accommodation
Different people I'm friends with can find it difficult to talk to each other; their approach to life, personality, interests, may not overlap much and so there isn't a lot of common ground for light dinner time discussion, especially if they don't know each other well. I like that they have to work a little harder to make conversation. Sometimes they regard each other speculatively or with bafflement, as if they're assessing species membership; other times they bond briefly over a love of sticky cinnamon kugel.
cataracts
The moon squints through a film of cloud.
delusion
What doesn't get done today will not get done tomorrow but might get done the day after tomorrow.
escapism
When I need a break from work one thing I do is look up bus and train schedules and imagine myself traveling from one town to another. I take my time coming home.
inverted
The roots of the trees swim in gold leaves.
preserving
A young boy, half-shy and half-pleased, gives a little speech in Yiddish. The people at the dinner sing in Yiddish too, and there are echoes of the shtetl in their voices. I've never been to Eastern Europe and did not grow up among Yiddish speakers, but my family's history runs through that part of the world, and there's a bittersweet pain when I think about the way of life systematically wiped out and the way the rich culture still manages to endure.
replete
To step outside and discover that it's just rained, and that after a walk through the cold clean air I'll sit down to a baked apple, golden and brown and smeared with cinnamon.
