Browsed by
Author: Anne Cassidy

Slow Dawn

Slow Dawn

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There is something so companionable about waking up with the day. As my eyes open, the room fills with dim light. Shapes are still shadowy and bird song tentative. But the deck railing and rocking chair have already revealed themselves.

It is the perfect way to leave sleep behind. Dim, still, nothing expected of me. No loud jangly noises to make my head spin. The lights of a car on a distant road all the illumination I need — that and the light of this screen.

Only one thing could make this better.

I’ll walk to the kitchen now and pour myself a cup of tea.

Bouncing and Bierstadt

Bouncing and Bierstadt

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Last evening, a late-in-the-day bounce on the trampoline. I’ve jumped at this time before but had forgotten how transcendent it is.

The sun was low in the sky but not yet setting. From my vantage point the trees in the front yard were shining. And though I knew it was a reflected gleam, I could not shake the belief that they had generated that light themselves. Beyond the leaves was the sky — and it was the shade of blue it turns before going out for the night — a radiant hue.

The landscape had the sentimental, heroic scale of a Bierstadt painting, which was no doubt caused by exhaustion and bouncers’ (instead of runners’) high.

But it was as real to me as any humdrum scene, as real as the pale dawn now unfolding outside my door.

(Albert Bierstadt, Forest Sunrise)

All Aboard

All Aboard

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It doesn’t always happen this way — in fact, it usually does not — but today I didn’t so much ride the train to work as float here. I opened the novel at West Falls Church, left it out of the bag to read while waiting for the Red Line at Metro Center, and only reluctantly tucked it away when I exited at Judiciary Square.

It’s not the book itself I want to write about here, but the act of reading.

Sometimes I’m the person staring into the tiny screen of a smartphone or tapping on its keyboard. And the newspaper also has its allure. But books are the best commuting companions. They are the ones that blur the miles, that stitch home to office most deftly.

But just as books are good for commuting, commuting is good for books —100 minutes of almost uninterrupted mind space (round trip) — time to lose myself in even a boring tome, to say nothing of a moderately engrossing novel.

Open Door

Open Door

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Other topics were rattling around in my head this morning. But then I turned to look behind me, through the tidier than usual expanse of the living room, and saw this.

The front door open with just the storm door closed. Light pouring into the house from the east. Morning light that blots out the landscape, the bleeding heart, the azalea, the forget-me-nots, the lone tulip. (What happened to the others? I suspect deer!)

With the door open, the hall elongates and the floor shines. The world lies waiting, resplendent. All the promise of a May morning.

The outside comes in, not in its unique particulate form (not the way I see it now, for instance), but in a blur of possibilities, a smudging of light.

Derby Day

Derby Day

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I’ve spent more time in Kentucky this year than any time since I lived there decades ago. So it’s ironic that I’ve been less on top of Derby hopefuls than usual.

But maybe not. The Derby is Kentucky as metaphor. I’ve had Kentucky as anything but. The state has been so real for me that I don’t have to pine away for it.

Still, when the thoroughbreds strut in the post parade and “My Old Kentucky Home” begins to play, I’ll have white fences on my mind — and tissues at the ready.

May Day?

May Day?

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Here we are at May Day — sodden, squishy, water-logged. The petals of our dogwood, our Kwanzan cherries, scattered and beaten to the ground. Our airy forget-me-nots hardly the azure clouds they were three days ago. The azaleas hesitant, unwilling to bloom.

After this winter, I’d hoped for a knock-’em-dead spring. Something to warm and delight us. But nature doesn’t operate like that, I tell myself. Rain pelts and puddles — or fails to fall at all. Winds  funnel and destroy. Sometimes, snow even falls in spring.

The balance we seek, the recompense, is not in the natural world. If it is to be, we must supply it.

Coverage

Coverage

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It seems as if we’ve gotten all our April showers in the last two days, last night in particular. Walking to and from Metro in these downpours has made me ponder the efficiency — or inefficiency — of my umbrella.

The way I look at it you have a choice. You can either have a small umbrella with you at all times, a folding insurance policy, or take along a large one when the weather calls for it.

I’ve opted for the former. It’s easier to maneuver, fits in a pocket or bag and is light to carry.

But what it boasts in portability it lacks in coverage. It’s the diameter, I guess. There simply isn’t enough nylon to keep all the drops at bay.

I think there’s a life lesson here; I’m just a little too soggy now to figure it out.

Dogs Wearing Clothes

Dogs Wearing Clothes

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Our little ragamuffin pooch Copper was glad to see me when I walked in the door Sunday night. I gave him a hug and a pat, and yesterday, when we had more time together, I told him what I really thought about the dogs of New York.

They’re cute, I said, and you would probably like to sniff them out. But then again, you might not take them seriously because … they wear clothes. I mean, not just the random pampered poodle, but the perky bichon and the elegant whippet.  I would say about a third of the canines I spotted in the Big Apple were wearing something other than their leashes.

Dachshunds were the best dressed. They wore knitted shirts and tuxedo vests. And one dog (not a dachshund) in Washington Square Park was decked out in a plaid shirt and tennis shoes. This dog also walked on his hind legs.

I’ve heard there’s a new movement afoot to accord animals the rights of people. If not the rights, then at least the wardrobes. At least in Manhattan. 

Stopped in Their Tracks

Stopped in Their Tracks

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On the High Line yesterday nature-starved New Yorkers clustered around a red bud tree as if it were a work of high art. It halted them mid-promenade — the beauty of the nubby blossoms, the radiant color against the neutral palette of lower Manhattan.

I compare this tree with all the wild red buds I saw driving through the hills of West Virginia ten days earlier. Brilliant volunteers alone and unnoticed, living out their bloom on lonely hillsides.

Not this tree. It’s well loved, earnestly photographed. And it’s no volunteer. Even its position — pushing up through the rails of an abandoned railway— is no accident.

New Yorkers stride nonchalantly past soaring skyscrapers — but a single tree stops them in their tracks. It’s a reversal worth noting.