Twilight is the perfect time for pretending you live somewhere you don't. The sky guard is changing, security is relaxed, and everyone's just had a cocktail. In the gloaming, there is slippage.
~Heidi Julavits
The Folded Clock
This is my favorite description of my most loved minutes of the day. As the sun descends from 6 to 18 degrees below the horizon, the last remaining light dances magically throughout the atmosphere. Between day and darkness, there is a lapse. What was is suspended momentarily between light and night so that for a split second it is both: day and dark. A split second so precise that if you blink, you'll miss the day's departure and the night's onfall. Blink and you miss the illusion of infinity and glimpse of life beyond limits. Blink and the day simply extinguishes. It ceases to exist.
Every time I witness this changing of the guard I feel woozy and light headed. It's as if I've been under water holding my breath. When I come up for air and take that greedy gulp, I feel clear, and sharp and alive. I think of the standstill second my mom went from being here to there. I see myself standing on a cliff or pier reluctant to take the plunge like I've been so many times in my life literally and figuratively. In the split second I go from being dry to wet, from all out to all in, I'm free falling. I have rocks in my pockets and I'm light as feather in the same instant. I'm flying. I'm falling. How can I be both? How can I not?
It occurs to me in these moments of overlap and incongruity that time is a commodity, a dimension, and a sensation. In the second it takes to select the send button or to hit delete, I ask myself...I ask you: who would you be, if you weren't who you are? And then, why aren't you that?
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