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Author: Anne Cassidy

Counterbalance

Counterbalance

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The coronavirus has arrived along with the crocus and the daffodils, the sweet woodruff and forsythia. It’s arrived along with the balmy breezes and the occasional rumble of thunder.

I’m wondering if there’s a connection between the two, the virus and the early spring, and have decided that only in the most general, humans-messing-things-up kind of way. That and how they both heighten the disjointedness I’m feeling these days, a sense that the world is out of kilter.

Still, the one can be a balm for the other. Pulling into my driveway last night, I glimpsed the blossoms that popped during the 70-degree day and felt all tingly and alive again. Yes, I still rushed in to wash my hands — but then I rushed back out again to snap this photo.

In the CIty

In the CIty

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It wasn’t where I thought I would be when I climbed up the Metro stairs, but it was close enough. It was the city, the city where I worked for 10 years and don’t work anymore.

It was the city where sidewalks would gleam with water sprayed from hoses in the hot summer sun.

It was the city where I would traipse home at the end of a long day.

It was the city that now, surprisingly, welcomed me home.

Late Light

Late Light

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After a late light evening, a late dark morning. The drive I normally do in full daylight I did today in the gloaming, with the glow of an almost-full moon to guide me.

It’s no matter. I’ve experienced this enough by now to expect the shift and roll with it. The missing hour of sleep is another issue. In my experience once you lose it you seldom get it back. The long catch-up snoozes do little to erase the deficit.

Nevertheless, I look forward to acclimating soon. I want to be awake and alert to enjoy the endless afternoons, the dusks that go on forever, the sense of possibility that late light can bring.

ISO Hand Sanitizer

ISO Hand Sanitizer

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I’ve read enough psychology to understand when my actions are simply seeking a little control over a situation that’s beyond any. And for me, these last few days, it all boils down to hand sanitizer.

No matter that I’ve been washing my hands like a fiend. I want hand sanitizer to carry in my purse and backpack. I want to know I can slip a glob of it in my hands when soap and water aren’t available.

Of course, as anyone who’s been shopping knows, there’s no hand sanitizer to be found. Not in pharmacies or grocery stores or anywhere else. When I enter a store and find no hand sanitizer, I buy paper towels or bleach or something else. This is getting expensive!

Which is why I’m glad to hear you can make the stuff. Combine two-thirds cup alcohol with one-third cup aloe vera gel. Of course, you must have aloe vera gel, which strangely enough, I do. It was buried in a bag in the garage where I keep sunscreen and insect repellent.

I still feel out of control … but not quite so much.


(Photo chosen for serenity enhancement)

Requiem for a Tree

Requiem for a Tree

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It comes down today, this mighty oak, the tallest in the yard, once a noble specimen but now a victim of drought, development and Lord knows what else. It bravely endured the amputation of its leeward half, a move that was meant to save it or at least forestall its end.  While that gave it a few more years, it was not enough. The executioners arrive in an hour to cut it down.

I’ve lost track of how many trees we’ve lost through the years, ones blown down by strong winds after soaking rains; ones felled before that can happen; and one that was cabled for years to keep it upright only to have it plunge to earth on a warm and still May morning.

I went out early this morning to say goodbye to the tree, patting its great hoary trunk, mossy and lichened. I thought of the games the children played at its feet, recalled the haphazard forsythia hedge that used to grow in front of it, the playhouse and sandbox that were there. I thought about its role in Suzanne and Appolinaire’s wedding, when, decorated with a fern, it was witness to their vows.

Once it was one of a number; now, it’s the last of its breed. There are no more 100-footers. They have died and gone away.

I know this is the right thing to do. The tree is rotting and weakened. If left to its own devices it could fall down, taking other trees and the neighbor’s shed with it. But I will miss its shade in summer and its bare branches in winter. I will miss its salute to the sky.

Blank Slate

Blank Slate

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It’s the first time I’ve been home in the morning light since I pruned the rose bush, and I sit at the kitchen table looking at the results. There are fewer branches, to be sure, and there is a clarity, the beginnings of new growth.

