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Author: Anne Cassidy

Hooray For …

Hooray For …

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I enjoyed the movies nominated for Best Picture this year more than I have any crop in years. Either I’m getting inured to the Zeitgeist, or there were more throwbacks. The latter, I think.

What was not a throwback was the ceremony itself. I realized at the end of it that what I look for in the Oscars is some kind of old-time glamour that hasn’t been there in years. Last year’s ceremony had such a shocking conclusion that it didn’t matter. The year before that I was probably too rattled to care.

But this year, I did notice, I did care and I did wonder. When things seem Not the Same, how much of it is because things are actually changing, how much is the raging of age (“nothing is as good as it used to be, dearie”) … and how much is a combination of the two?

(Danielle Darrieux from In Memoriam, Oscargo.com)

Toppled and Crushed

Toppled and Crushed

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I knew it was a dumb title … Kingdom of the Wind. Well, that kingdom just took down not only the Sword of Damocles, but the 110-foot-tall split-trunk oak that had snagged it. And with an awe-inspiring precision, the huge tree fell right on top of my trampoline.

Smashed it, split it right down the middle.

I’m grateful no one was hurt, that Copper wasn’t in the yard … and of course that I wasn’t bouncing at the time (not that I would have been in 60-mile-an-hour gusts).

But the trampoline meant so much to me, as did the tree — and now they’re both gone.

Soon there will be chainsaws, re-fencing, carting the trampoline away. There will be estimates, expenditures, recalculations.

But there won’t be that portal to the sky.

Kingdom of the Wind

Kingdom of the Wind

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When the wind blows this hard (gusts up to 67 miles an hour), I feel like I’ve entered another country, a howling, raging place, a Kingdom of the Wind. I wake to its sound.

The bamboo beats a rough staccato on the siding, and there’s a clanging I can’t quite place. Is it a rogue bucket on the deck, or old Jacob Marley rattling his chains?

With winds this high, either Dulles Airport is closed, or diverting its traffic to an alternate runway, one that goes … right over our house! So on top of wondering if a tree will fall, I’m worried that a plane will, too.

An unsettled morning to be sure, with government offices closed and my office shuttered. I have one question: Will the errant branch we call the Sword of Damocles finally be blown out of the old oak? It’s dancing madly out there now, but is so wedged in place that it lingers still.

Just lost power … just got it back …

It will be a long day here in the Kingdom of the Wind.

Flowers, Real and Imagined

Flowers, Real and Imagined

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Here in Crystal City, folks are trying hard. Brightly patterned skins have gone over the gray stone buildings, blank walls have sprout faux gardens, while not far away a sheltered cherry tree breaks into early bloom.

A colleague thinks we’re trying to lure Amazon’s HQ2, and that may be the case.

But all the paint and netting in the world can’t camouflage the button-downed corporate soul of this place. The only thing that does that for me are the people. At lunchtime on a warm day, the place is full of life. Pale office workers play ping-pong or corn hole. Smokers linger longer in front of buildings. Bikers and runners mingle on the sidewalks.

So if paint and netting bring out the people, then bring them on!

Deadlines, Real and Imagined

Deadlines, Real and Imagined

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Writing this blog is completely voluntary, of course. No one is paying me to do it, no one is expecting me to do it. Which is why, when things are especially crazy at work, I post here later in the day.

Today has been one of those days. Having waited all day for a logical stopping point, I’ve finally given up. I’m writing now at an illogical stopping point — meaning that I still have work to complete before close of business.

Ironically, it’s often when I telecommute that I don’t post here until later in the day.  Overcompensation, a different routine, real deadlines interfering with imagined ones.

But which are more important? The real ones demand response, will get it one way or the other. The imagined ones can slip away. Does that not make them the ones that need me most?

Seems that way to me.

(Rushing here, rushing there. But at least I’m not riding Metro today.)

Musical Measure

Musical Measure

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The other day I walked exactly as long as it took to listen to Brahms’ “Variations on a Theme by Haydn.” Then I turned around, walked back and listened to the same piece again. Eighteen minutes down and 18 minutes back. Adding a couple minutes on each end for the turn-around and the cool-down made it a 40-minute walk, three to four miles.

It was simple. It was pure. It was exquisite. At least the musical part.

Usually my walks are prescribed by geography — to the end of the neighborhood and back — or by time — 15 minutes out and 15 minutes back. Measuring the walk by music was deliciously different: organic and thematic.

I don’t always have the freedom for a musical measure, but it’s something to aspire to.

River of Spring

River of Spring

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We had a lot of rain over the weekend, and as I dodged the drops (not always successfully), I thought about the moistness that’s the
beginning, the true origin, of spring — and of all life.
Noticing the swollen buds on the forsythia, a pinch of yellow
here and there. The greening of stems, the smallest actors.
The birds get it before we do. They know the days are
getting longer, the light stronger. They know the river of spring is rising.

I want to enter this river, knowing it will be muddy and
cold. I want to be carried along into true spring. Beyond the pale yellow of
forsythia into the pinks and whites and purples of azalea, dogwood and lilac.
Right now we are on the banks, just dipping our toe into the waters. But soon
we will be riding high.
Doves in Love

Doves in Love

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Yesterday’s damp chilly walk was full of birdsong and the smell of fresh earth. I’d already heard spring peepers, and then I spied a pair of mourning doves. More signs of spring. They sat on the road until a car was almost upon them, then flew away together into the gray sky.

Mourning doves are also called rain doves, which may be why there were out and about yesterday.

And it was a good day to be out and about. A light drizzle fell, but the earth was alive in a way it hasn’t been recently. No more cold, frozen ground.

As the body moves through space, thoughts move through the mind, and what was cluttered is suddenly cleared, as if a plump bird swept away the cobwebs with its swift wing.

Post Patience

Post Patience

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As I slowly rebuild the blog’s home page inventory, I’m reminded of its original intent:

The snow has clung to every available surface. The most spindly branches of the forsythia have “Vs” of snow, and I can imagine the accumulation, patient and slow, crystal attracting crystal until little pockets formed. I hope this blog will be the same, a slow, patient accumulation of words.

Today I focus on the patience part of this equation. Patience has never been my strong suit. In the little inventory I sometimes take at the end of the day — when could I have been kinder or stronger? — many failures come down to impatience, wanting to check off a box, complete a task, rather than waiting a while, living with the the slight discomfort of uncertainty.

In Letters to a Young Poet, Rainer Maria Rilke wrote, “Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue.”

That will be my mantra today, to live with what is unsolved, to love the questions themselves.

What Happened?

What Happened?

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Yesterday I wrote my entry as I always do, pushed “publish,” and checked to make sure the blog post was there. It was … but nothing else. Instead of 14 posts on the page, there was only one. The other posts are reachable, but you must click on them from the right-hand column. Not a catastrophe, but not what I wanted to see at the beginning of my day.

It was, as usual, a hectic morning. I was already late. So I came into the office, hoping that when I arrived and checked the blog, it would have magically fixed itself. This is something I believe in, by the way. I’ve known many appliances that have fixed themselves — phones and computers and maybe, once, an answering machine.

This was not one of those times.

So now I’m writing today’s post, hoping that when I push “publish,” it will appear on the page — along with its 13 lost cousins.

Here goes …

(Choosing a calm photograph this morning!)