First-day-of-teaching checklist:
— bleary-eyed 5:00 AM workout, during which I silently recite what to say to the students on their first day of college. This quickly digresses into wondering what Meryl Streep would tell them.
— freshly-pedicured toes encased in teacher-y shoes that say, “I’m not afraid of you or of walking on high, pencil-sliver heels.” Which is an absolute lie.
— fitted skirt that says, “I mean business. I spend my time thinking serious thoughts and saying serious things.” Sartorial lie number two.
— course syllabus typed in Futura {because would any other font will do on such an occasion?}.
— fresh muffins the size of a small child’s head. I am not above muffin bribery.

Things started off a bit rocky because the students didn’t laugh at my jokes; initially they were stone-faced and silent. I thought, Either I am completely unamusing, or these people aren’t weird enough. Where are the weird students? They are the ones I should be teaching!

But then at one point I held up an enormous 2,949-page Norton Anthology and said, “You’ll need this book in addition to the other textbooks we’ve discussed. Does everyone have it?” Twenty-five heads shook adamantly with expressions of panic, and possibly hatred. A teenage riot seemed imminent.

When they realized I was joking, the room whooshed with a collective sigh of relief. They laughed at every quip thereafter and made some of their own. And that’s when I knew — the way one just knows about these things — that everything would be all right. It seems I have a class of wonderful weirdos after all, and I can’t wait to spend the semester with them.

Now, of course, the problem is that I actually have to teach something. So maybe, despite an excellently muffin-filled first day, I’ll keep my fingers crossed a little bit longer.

* * * * *

Have you picked up the annual fiction issue of The Atlantic? Oh, please do, and then we can read it and talk about it and be the sort of friends who exchange interesting tidbits and use words like “quixotic.”

Paul Theroux has a piece {actually, 14 mini-pieces} in it called “Voices of Love.” And so many of his snippets have unstitched me. Here is one I love, almost entirely because of the final sentence:

In a way, I have been preparing myself for this event, this feeling, for years. As a painter, I know many older painters, sculptors, photographers — say, artists — in my position. Something happened in the late 1950′s and early ’60′s. They met younger women, always the same sort of woman. Maybe I’m wrong, but I know of very few exceptions.
This woman was in her 20′s. A woman of 20 doesn’t know if she has a place in the world; something about her age or our age. What will happen to her? Will she find a job? Will she find a husband? Will she ever have a child? Where does she belong?
She has no idea where she is going She is anxious. She needs someone to intervene.
Here’s where the artist comes in. A painter or a photographer at 60 has either made it or stopped trying. If he has made it, he looks powerful — more than powerful, as indestructible as his art. But one thing he does not have: his youth. And he certainly questions the diminishing of his virility, what the Dutch call “the shutting of the door.”
He meets a 20 year-old and is immediately smitten. She is so relieved to be rescued, like someone plucked from a deep sea, that she believes she is in love with her rescuer. Not long after they meet she is secure, and happy, having been brought to safety, onshore at last.
Perhaps she has his baby, perhaps he leaves his wife, perhaps they live together and he paints her. Never mind; no matter — such meetings are always a disaster. She leaves him. She has a life. He is destroyed by this love. And even if you know in advance what the consequences will be, you still pursue her, as I did. Her name was Lucy, and I was wrecked.

* * * * * *

FACT: My cats are unmoved by spontaneous dances of exultation.

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