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Author: Anne Cassidy

Giving Up the Ghost

Giving Up the Ghost

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I just finished Hilary Mantel’s memoir Giving Up the Ghost, a powerful story of childhood fears, adult sorrows and the writer’s ability to triumph over them by putting pen to paper. 

Mantel writes that she has a “nervous sort of nostalgia” for any surface she’s written a book on. “I think the words, for better or worse, have sunk into the grain of the wood.” In Mantel’s case, many words. The Wolf Hall, Bring Up the Bodies and Mirror and the Light trilogy about Lord Cromwell top out at more than 1,500 pages.

In interviews, Mantel says she had the idea to write about Cromwell even before she was published, which means that it was likely on her mind when she wrote her memoir, too. Perhaps when she wrote these words, some of the most evocative I’ve read describing books not yet written:

“Sometimes, at dawn or dusk, I pick out from the gloom — I think I do — a certain figure, traversing the rutted fields in a hushed and pearly light, picking a way among the treacherous rivulets and the concealed ditches. It is a figure shrouded in a cloak, bearing certain bulky objects wrapped in oilcloth, irregular in shape: not heavy but awkward to carry. This figure is me; these shapes, hidden in their wrappings, are books that, God willing, I am going to write.” 

Write them she did. In an interview with The Guardian in 2020, Mantel says that as soon as she started writing Wolf Hall, she knew it was what she had been working toward. Starting the trilogy was “like at last delivering what’s within you … an enormous shout from a mountaintop.”

I marvel at such surety. I wonder what it would be like to feel it.

(The Old Library, Trinity College, Dublin)

Storm at Night

Storm at Night

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Thunder and lightning woke me up last night — that and the stagnant air that collected after a power loss. It was long-predicted — the remnants of Hurricane Ida heading this way — but no less frightening.

To see a storm brewing on the horizon, to watch as clouds darken and loom, is one thing. To be roused from sleep by a thunderclap is something else altogether. I wondered about the roof, the gutters, the tall trees that cluster around the house.  I felt at the mercy of the elements.  

I told myself that all would hold, the joists and metal and soil. I told myself to enjoy the spectacle of it all. But I couldn’t fall back to sleep until the torrents had slowed, until the heavens turned dark again. 

(Photo: Wikimedia Commons)

Endings and Beginnings

Endings and Beginnings

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August 31 is a big day for endings. It’s the end of the month, the end of the summer — and the end of the U.S. presence in Afghanistan. 

But it’s also my first day of class. This evening I officially start the master’s program I enrolled in months ago. 

In a way it’s just a return to the program I began a decade ago when I took a Georgetown class called A Sense of Place: Values and Identity. But it’s been 10 years. The program has changed, and I have, too.

Now I’m enrolled in one of four required foundation classes, Science and Society. To prepare for it I’ve read four chapters of a book on the history of science, taking notes on Bacon and Newton and Tycho Brahe. 

What will it be like to sit in a classroom again, to write papers, to be graded? I don’t know … but I’m about to find out.

(Lamplight on the Georgetown campus)

Harvest Time

Harvest Time

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A day’s drive out, a day’s drive back and three days in my hometown leave me in a state of addled contentment now that I’m back home. Throw in some nostalgia and amazement — from visiting with folks I haven’t seen in 10 or 20 years (numbers we toss around as we used to the single digits) — and you have a lovely way to end the summer.

Or is it ending? It will be 90 again today,  the cicadas are crescendoing and the humidity is creeping up as I write this post on the deck. 

Given the opportunity, I’d probably keep traveling and keep sweltering another month or two, but September is almost here — September with its call to purpose and purchase. It’s time to harvest what I’ve sown. 

(Joe Pye weed in a Jessamine County, Kentucky, field)

Walk Across Kentucky

Walk Across Kentucky

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This morning, I walked across Kentucky. Not the 370 miles from Ashland to Paducah, or the 180 miles from Covington to Williamsburg. But the two miles around the Kentucky Arboretum trail, which promises to compress all seven of the state’s geographical regions into one stroll. 