How I wish I could bring that clarity to other tasks at hand: to the boxes and shelves and hidden corners of my house. To the jumble of ideas in my brain.

What’s required is the kind of careful, methodical approach I used last Sunday. That requires time … and space. Long afternoons, mornings without appointments. The blank slate of an empty room.

Underland

Underland

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Like the underworlds Robert Macfarlane plumbs in his book Underland: A Deep Time Journey, there is much going on beneath the surface in this marvelous new offering by one of my favorite authors. 

And there would have to be to combine prehistoric cave art, Parisian catacombs, the “wood wide web” (the fungal and rooted connectedness of trees in the forest), underground rivers, sweating icebergs and burial sites for nuclear waste — all in one book.

One theme that ties them together, besides Macfarlane’s exploration of them (no one is better than he at describing fear) is a growing recognition of the Anthropocene, the geologic age that experts have come to accept we are living through, one defined by human influence on the environment.

To comprehend the enormity of this designation, Macfarlane brings many tools to bear — literature, myth, science, philosophy and language, always language. “Words are world-makers — and language is one of the great geologic forces of the Anthropocene,” Macfarlane writes. But of the many terms for this “ugly epoch,” only one seems right with Macfarlane — “species loneliness, the intense solitude that we are fashioning for ourselves as we strip the Earth of the other life with which we share it.” 


“If there is human meaning to be made of the wood wide web,” he continues, “it is surely that what might save us as we move forwards into the precarious, unsettled centuries ahead is collaboration: mutualism, symbiosis, the inclusive human work of collective decision-making extended to more-than-human communities.”


And so the image at the heart of these pages, he explains, is that of an opened hand — extended in greeting, compassion, art — the prehistoric hand prints in ancient cave paintings and the touch of his young son’s hand. 


I know I will write more about this wonderful book; this is a start.

Sweet Normalcy

Sweet Normalcy

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Okay, I take back what I said about yesterday. It wasn’t a “not so super Tuesday.” It was a surprisingly pleasant Tuesday, and went a long way toward removing the sense of existential dread that has been dogging me of late.

It gave me hope that someday we might have sweet normalcy again — a time when civility rules, when I’m not afraid to read the newspaper, and eventually, when it’s permissible to shake hands or cough discretely into a tissue.

Normalcy is always underrated until it goes into hiding. But today I sat on Metro appreciating the ride and the sunshine streaming into the car when it was above-ground. And now I look over at the nondescript office building outside my window, watching a reflection of the planes taking off at National Airport. And I think that normal hasn’t looked this good in a long time.

Not So Super Tuesday

Not So Super Tuesday

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Yesterday began with a meditation session — a few minutes of peace that were quickly blotted out by the panic in the air. Had I bought enough staples at the grocery store? Should I pick up extra dog food? What about dried beans and noodles? And hand sanitizer? I hear there are runs on that in the stores.

At meetings and at the water cooler, talk of Covid 19 alternated with talk of Super Tuesday, with a similar degree of cheer, which was none at all. Disasters seem to be looming on both fronts.

One searches for a center of gravity, for normalcy, for what passes as calm. Is it better to be informed or stay ignorant?

At this point, I vote for the latter.

Pruning the Rose

Pruning the Rose

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Pruning the rose is one of the more zen-like gardening tasks. While it may seem daunting at first, once you’ve found the rhythm — deadheading the spent blooms, tracing each shoot to its origin, discovering the essential order of the plant — it becomes as engrossing as any occupation I know of.

It’s not mindless but mindful. It requires that we study each stem, follow it through a tangle of thorns and the green gardening wire I use to lash errant branches to their railings. It’s almost like entering the plant, learning its secrets, understanding it enough to diminish it, knowing that in making it less we ultimately make it more.

Gardening mirrors life in many ways — but pruning the rose mirrors it more than mowing, say, or weeding. Because in life must we often need to shed the extraneous, to find the essential and amplify it, to train first ourselves and then our children, to guide and shepherd. And that means meeting things first on their own terms.  In gardening, as in life, it’s important to pay attention.