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Author: Anne Cassidy

Moon Shadow

Moon Shadow

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I took the flashlight, but I didn’t use it. The moon was bright enough to light the road and throw shadows on it — dense and hulking where woods meets the road, a more delicate tracery where only a tree or two (and earth’s atmosphere) stood between me and the orb.

The illuminated landscape was like a negative, an inside-out version of the view. Devoid of life and color, a dreamscape in black and white.

I passed no cars until I was on the way home, their harsh, artificial glare a counterpoint to the natural light.

It was like plunging into another world, this early morning walk, like visiting a barren island nation.

One Year

One Year

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Sometimes when I can’t sleep I wander into Suzanne’s old room, where there’s a four-poster rope bed that I made up using Mom’s quilt and pillow shams after my last trip to Kentucky. It’s the same room where I’ve stored a lot of her jewelry, papers and photographs. I’ve whiled away many wee hours in there lately, reading and thinking, remembering her last days and hours.

Today marks a year. While it’s been a full one in most senses of that word — personally, socially, politically — it seems little more than an instant since she died. Like the flipping of a switch or the turning of a dial, it’s another world I live in now.

It’s difficult to understand this new world in a few weeks or even in 52. The strangeness of it constantly surprises me. But there is one surety: I know she’s at peace now, and that brings some comfort.

As for the long nights, when I get drowsy again I turn off the light and snuggle into the covers, her covers.  I feel her presence there in the dark, and finally, finally, I can sleep.

Week Without Metro

Week Without Metro

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It wasn’t planned, it just worked out that way, but as of yesterday, I’ve had one week without Metro. And yes, it’s been nice! It won’t last, of course. I can’t pull off a drive everyday. But if nothing else I will appreciate the reading time more next week when I jump back on the much reviled public transportation system.

In general, a train or bus is a good place for walkers to be. You hoof it to the bus stop or the subway. You make it work.

But time is a factor, too. And with daylight hours dwindling, walkers need every minute they can find.

So let’s hear it for a week without Metro … and more Metro-less weeks to come!

With Pen in Hand

With Pen in Hand

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The late Oliver Sacks was called “Inky” as a boy because he always had ink-stained fingers. He began keeping a journal at age 14 and had completed more than 600 of them by the time he died at the age of 82 in 2015. 

Sacks ended his autobiography On the Move with these words about writing’s importance in his life:

The art of writing, when it goes well, gives me a pleasure, a joy, unlike any other. It takes me to another place — irrespective of my subject — where I am totally absorbed and oblivious to distracting thoughts, worries, preoccupation or indeed the passage of time. In those rare, heavenly states of mind, I may write nonstop until I can no longer see the paper. Only then do I realize that evening has come and I have been writing all day. 

 Over a lifetime, I have written millions of words, but the act of writing seems as fresh, and as much fun,  as when I started nearly seventy years ago.

In fact, he was writing with great clarity up until days before his died, his collaborator reported. “We are pretty sure he will go with a fountain pen in hand,” she said.

I can’t think of a better way.






(No photos of pens, but here’s one of paper!)

Twelve Years…

Twelve Years…

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Twelve years ago I went to work in an office. I’m still not sure exactly why. I was busy as a freelance writer and had started teaching, too. But the magazine business was changing, and I felt isolated and creatively stuck. So I opted for camaraderie and a steady paycheck.

The work I have now challenges my mind, fills my days and even sends me out into the world every few months. I’m grateful for it. But that doesn’t means the years aren’t passing — and that time, the only currency we have, is dwindling more quickly than I’d like.

I’m resisting the temptation to add “A Slave” to this post title. That would be a cheap shot. But there are times (many times) when I miss the freelance freedom I used to have. And there are days (many days) when the words I write here are the lifeline, what gets me through.

Turning a Corner

Turning a Corner

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Yesterday’s drive to and from the office was like a dream. Forty minutes in and forty minutes out. I gained 100 minutes of free time. I know it was unusual, I know it won’t hold up over time, but even if I saved 50 minutes, that’s almost an hour (a daylight hour!) a day.

Put five of those together and you have a paragraph written,  a closet cleaned — a walk enjoyed.

Driving has its own frustrations. Stop-and-go traffic, crazy drivers, the inability to get anything else done at the same time. (I love my reading time on Metro.)

But a flip has been switched, a corner has been turned. Fifty minutes is 50 minutes.

Ghost Land

Ghost Land

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The streets are deserted, the high-occupancy vehicle restrictions lifted, and I am abroad in a Ghost Land. The buildings are still here, the air system hums as it always does. But gone are the suits on the eleventh floor, the officers in camouflague gear, and most of all, the bustle of a busy work ‘hood.

We are suspended in our glass house while wind whips the yellowing trees and stirs the Potomac into ripples and eddies. We are here where the coffee machine punctuates the silence and voices I’ve grown to recognize call from distant corners.

When you work in a company town, you accept the company rhythms. But today, I’m cutting against the grain. It’s Monday, it’s Columbus Day, I’m in the office.

Awe Walk

Awe Walk

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It helps us see things in new way, boosts our immune system and lowers our blood pressure. It’s even being used to treat PTSD.

The emotion of awe is gaining new respect and appreciation, says an article in Parade magazine. Being in the presence of something that is beyond human scale and understanding — the kind of feeling we get from watching a sunrise or lying under a blanket of stars — can have a profound effect on ordinary living.

Being awe-struck often has an element of surprise, though; it is, almost by definition, out of the ordinary. How to make awe a more permanent part of our day?

Drop the devices and get outside, says the article. Visit a park, museum or planetarium. Or … take an Awe Walk.

Ah, an “Awe Walk” … sounds familiar!

Afternoon Appeal

Afternoon Appeal

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I’m a morning writer, so it feels a strange to be posting this in the afternoon. Afternoon is a time to wind down instead of up. It’s a time to exercise and clean out a closet, to start dinner or have a cup of tea.

Truth to tell, afternoon is not my favorite time of the day. Is it anyone’s? Maybe the late riser prefers afternoon, but only because it is his or her morning — undoubtedly an “a.m.-centric” attitude!

The thing about an afternoon post, though, is that it says, by its very existence, that intellectual effort may be expended even when one thinks it’s too late to bother. And, by extrapolation, that it’s never too late to start/try/begin again.

Before the Storm

Before the Storm

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Today we send our thoughts southward to Florida, which braces itself for Hurricane Matthew.

I’ve grown fond of the Sunshine State, have reveled in its west coast beaches and marveled at its subtropical clime. And now I feel downright protective as it faces a category 4 storm.

Florida seems a large part water anyway, with its swamps and lagoons. How can it withstand this without serious damage to its roads and homes and shores?

I’m sending sunny thoughts Florida’s way, in hopes that this passes quickly, that damage is minimal and the sun soon shines again.