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Author: Anne Cassidy

Ready for Rest?

Ready for Rest?

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Within this morning’s walk, rushing to work in a work-out before the heat begins to build, there was a sudden awareness of pause amidst the hurry. The feeling you get at the top of roller coaster, infinite and infinitesimal at the same time.

It was the feeling of summer at its peak, full of birdsong and cicada crescendo. Of crows, discussing the world and its problems as they often do, hopping along the gravel berm with their wise eyes and sleek black coats.

And for some reason this summer, what has become a signature sound, the felling of trees, the grinding up of deadwood. Are lawn services offering specials or something? Or are the trees, like so many of us, ready for a rest?

What Remains

What Remains

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Since mid-June I’ve been in fighting mode.  The day lilies were budding and the deer were biting — and I was determined to win the battle this time. Armed with both liquid and granular deer repellent, I spent time each evening treating the flowers, dousing them with so much foul-smelling stuff that I dared any young buck to come near them.

But the young bucks did — and the young does, too. Apparently they were hungrier or more numerous than usual, because, despite all my efforts, the deer have decimated my day lily crop. The brilliant yellow and orange accents to the pink coneflowers … are not there. It’s a sparser and more monochromatic garden than I had anticipated this spring.

It’s easy for me to be discouraged by such matters, as seemingly trivial as they are. But I realized yesterday that I was looking at it all wrong. I was gazing at the garden and seeing what was not there rather than what is.

So I shifted focus. I skimmed over the stripped stalks, the nubs left by the marauding hordes. Instead, I appreciated the coneflowers, the pink ones and the white ones. I spotted the black-eyed Susans that are just beginning to pop. I took a couple of deep breaths and almost — almost — saw the beauty … in what remains.

(The garden a few years ago, when the day lilies still had a fighting chance.) 

Out of State

Out of State

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Over the weekend, I took a brief trip to the state of Maryland. It was only a quick visit, I was home in less than five hours. Yet so homebound have I become that it felt like I was taking off for a cross-country expedition.

While the go-go-ness of my life up till March has meant no time to process the people and places I was visiting, recent stay-at-home mandates haven’t given me much time to digest things, either. Because there’s never a shortage of work and chores, and low-level anxiety has a way of gumming up the gray matter.

Still, even a short sojourn helped. There was a new path, familiar beneath the feet — but it had been more than a year since I strolled it. There was fresh air from the river and bay, and, most of all, there were the dear faces of people I love but hadn’t seen since wintertime. 
It was a short trip but a good trip, proof that even a little break makes a difference. On the way home I sang in the car.  
A Day’s Work

A Day’s Work

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Today I’ve spent roughly five hours (and counting) on a call with Apple Support. I have installed and uninstalled, saved and unsaved. I’ve held my phone up to the screen of my computer at the same time that I typed on that computer’s keyboard. 

To do this has required multiple plugs and passwords, a backup disc, three computers and a technician who is as calm as she is smart. “Patience is my middle name,” she said during our third (fourth?) hour together. I’ve gotten so used to her voice in my ear that I’m wondering if I can write a blog post without her. 
This is by no means finished. I imagine we will go on long past 5 p.m. But at the end of this I hope to be able to use my new work computer — and, given how long I’ve spent holding my smart phone up to my computer, be sporting a newly toned set of biceps. 
It’s all in a day’s work for this most un-tech-savvy of writers …
(Using a calm picture to soothe frayed nerves …)
The Fifth of July

The Fifth of July

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It was the first time in a long time that I didn’t see a live fireworks display. But because I didn’t — or for a thousand other reasons, some of them valid — last night’s show was especially touching to me.

Maybe it was because of the anger in the air, justified to some extent but frightening, too, because it seems to be blinding us to all that is good about our country. Or maybe it was because I always appreciate a fine soundtrack, and televised viewing allows for that. (What could be better than fireworks plus “Stars and Stripes Forever”?)

Mostly I think it was because there is still so much good in our country, and we are having such a tough time of it, are hurting in so many ways. I worry that we have lost sight of what makes us great, of “e pluribus unum.” But last night, sitting in front of the TV with a bowl of popcorn in my arms (dinner!) I found cause for optimism. I hope it lasts.

Funny Fourth

Funny Fourth

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Funny that I won’t be seeing live fireworks this year …

Or going to any cook-outs …

Or singing any patriotic songs.

Funny that it doesn’t really feel like the Fourth.

Or maybe not so funny after all …

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy

Lazy, Hazy, Crazy

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“Bring back those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer,” went the old Nat King Cole song, which I just learned from Wikipedia was originally a German tune.  It’s one of those ditties that once stuck in your brain remains there, so I will not link to it.

The song has been in my mind these last few days as we enter full-on summer, with temperatures in the 90s and rising humidity. It is, without a doubt, my favorite time of year. And now that I’m working at home I’m able to be out in it most of the day.

Besides avoiding a long and often-arduous commute, being outside this summer is my favorite part of the new arrangement. To be a part of the scene — part of the whole buzzing, bird-chirping, lawnmower’ing, afternoon-thunderstorm’ing package — is as close to mindfulness as I can get.

Books, Books and Books

Books, Books and Books

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From a book I’m reading that I may have read once before, I caught an aha moment last night. It’s a passage from Jewelweed by David Rhodes, and it involves a conversation between a man in prison and the minister who comes to visit him.

“Is there anything you’d like me to bring next time?” she asks.

Yes, says the man in prison, whose name is Blake. “Three things … books, books and books.”

When the minister asks what kind of books, Blake says he will read most anything, but what he really wants are … “thick books with fine print, difficult sentences, long words, and enormous ideas, books written in a feverish hand by writers who hate the world yet can’t keep from loving it, whose feelings so demand to be understood that if they didn’t write them down they would go blind.”

Sounds good to me.

The Miniaturist

The Miniaturist

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Today, Virginia enters “Phase 3,” which means that pools open, gyms can operate at 75-percent capacity and gatherings of 250 may be held.  But for many of us, I suspect, life will continue on its oh-so-different track.

Book group tonight will still be virtual. Going for groceries will remain my only weekly outside-the-house errand. Working-from-home has become routine, as have my take-a-quick-break strolls around the backyard.

It was on one of those yesterday that it dawned on me that this new life is making me a miniaturist. Not someone who builds tiny dollhouses or paints illuminated manuscripts, as tempting as those occupations might be, but “miniaturist” in the sense of paying attention to small things.

I notice the gall on the poplar and the chicory that has sprung up by the fence. Those parts of the yard that I seldom used to enter have become my secondary landscape, the place I go to make the world go away. And there is beauty in the small and quiet, the “violet by the mossy stone, half hidden from the eye.” 

Moderation

Moderation

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A metaphor came to mind today: As is true in many houses of this era (mid-1970s), the venting leaves much to be desired. Despite numerous adjustments, in the summer it’s still too warm upstairs, too cold in the basement and, though I would like to say it’s just right on the first floor, that’s not entirely true. Let’s just say it’s less extreme than the others.

What I was thinking about this morning while adjusting the thermostat — with one of us in the basement, another on the first floor and the third up above — is about regulation, moderation, in general, how making one of us slightly more comfortable may make the others slightly less so. I was thinking, in short, of sacrifice: that the good of others may depend upon our discomfort.

I wan’t intending this to be about mask-wearing. My initial thought was much more general. But given the times we live in, it wasn’t long before it trended this way.