time was as valuable as theirs, I don't keep my students after class is scheduled to end. Also, I generally start right at the hour or maybe even a minute or so before, just to keep my students on their toes.

But when it came to meeting friends or being ready to go with my husband somewhere, I was always running behind the appointed time, much to the frustration of my expectedly punctual gringo husband.

Lately, however, I've been transformed. Invited to dinner at a friend's house, I arrived 2 minutes early to find that she wasn't ready for me and would've appreciated the 10-minute delay I was on before I was inadvertently transmuted into a socially punctual person.

Invited to meet a colleague for breakfast, I arrived 5 minutes early only to wait for another 10 minutes before she was able to arrive, after being delayed by her busy schedule.

Invited to meet two other colleagues for lunch, I arrived to the appointed venue 3 minutes ahead of schedule only to see them walking to another, nearby eating place. By the time I gathered all my things and ran behind them, I was a few minutes late in their book!

What I've realized, however, is that by being chronically early, I'm becoming the cause of everybody else's embarrassment. Back when I was late, I was the only one embarrassed and the other person was, at worst, a little annoyed with me.

I'm not sure I like the way this chronically I'm-early thing has balanced out. I don't feel good at all about being so early that I lead others to feel guilty and self-conscious and apologetic.

Perhaps, now that I've mastered the art of being early, I can finally master the poetry of being on time. Not a few minutes before, nor a few minutes after. Just right on the dot, right on the spot, right on the clock.

Perhaps then the universe will be finally balanced and both I and the person who awaits me will be at ease.

A second wind

Rusty and Geni remind me that it's not physical age that affects us so much as the age of our soul.

Geni has never accepted that she's almost 14 years old, basically the age expectancy for most dogs. She's still as wacky, goofy, not-the-brightest and energetic as when she adopted us back in 1998.

True, she had to have major cancer surgery last year, which left her abdomen sliced up like a piece of meat and took her (and me) months to recover from. And, true, she's now covered in small black moles and has some arthritis on her wrists, which was causing her to trip often until I started giving her glucosamine.

But it's not like she acknowledges any of that. She's not even gray around her muzzle, like most dogs when they age. Definitely unlike Rusty, who gets grayer and grayer and grayer as each year goes by.

Rusty has aged significantly since we first got him in 1995, a year after we'd married. He's not just gray but has to take arthritis medication and allergy medication and anti-anxiety medication and anti-reflux medication and glucosamine. And before he started on the arthritis medication he didn't want to move much and would sit, staring at the walls for no apparent reason.

But, for a while now, he seems to have gotten a second wind. Yesterday, as my husband and I walked him in the early morning of my college on the hill, we saw a buck shoot out of the woods and run away from us as fast as it could.

I was so excited, since I'd never seen a buck before, always does or fawns. But my excitement couldn't match Rusty's or Geni's, for that matter. They were chomping at the bit, so to speak, dying to go chase after the magnificent creature.

Rusty also was pulling at the leash my husband held, trying to keep up with my refurbished, tag sale bike, which my husband brought up from our city home. That way I can use it to go to The Village until the weather gets bad and next year when the weather begins to get better. Rusty was ready to sprint along the bike, something that surprised us, especially after he'd tried to rush after a cat and the buck.

"It's like he's a puppy again," my husband said, amused.

Of course, once we were back in the apartment, the bike put away and Cleaning Day well on its way, Rusty plopped down on his favorite bed and snored the morning and the early afternoon away until it was time to get in the car to come back to the city.

This morning, both dogs were spry and ready to chase after the squirrels as we walked a mile and a quarter through the wide streets of our small city.

Ears cocked, tongues hanging, tails high and stepping with a good pace in their gait, the two elderly dogs pulled on their leashes ahead of me. As October continues to step toward my birthday, the dogs remind me, generously, that it's not the chronological age that matters, but (health permitting) the age you think of yourself as enjoying.

Where's October?

OK, so I'd hoped October would be it for this unusually warm weather. My month. My wonderful, 60-degree days, 40-degree nights, orange-yellow-burnt red month. The month of brisk mornings and air-conditioner cool evenings. The month of fall.

But no. It's not to be, it seems. The same way that Evil Winter refused to leave earlier this year and we had that killing frost in April (which, I recently found out, wiped out the entire apple orchard we like to visit each October in a nearby town), summer is hanging on with tooth and nail.

For today, the forecaster has predicted we'll break a record of heat by reaching 88 degrees. And Sunday and Monday we're poised to break 1939 records by edging past the 90-degree mark. In October!

A colleague commented recently that she thinks fall is a thing of the past because of Global Warming. Oh, I do so hope she's not right. How sad it would be not to have fall.

My husband, of course, is thrilled. Any minute of cold we miss, makes him happy and he keeps reminding me that this means winter might come later, rather than sooner.

