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Author: Anne Cassidy

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.

Spacious Mind

Spacious Mind

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A happy mind is a spacious mind, intoned the voice that I have come to associate with calm. It’s the voice of the Headspace application (its founder, as a matter of fact), and it has been my guide on this several-month journey I’ve been taking recently, dipping my toe into the shallowest end of the deep waters of meditation.

Any progress I’ve made has been courtesy of my place of employ, which has sponsored Headspace meditation sessions every workday since mid-March, most of which I’ve attended.

Some days I’m a hopeless case and can barely follow the instructions. But other days I can feel myself in another place, one where thoughts flit into my mind and just as easily float out again; one where following the breath, flowing with the breath, is becoming a little more second nature.

Today, when I heard this line that a happy mind is a spacious mind, a mind that has room for other people, other ideas, I’ll admit I broke the first rule of meditation. I didn’t let that thought move through and out. I savored it a bit, I pondered the implications.

Equating happiness with spaciousness, yes, it works — though you could just as easily equate it with coziness and smallness and manageability. But in this case I imagined the clear sky that you reach when you soar above the clouds. The spaciousness of the heavens, of the mind unencumbered.

Drippy Walk

Drippy Walk

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A drippy walk last week had me dodging raindrops. When I left my parked car I thought the sun would burn the clouds away, but the farther I walked the less certain I was of that. 

Still, it was a grand way to spend an early summer afternoon, making my way along moss-slicked paths, inhaling the rain-spun air, exploring an unfamiliar corner of the neighborhood.
My shoes and shirt were growing soggier by the minute but I couldn’t bear to turn around. The canopy was catching the worst of the weather, and the moisture seemed to accentuate everything — the leaves were greener, the air was fresher — and I was walking through it, gladly.
Virtual Shower

Virtual Shower

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Today, we make one more notch on the digital belt, as we hold a virtual baby shower for Claire. With two expectant mothers in the family, we thought it best to forgo a real party.

By now most of us have been to Zoom happy hours, Zoom meetings, Zoom family reunions and all other manner of screened gatherings. We have grown accustomed to the squares on a screen.

So today, there will be more of that. There will be virtual games and present-opening. But the gifts, the decorations — and most of all, the love and good wishes — will be most emphatically real.

Dizzy Doggie

Dizzy Doggie

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A dizzy doggie is a sad sight to behold, and we’re beholding it now since Copper came down with something called vestibular disease. It affects the part of a dog’s brain and ear that regulates balance, and is a condition known to affect old dogs.

This time yesterday we thought our dear pet was not long for this world. He couldn’t eat or stand, was sick to his stomach. I thought he must have had a stroke and was preparing myself (not well, either) for the worst.

But a trip to the vet informed us that he would most likely recover and just needed to be kept quiet until this thing goes away. Of course, we left with medications because this after all is a modern, state-of-art veterinary practice. But time is the great healer here — as it so often is.


(Copper is looking ahead to better days.)

When Worlds Collide

When Worlds Collide

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Working outside means that my worlds collide. 

I sit in the office chair retrieved on Tuesday, a shiny, heavy object with padding everywhere a body needs it — but yesterday I pulled it out onto the deck in full view of the wood bees and the red-shouldered hawk family next door and the knockout rose bush, just planted on the side of the yard. 
In the way that white noise makes one concentrate, the sights and sounds of the outdoors do the same for me. And to concentrate while also seated in comfort is … divine.
So let the worlds collide. I’m fine with it! 
Reading Double

Reading Double

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What’s a reader to do when she becomes totally engrossed in an Audible book while already reading a page-turner the old-fashioned way? There’s only one answer to that: spend all non-work hours reading or listening.

Beyond that, though, there are some considerations. One can “read” an Audible book while walking or dusting or chopping vegetables, but one cannot read an Audible book before bed. I’ve tried that before, have fallen asleep to a mellifluous voice carrying me sweetly from novel to dreamland only to find myself hopelessly lost and frantically rewinding (using that five-seconds-back key) in the clear light of day.
With eyes on paper, though, the worst that can happen is that you lose your bookmark in the bedcovers. But that, and one’s place in the story, is easily found the next morning. 
So there develops the two-channeled reading mind, which thrills to American Dirt in the evening and revels in The Heart’s Invisible Furies in the morning. And why should it not? After all, it’s the same mind that holds recipes and birthdays, addresses and passwords. It can juggle more than one movie or television show in an evening, so why not two books in a day?
 I say this now, of course, but I’m only a few days into reading double. We’ll see later how it all turns out. 
One Last Look

One Last Look

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Not only is my office still in lockdown, with employees required to work from home, but we’ll soon move to a new building. By early fall, we’ll  have the option of returning to the office, but it won’t be this office. Which is why I went down to Crystal City this morning to pack up my chair, standing desk, notebooks and files — and bring them home.

It was a big job that my becoming sentimental made even bigger. I couldn’t stop thinking of all the colleagues who once peopled this place. Though I still work with them, we are now squares on a screen or voices on the phone. There is no more banter in the kitchen, no more planking in the hall.

I’ll admit that working at home is wonderful, but I miss the camaraderie and the stimulation. I miss the life I used to have. Which is why I spent some time today running around with my phone taking pictures of the place.  Here’s where we held potlucks. There’s where we started planning the speech it would take me a month to write.

It may sound silly, it took time I didn’t have. But I spent the better part of four years in this place. Surely it’s worth one last look.