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Author: Anne Cassidy

Company Town: Closed

Company Town: Closed

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Living in a company town produces some funny situations. Like today. The federal government is closed and so is my university. No complaints there, although deadlines being deadlines, I’ll be working anyway.

The funny thing is the unanimity of opinion. And the reliance on experts, in this case meteorologists. There’s not a flake of snow flying but we’re all hunkered down. The reason, of course, is traffic. In the last few years late-breaking snow storms have produced jams of biblical proportions, people arriving home seven, eight hours after they left for what they thought would be an hour-long commute.

So we’re taking no chances. We’re playing it safe. We’re grinding the wheels of government and commerce to a halt. We’re calling it a snow day.

Now all we need is the snow!

Bluebirds!

Bluebirds!

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They visited us on Saturday, several of them, including a persistent pair that hung out on the deck railing, the feeder or nearby branches. At the slightest sound (especially when I opened the window to take their picture), they would flutter away.  But I waited — and they returned.

Maybe they were driven here by the northwest wind. Or more likely the suet — a high-calorie treat to fuel their winter rambles. I hope they checked out the real estate while they were here: there are a couple of dandy bluebird houses in the neighborhood, and this time of year they’re open for takers.

Mostly I wondered where they had come from and where they were going. I’d like to think they were the proverbial bluebirds of happiness, come to pay us a visit on this cold midwinter day.

Mountain Views

Mountain Views

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This morning is blustery and cold. I look out the French doors into the backyard, with its dusting of snow, its wind-bent boughs.

It’s a familiar view, a treasured view. But for some reason this morning I notice how the bare tree branches across the street come together to resemble a peak. If I didn’t know better, if I looked quickly, I could be staring at a mountain.

So now I’m dreaming of mountains I’ve seen — and the views they’ve given me.

The Un-Resolution

The Un-Resolution

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Midway through January and resolutions are falling away like petals off a full-blown rose. Stretching — I do that about half as much as I should. The perennial “don’t worry so much” — there’s a reason it’s a perennial.

But one resolution snuck up on me — giving up caffeine. I didn’t make it official on New Year’s Day because I didn’t think I could. Give up the cups of strong black tea that wake me every morning, the Diet Coke that revives me in the afternoon or the iced tea that refreshes at dinner? Water, sparkling water, juice — what are those? For me, for years, it’s been caffeinated beverages from morning till night.

But on January 2 I woke up with yet another headache. I perused the dietary chapters of Heal Your Headache, by Dr. David Buchholz, which I’d read in the fall but hadn’t the nerve to try. I saw the list of triggers, including some of my favorite foods — yogurt, nuts, chocolate, even sugar snap peas! But one culprit stood out above the rest. If you can banish anything, Buchholz wrote, make it caffeine.

And so I did. Quit cold turkey. Haven’t had a cup of “real tea” in more than two weeks. I limp by with two cups of de-caf black in the morning and a mug of herbal brew in the afternoon. In between I drink water — more than I used to.

And … so far so good. After four or five days of feeling jittery and headachey, a worse withdrawal than I’d expected, I emerged relatively headache-free. The verdict is still out, but I like the way I feel, which I can best describe as “clean.”

I sit now with my second cup of de-caf. It tastes far more like cardboard than I’d like it to, but that doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s what comes next that matters.

Body in Motion

Body in Motion

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Here is a brief hymn to the body in motion, a passage from the memoir Winter Journal by Paul Auster. I read the book a few weeks ago and marked this page:

Your body in small rooms and large rooms, your body walking up and down stairs …

leaning back in chairs with your legs propped up on desks and tables as you write in notebooks, hunching over typewriters, walking through snowstorms without a hat …

feeling the different sensations of putting your feet on sand, dirt, and grass, but most of all the sensation of sidewalks, for that is how you see yourself whenever you stop to think about who you are: a man who walks, a man who has spent his life walking through the streets of cities.

To which I will add … and along woodland trails, suburban lanes, the paved paths that run beside busy roads, the strips of sidewalk that show up unannounced when I least expect them — and across streams on cylinders of concrete, the water rushing beneath my feet.

Moon Alone

Moon Alone

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Yesterday’s lunar encounter happened later than Monday’s. I found the orb higher in the heavens, no trees or clouds to hide it.

A thick fog was swirling up from the ground, but it didn’t obscure the sky. So when I went outside after dark, the moon (the “wolf moon” I later learned), was throwing striped shadows across the backyard. There were bars of darkness and light and I stepped through them, like rungs of a ladder lying flat on the ground.

Venus was rumored to be in the neighborhood, but I didn’t see it. Only this moon, alone in a field of black.

Moon through Trees

Moon through Trees

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This week’s warming pattern has brought us back to November: The air is raw but not frigid; the trees are bare but not icy.

We’ve not yet crossed the boundary where a warming trend feels like spring. Instead, it feels like fall with all of winter yet to come.

Last evening, stepping out of the car to get the mail, I paused as I turned when I spotted this moon. It was a Halloween moon that was late to the party. I looked for the witch on her broomstick. I saw instead today’s clouds moving in on a freshening wind, and a blur of light both wan and enigmatic.

Cinematherapy

Cinematherapy

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The Golden Globes have happened, Oscar nominations will be announced soon — and yesterday I saw two movies back to back. It was a double feature of my own making, made possible by an art house theater that happened to be playing several of the films I want to see. The movies were “Nebraska” and “Philomena,” but that’s not important.

What’s important is that in that darkened theater there was no past or future, only present. The elusive present, so hard to reach. The present filled with motion and sound.

It was a present that took me out of myself and deposited me into the lives of others, where, for four hours, I lived quite happily.

Movie-going doesn’t take away our problems; it’s more like respite care. But sometimes, that’s enough.

Decluttering the Nest

Decluttering the Nest

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It often attacks me this time of year, the organization bug, as if I’m seeing the house for the first time.

Why is this basement bookshelf filled with children’s books? The children have grown up. Do I still need that (fill in the blank) jacket, lamp, stack of magazines? Wouldn’t life be easier if there was a place for everything and everything in its place?

When this impulse strikes I try to seize on it immediately. It usually doesn’t last for long. Let’s just say I’m hoping for a bumper crop of trash on Monday…

Ground Rules

Ground Rules

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Today the ground rules. The
heavens send us rain; the ground gives us ice. We are coated from the ground
up. We are bound to the ground, are creatures of it. From it we come and to it
we return. We look to the heavens but are bound to the earth. 
The
other day I watched a show about bird men, people who bundle up in special
suits with “wings” then jump off cliffs and “fly” down. The most crucial time,
said one of the daredevils, is when you pull the ripcord. Too soon and you miss
the ride. Too late and you die.
To pull the ripcord is to speak the truth — that we
are creatures of earth, not of heaven. It’s to say, with a reluctant dip of the wing, that the ground rules.