But I'm afraid things don't work that way. I'm worried that we won't get fall but we'll be battered by winter and then winter will creep into spring, which also is on its way to disappearing, it seems.

My college on the hill is famous for its display of fall colors. I hope this October summer doesn't do away with that too! I was planning a photo gallery to share the show...

Small serenade to this day

Pequeña serenata diurna. That's the title of a canción hermosa by Cuban cantautor Silvio Rodríguez, in which he lists the reasons for his uncomplicated happiness.

He sings about how he is loved and he loves, he has his art and his country. And, thus, he asks the dead (those who died before him, without achieving such happiness) to forgive him.

Soy feliz.
Soy un hombre feliz.
Y quiero que me perdonen
en este día
los muertos de mi felicidad.

Today, I also ask forgiveness of the dead. Of all those whose blood flows through my veins, especially of those whose stories I'll never know. Of all who didn't get a chance at happiness - my unnamed and unknown African ancestors among them.

That's because today (and every day, even on my crankiest days) I am una mujer feliz, inefablemente feliz.

Some might say I don't have all I could wish for. But I say I don't wish for any more than I have.

Unlike the first third of my life, these days I have relatively good health. I also have a large, united family, which though dispersed, maintains itself close; a strong, wonderful man I love, and who loves me; good, supportive friends; a great place to work and excellent colleagues; and students who bring laughter and purpose to my life each and every day I have the privilege to teach and learn from them.

Best of all, having passed the mid point of my fourth decade, I finally have been granted the emotional maturity that encourages me to put things in perspective and to appreciate and cherish the bounty of Godsends in my life.

Yesterday, as we discussed Midnight's Children in class, we talked about how Rushdie merges the past, the present and the future. We also talked about how the future guides the main character of the novel to revisit the past. Saleem Sinai, that child of all colonial midnights, is not propelled by the past or by his present, but by his future.

This morning, I recalled that conversation while walking the dogs in the breathtakingly beautiful country, as the shafts of sunlight broke through the trees and illuminated the road ahead of us like beacons, signaling the open possibilities of this day. Then, I had an small epiphany.

It's the future, not the past, that should guide our life project. We should decide what kind of life we yearn to live, physically, mentally, emotionally and spiritually. If we find ourselves among the truly privileged, the afortunados de la tierra, who have access to the future we can dream of, that should be our blueprint.

The past teaches us about the things we don't ever want to do again, the people we should stay away from, the situations that are toxic to our lives, the person we don't want to become or continue being. The future, however, is like soft, malleable, red-earth clay, ready and willing to take shape in our hands.

The millions of unnamed and unsung dead, and the millions of desafortunados de la tierra, must perforce remind us that it's a privilege to have a future filled with possibility. We must not squander one hour, one second, one minute of it.

Lady Macbeth knew it well. The deed, or the past, is done. It can't be undone. The spots of blood won't come off. There's nothing left but to learn from, make peace with, and be accountable for our missteps. That's all we can do in the past.

The future, however, is the small serenade to this day, and to every day that awakens filled with promise. For that privilege, for that intimate and inexpressible joy, I am grateful.

And for that I also ask forgiveness of the dead. But I also pledge that because of my happiness and my privilege, they will never be forgotten.

The perils of country living

My car smells like skunk.

No, I didn't run over one, thank God. But the car driving ahead of me this morning, on the country road leading to the college on the hill, did. The large, white, furry skunk was already quite dead (one of two I saw as road kill today), but it obviously retained most of its potent fragrance.

Some of its scent must have been released by the impact of the idiot driving the car ahead of me (who hits a skunk that's already dead?) and must have traveled all the way back to my car. Thus, my salsa red Scion is now impregnated with the faint stink of dead skunk.

Talk about the perils of living in the country.

Of course, Rusty and Geni couldn't be more delighted. Not by the smell of skunk, which I'm not sure any other creature enjoys. But they do love all the strange smells they get to sniff out here, which are not available in our city home.

This morning, after I'd unpacked my life once again, we went on our walk and they were pulling at their leashes, ears cocked and tails high, hoping to run into the family of deer or come across some other marvelous creature, such as the horses Rusty stared at intently on our way here.

Rusty also likes the blackest of crows, which hang out around the college on the hill. These birds are likely some of the smartest ones in creation. The ones near where I live have figured out that the cars passing under an avenue of walnut trees will crush the large, hard, green hulls and expose the soft, brown nuts for them to feast.

Thus, they hang around that part of the road in conclaves and have nut-eating conventions that Rusty loves to break up as we walk up that road. They complain and fly away but they're right back at it once we've moved on.

The sight of the crows taking advantage of the cars provides good fodder for thinking about evolution and what evolution didn't consider.

In any case, I hope the skunk smell is gone by the time I'm back in the city later this week. I'd much rather not drag my country life into my city life, if you know what I mean.