Week in Seven Words #224 & 225

224

cleanse
Lungs embracing the air, holding tight to the freshness of the air beside the running water.

effused
All of the cards I come across are gushy about love and gratitude, and I wonder how many times people's feelings really match up with what they buy.

flicking
Throughout the dinner, I need to deflect nasty, passive-aggressive digs. In my mind, I pretend I'm flicking away each comment with a fork like bits of mashed potato.

hovering
They're more benevolent, because they can afford to be. Treating him well costs them nothing and gives them the pleasure of feeling above him, bestowing favors on him in angelic fashion while remaining unsullied by his human dirt.

hypocrisy
He hears many excuses and even encouragement for obnoxious behavior, so then he gets confused and frustrated when he's punished for it.

stump
His job is to sit hunched at a table and occasionally be pleasant.

surgical
Renovations on the hallway look surgical. Pipes like veins and capillaries, wires like exposed nerves.

East River Walk: Upper East Side, Randall's Island, Astoria (Queens)

I did a 15-mile walk yesterday starting from 86th street on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, going north along the East River, crossing the Triborough Bridge to Randall's Island, walking around a bit there, then continuing on the Triborough Bridge to Astoria (a neighborhood in Queens), then walking south through Astoria, mostly along the East River, and heading back into Manhattan on the Queensboro Bridge. (The walk was organized by this group.)

Here's the Triborough Bridge from the Upper East Side waterfront:


The bridge connects Manhattan with Randall's Island and then with Queens.


The part of Randall's Island we saw was mostly athletic fields, with some green spaces looking out over Manhattan.


The best part of this walk was the bridge. Under it:


Getting onto it:


Looking over its edge:

Six Short Stories About Different States of Mind

Title: The Balloon of William Fuerst
Author: Lowell B. Komie
Where I Read It: Legal Fictions

A short, funny story but one with a familiar pang in it, the feeling of life getting wasted on triviality. The main character is an attorney who starts to hear air escaping from his ears - "a hiss of all the useless acts." He imagines his head is a balloon, with air leaking out. How does he think he can fix the problem, without leaving a job he feels trapped in? Maybe helium is the answer! If nothing else, at least he'll sound like a new person...

Title: Bitter Grounds
Author: Neil Gaiman
Where I Read It: Fragile Things

Before reading "Bitter Grounds," I hadn't come across any zombie fic that interested me. But this story is further proof that it's never the subject matter that's the problem, but the way it's handled. Any topic can be written about in an interesting way.

This isn't a typical zombie fic. There are no rotting corpses staggering around - no brain-eating, post-apocalyptic monsters. It's more a confusing and fascinating story of escape and loss of identity, of blurred boundaries between people and between the living and the dead. It begins with a man who can't deal with his life anymore:

"In every way that counted, I was dead. Inside somewhere maybe I was screaming and weeping and howling like an animal, but that was another person deep inside, another person who had no access to the face and lips and mouth and head, so on the surface I just shrugged and smiled and kept moving."

One day, he drives and just keeps on driving, with no particular destination or purpose. And then starts to move between different identities. Through circumstances described in the story, he steps into the shoes of an anthropology professor invited to give a talk in New Orleans about tales of undead Haitian coffee girls. Nothing in this story is as it seems, and by the end, you have to wonder who is this man, and who has he met along the way? Not sure if this is a nightmare, or if he's ripped through the fragile tissues that life's made of.

Week in Seven Words #222 & 223

222

disconnect
A couple in the park: Man and woman strolling, he pontificates, gestures broadly, makes authoritative pronouncements about things he only half-knows at best, while the woman nods, murmurs, surreptitiously checks her phone.

faerie
The enchantment of pink blossoms floating around your head.

patchy
Blonde willows and raggedy weeds by the pond.

pistons
I understand the enjoyment people get from running, but not from jogging. Running can give you a feeling of freeness. Jogging has always struck me as mechanical, like you're a machine pumping up and down.

shocked
The park is artificial, so the lakes can be drained or filled at will. The fish might be stunned out of their habitual routes and find themselves on their sides, eyeing a terrible sun.

tableau
Facing north, heads uplifted, four turtles frozen on a sunny rock.

treble
And there he is again: The half-naked man, kneeling in the tunnel and playing the violin.