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Author: Anne Cassidy

Writer’s Writer’s Writer

Writer’s Writer’s Writer

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James Salter, I read recently, is not just a writer’s writer. He is a writer’s writer’s writer.

I’m not sure exactly what that means, but I like the sound of it. And I agree with it. Here’s why:

I had three lives, one during the day, one at night, and the
last in a drawer in my room in a small book of notes. There were wonderful things in that book, things that I am
unable to write or even imagine again. That they were wonderful was not my
doing—I merely took the trouble to put them down.    

The poets, writers, the sages and voices of their time, they
are a chorus, the anthem they share is the same: the great and small are
joined, the beautiful lives, the other dies, and all is foolish except honor,
love, and what little is known by the heart.

Writing is filled with uncertainty and much of what one does
turns out bad, but this time, very early there was a startling glimpse, like
that of a body beneath the water, pale, terrifying, the glimpse that says: it
is there.

 In the darkness the soft hum of the tires on the empty road
was like a cooling hand. The city had sunk to mere glowing sky. My own book was
not yet published but would be. It had no dimensions, no limit to the heights
it might reach. It was deep in my pocket, like an inheritance.

(These passages are from Salter’s memoir, Burning the Days. Photo: detail of wall mural from Mission San Xavier del Bac, Tucson, Arizona)

Wild Thing

Wild Thing

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It was one of my favorite songs in the old days. Short on finesse, but full of raw energy. Even the name of the group evoked primal power: the Troggs.

“Wild thing/ You make my heart sing/You make everything/ Groovy … /Wild thing.”

It was a song that seemed radical in its day, and I was always a little proud to claim it as one of my favorites. Especially since it consisted of about three chords, played over and over again.

So imagine my surprise when I heard it recently during an Olympics interval.

“Wild thing/ You make my heart sing.”

And what was this wild thing being shilled? A fast car, a new show, a brand of mascara?  Uh, none of the above. The “wild thing” in question is … an Applebee’s hamburger.

Lo, how the mighty have fallen.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Many Questions, No Answers

Many Questions, No Answers

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It’s a Monday that doesn’t feel like a Monday, and I’ve been reading about the Parkland shooting, listening to the young voices, learning about the cracks that Nicholas Cruz slipped through.

That we starve social services of the funds they need to help the mentally ill is a given. That our nation is awash in guns is another given. And then there are the deeper causes, the values we no longer hold dear, the center that no longer holds.

How to bind these wounds? How to mend these broken hearts? Especially when solutions are labeled liberal or conservative, and when those labels prevent us from talking honestly about what has happened and what can be done.

How to come together for the common good?

I fear we’ve forgotten how.

Year of the Dog

Year of the Dog

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It’s Chinese New Year and the Year of the Dog, the eleventh of the zodiac. I read that the Dog is associated with the earthly branch and the hours 7 to 9 in the evening. When it comes to yin and yang, Dogs are “yang.”

This doesn’t mean a lot to me. When I think of the Year of the Dog, I think of our dog, Copper, and I think of every year.

Copper is treated like a little king in this house. He lounges on beds, has grated cheese sprinkled over his kibble, and is walked frequently. His barks and whines are tolerated well, as are his middle-of-the-night requests for basement access (this only when it’s raining).

When it comes to Copper, much is given … but much is received. Copper is loving and snuggly. His big soulful eyes seem to know all. And when he jumps on the couch (like so many of his antics once forbidden and now tolerated), he pushes his back up against my leg. I’m his security blanket. But often, he is mine.

Changing Places

Changing Places

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For some reason the management company that owns my office building has set out furniture and plants, set up a coffee bar, a wine bar, hung fabric sculptures on the wall and set potted plants in the corners. When I left last night, a singer was crooning in the lobby.

We’re not sure what’s behind this sudden show of largesse, though some of us suspect rental fees will be rising soon. Is it to build community? To advertise art (some of those fabric sculptures are for sale)? To humanize?

I had the idea for this post before I heard the news from Florida. Seventeen dead in another school shooting. Can we trade this world for another? Because I’m not sure I want to live in this one anymore. Can I put chairs in my lobby and art on my walls? Can I pretend I live somewhere that I do not?

Golden Hearts

Golden Hearts

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Last night I watched pairs skating and thought about love, the glancing touch, moving together, moving alone.  Head-spinning and heart-stopping. Can there be a more perfect evocation of romantic love than these dancers on ice?

Cut to a commercial, followed by another scene, another Olympic venue. The once-vanquished hero returns to scenes of former glory. He had spent some dark days, was challenged by young competitors, worked hard and risked much.

Can he do it again? He bounces on his board and takes off on his last run. And he is flying, cork-screwing, skittering in the air, defying death (it seems to me) with every swoop and curve. And yes, he has what it takes, he wins the gold.