I saw conifers representing the Appalachian Plateau, dogwood and coffeetree for the Knobs and tall grasses for the Pennyrile Region.

The Bluegrass Region, where Lexington is located,  is the most extensive, with bur and chinquapin oaks, several types of ash tree and outcroppings of shaggy limestone. 

Ambling through the Arboretum warmed me up, wore me out and educated me, too. After just one visit I can tell it will be one of my regular hometown routes. 

Ashland Park

Ashland Park

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There are places I visit so often in my imagination that I need to recharge the memories as you would a battery. I did some recharging today when I strolled through Lexington’s Ashland Park neighborhood.

There was Woodland Park with its baseball diamonds and picnic tables, then my old place on Lafayette, the first of several former houses I would visit today (the others I drove by rather than walked past).

I ambled down South Hanover and Fincastle, letting my mind wander, fantasizing what it would be like to live in some of these places, the grand brick colonials, the charming round-doored tudors.  

Till I reached Ashland itself, the home of 19-century statesman Henry Clay, which stopped my reveries in their tracks. Ashland with its shaded walks and formal garden. Ashland with its historic pedigree and bountiful acreage. Even in fantasy, Ashland is out of my league. 

Corridor H

Corridor H

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The climb started as soon as I exited Interstate 81. The flat land became scarcer, the tree tunnels more abundant. My little car felt the difference but handled it better than I’d hoped. 

The first stretch was road I’ve known and driven for years, Routes 33 and 55, which I wrote about years ago. But instead of chugging through Moorefield and Seneca Rocks, I cruised the top of the ridge along Highway 48, which I learned today is part of the Appalachian Development Highway System’s as yet incomplete Corridor H. (Sounds more like a UFO site than a federal roads project.) 

Incomplete might be seen as a disadvantage, given the two-lane stretches in between the four, but not when it takes you to places like this, a pull-off viewing spot I almost missed since it had no sign or build-up. What I found were mountains beyond mountains, Queen Anne’s lace and bumblebees, the quiet of a land out of time.

Going Home

Going Home

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In the waning days of summer, I sandwich in one more trip — this one back to Lexington for my high school reunion. It’s been 10 years since I’ve seen most of these folks and three years since I’ve been in my hometown, a record I don’t want to duplicate. 

I’ve written about trips to Kentucky since I started this blog, describing the drive there and the drive home — even my old high school building makes a cameo appearance. 

There’s a reason for this, of course. It’s because once you’ve grown up in a place like Lexington, it never leaves you. It’s why, even though I’ve lived in this dear house for decades, raised my children here and treasure it beyond measure … when I go to Lexington, I still say “going home.” 

Back to the Bus

Back to the Bus

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The buses are rolling again, yellow school buses not yet matching the color of autumn leaves but rolling just the same. In their rolling I see hope and normalcy.

Yes, the delta variant is abroad in the land. Yes, some of us, too many, are unvaccinated. But in this (now August) ritual (it was always in September when my children were in school), I see a bid for real life with all its prickliness and uncertainty. 

So even though the buses about ran me off the road on my morning walk, even though conditions are not ideal, I’m glad students are heading back to the bus. And from the gleeful look I see on parents’ faces, I think they feel the same. 

The Shore

The Shore

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I’m home now, looking out the window of my office, staring at the
trees that aren’t palm, the greenery that’s not tropical. 

Yesterday I took a walk along familiar streets, nodding at neighbors, noting the changes even a week can bring, the house that’s up for sale, the fall clematis that’s about to bloom. There was much rain while I was gone. Not enough to rescue the parched ferns but enough to green the grass that now clogs the mower. 

It’s lovely, it’s my home. But I miss the big skies above the palms, the limitless white sand, the confab of shore birds that hung out at a tidal flat near where I would go. I see in my mind’s eye the small crescent beach only reachable at low tide and the alternating blues and greens of the Gulf water, lighter above the sand bar. 

What a magical place! How grateful I am to have gone there again!