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Author: Anne Cassidy

Walking the Apple

Walking the Apple

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In a few hours I’ll board a train that will take me up the Northeast Corridor to a journalism school reunion. Well, it won’t take me directly there. I’ll land at Penn Station, hop on a subway to 96th Street, check into the hotel, then walk, walk, walk wherever my feet will take me.

Maybe to Central Park, which should be lovely this time of year.  The Reservoir Path is nice, or I could dip south to the Sheep Meadow. There will be the castle and the Great Lawn and the arbor and the Ramble.

Later there will be lectures and panels, receptions and dinners. There will be classmates I haven’t seen in years.

But before that, there will be the walk.

Poetry Month

Poetry Month

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Trees have budded and bowed, petals littering the grass. Their golds are green now and shade has returned to the land. Oak tree catkins drape themselves on the azaleas and maple seeds helicopter down.

Nature seems ready to burst with all this growth and all this gladness. It needs an outlet. It needs a poem. Even this one:

And since to look at things in bloom
Fifty springs are little room
About the woodlands I will go
To see the cherry hung with snow.

Happy National Poetry Month!

Slipping Out

Slipping Out

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Last evening I slipped out at dusk, wearing tennis shoes, office clothes and a rain jacket the color of twilight. It was too late to change into sweatshirt and tights. There was time only for the leaving.

And so I forgot the trappings, the music on a string. I bolted before the moment and the impulse left me. Open on my screen was an article, mind food. Beside me a book of poetry.

They would wait. The walk would be something else, I knew, nourishment of a different kind.

One Year

One Year

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Today marks one year at my “new” job.  I know most names, can find most conference rooms and have located a stairwell that allows me back on the fifth floor once I do my stair-climb. (Shhh… this one is confidential; all other stairwells are locked from the other side!)

Anniversaries come more quickly than they used to, especially this one. It barely seems possible I’ve been here for one complete turn around the sun.

While I’m grateful that I could find a new job, meet new people and travel to far-flung places (especially grateful for that), I’m always mindful of the clock ticking, and of Mary Oliver’s words, which I quoted here a week ago:

The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it it neither power nor time.

So, as I start my second year here, I’ll focus most on balance, on finding the creative path through every task. It’s not just the right way; it’s the only way.

Second Beginning

Second Beginning

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A pre-dawn walk today in a light rain, Cyclops-eye blazing, cap and a hood to keep the drops at bay. These early outings merge into dreamscape. Did I really don shoes and socks and walk to Fox Mill Road and back? Or was that another walk, another day?

By the time I left the house this morning the day had lightened and the rain was steadier. The pink dogwood lifted its arms gracefully on one side of the yard, and the white dogwood took my breath away. In between were ferns, azaleas and forget-me-nots. The familiarity of the spring garden.

It seemed a different day than one hour earlier. A second beginning.

As Morning Unfolds

As Morning Unfolds

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I left the house before six today, walked into a misty morning with piled clouds and a chorus of birdsong. The air had a pastel fullness to it and the light was worthy of Bierstadt.

On mornings like these I leave the music at home so I can better observe the day as it wakes, stretches, waves his arms and opens its eyes.

Today, though, the morning clouded up as I strolled, and fat drops fell. But before they could gain too much traction, the day reversed course once again. Now it’s gloriously sunny and green.

It’s what I’ve wanted to do every day this week as I sat five stories up in a shell of glass and steel — watch the morning unfold, and be inside it as it wakes.

Free!

Free!

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It must be spring cleaning time, because Folkstone Drive has become a bazaar. Within the last few weeks, you could have scored a kitchen cabinet, bathroom vanity and a grill — all sitting on the street, absolutely free!

It’s hard to drive by this stuff without picking it up. It’s that hunting-gathering impulse honed when I lived in New York in my 20s and practically furnished an apartment with pieces drug in off the sidewalk.

But with much internal dialogue (“do you really need a broken grill? don’t you already have one sitting on the deck?”) and a modicum of self-shaming, I’ve managed to ignore this free stuff and act like I’m above it all.

I concentrate instead on the backdrops into which these items are placed and what lies just beyond them — the woods, the flowers, the dogwood, the redbud! What’s always free is the stride and the vista and what I see along the way. Everything else is just gravy.

When Minutes Fly

When Minutes Fly

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I’ve had many commutes in my life. The easiest was a stroll down the hall. The most inspiring was a walk through Central Park from the Upper West Side to Midtown Manhattan.

The one I have now involves a drive, Metro trip, bus ride and walk. I might be in as many as four vehicles on the way home, since I switch from one line to the other to avoid being squeezed in what is known here as the “Orange Crush” (for the Orange Line to Vienna, where I park my car).

All of which is to say, I have a disjointed commute. What’s consistent about it is that, unless I’m standing up and it’s too crowded to breathe, I have a book, journal or newspaper in hand. What stitches together the minutes and hours is … ( no surprise!) … the written word.

It’s amazing how quickly this makes time pass, how easy it is to miss my stop. So today I’m grateful for the words that make the minutes fly. Don’t know what I’d do without them.

A Dogwood’s Year

A Dogwood’s Year

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After an early bloom and an untimely freeze, I didn’t expect much of Spring this year. But it has surprised me. The hyacinths are wafting, the lilacs are trying (I have three blooms this year, up one from last year) and the dogwood, well, it’s something else entirely.

I remember when we would have four or five flowers on this tree. And now, it has burst into life and threatens to overcome the mailbox if there isn’t some judicious pruning.

Until there is, here’s the shaggy, unruly tree in all its gleaming,white 2017 glory.

Monday at Work

Monday at Work

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In many parts of the world today is an official holiday, schools and offices are closed. So when I arrived at the office before 8 in a spitting rain, I had the distinct feeling that I shouldn’t be here, that I should be working on an essay at home with a second cup of tea.

Instead, I have a few minutes for a few words. And I’m giving them to the poet Mary Oliver, from her book of essays Upstream:

It is 6 a.m., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt. My responsibility is not to the ordinary, or the timely. It does not include mustard, or teeth. It does not extend to the lost button, or the beans in the pot. My loyalty is to the inner vision, whenever and howsoever it may arrive. … There is no other way work of artistic worth can be done. And the occasional success, to the striver, is worth everything. The most regretful people on earth are those who felt the call to creative work, who felt their own creative power restive and uprising, and gave it it neither power nor time.

Thank you, Mary Oliver. I hear you.