Afterward, he smiles, pumps his fists, makes his way into the crowd where he finds … his mother. And he falls into her arms, sobbing.

Another kind of love.

(Photo: Wikipedia)

Recipe for Improvement

Recipe for Improvement

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The strolls through Arlington are becoming commonplace. Some days I walk two Metro stops up the line, others four. Last night it was two, and when I descended into the tunnel I could see a train coming. I was “lucky.” There had been a switch problem earlier and trains had been single-tracking most of the evening. The next train was due in 16 minutes (a lengthy interval at rush hour even for this dysfunctional system).

Can I do justice to the inward groan that greets a packed-full subway car at the end of a long day? Inward howl is more like it. A clown car’s worth of people piled out at Clarendon, but still it was shoulder to shoulder. But what’s this? I spied a tiny space, enough for me to step in and find a pole to hang onto. At least I had only six stops left. Many riders had been sardined in there for double, triple that.

It was one of those days, major cuts proposed to the State Department and Department of Agriculture, cuts that will no doubt never be enacted but which underline the difficulties of living here. Remind me again … oh, yeah, I work here, we work here. And now the girls work here, too.

Only one thing to do: Get home as quickly as possible and change into comfy clothes … then do something to make the world go away:
make dinner
hang out in the kitchen
bounce on the trampoline
write in my journal
watch the Olympics
talk on the phone
read a good book
hug Copper

… And hope tomorrow (today) is a little bit better!

Magical Thinking

Magical Thinking

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Watching a lot of Olympics these days and thinking about the power of spectator sports. How after a while, you can imagine your limbs as straight and as strong, your nerves as steady. There’s some kind of magical transference that ends the minute I get up and stretch. But for a few minutes, it’s sublime.

Or maybe that’s just me.

There is much talk of how slopes and rinks can stand in for battlefields. How when nations compete at sports they are less likely to compete at war. This may well be true.

But aren’t sports also good for intergenerational harmony? I look at the perfect spins and arabesques of the figure skaters, remember a time when I could hold my leg up to my ear — not while standing on a steel blade, mind you. But still, a time when I was more limber than I am now.

The years fade away when I’m watching the Olympics. Not just the years, but the lack of training and the fear of heights. For just a moment I’m soaring off a ski jump, twisting in air, feeling the unlimited power and strength of youth.

(Photo: Afritorial.com)

Morning of Words

Morning of Words

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It’s a quiet morning, the stock market is tanking, the government open again after a five-hour shutdown during the night, and I sit here perfectly content with my books, journal and laptop. Not that I’m living in a bubble or anything!

But truly, what can you do? We live in concentric circles, do we not? And when the outer orbits are caustic or frayed, we pull inward, to what makes us happy, what makes us whole.

What’s making me happy now is reading Ursula Le Guin’s No Time to Spare: Thinking About What Matters (2017). I was going to say it was her last book, but am glad I checked. Looks like there’s at least another one coming out.

Here is a passage I marked to copy later:

I know that to me words are things, almost immaterial but actual and real things, and that I like them.
I like their most material aspect: the sound of them, heard in the mind or spoken by the voice.
And right along with that, inseparably, I like the dances of meaning words do with one another, the endless changes and complexities of their interrelationships in sentence or text, by which imaginary worlds are build and shared. Writing engages me in both these aspects of words, in an inexhaustible playing, which is my lifework.
Words are my matter—my stuff. Words are my skein of yarn, my lump of wet clay, my block of uncarved wood. Words are my magic, antiproverbial cake. I eat it, and I still have it.

Throwback Thursday

Throwback Thursday

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My Throwback Thursday came a day early, when a high school friend called to tell me about the 70th anniversary reunion of the Central Kentucky Youth Orchestra. Many years ago (not 70, though!) I played string bass in that august ensemble. I was not very good. My audition piece was “My Country ‘Tis of Thee” — and still I only squeaked in.

I was in over my head from the start — Brahms 1st has some fantastically difficult runs — but I was hooked. To be even a small, insignificant, plunking-lower-string part of this swelling sound didn’t just make my day (the day was Saturday, the time 8 a.m. to noon). It made my year (s), both junior and senior. I had found my crowd: the music people.

For two years there was rosin dust and calloused fingers. There were rehearsals and parties and the dreaded tag day, when I stood on the corner of Short and Lime and asked passersby for money. There was the time we were invited to the Soviet Union for the International Music Educators Conference. Does my mind fail me here, or would we have played Kablevsky for Kablevsky?  I think that is true.

That one didn’t work out, but there were concerts at U.K. and Transylvania, on the road in Williamsburg and Atlanta, the night when guys from the trumpet section got their hands on the French taxi horns used in “An American in Paris” and woke up half the hotel.

All these memories bubbling out because of a phone call. The parts of life we think are over never really are.