Week in Seven Words #520

This covers the week of 1/5/20 - 1/11/20.

erasure
She stares at the surface of the desk and pulls on the drawstrings of her hoodie until her face is almost swallowed up.

hologram
Someone on the subway looks very much like Robert Picardo, the actor who plays the EMH on Star Trek: Voyager. It might actually be Picardo himself. Obviously wearing his mobile holo-emitter.

ignores
She says she doesn't confront people. If they bother her, she ignores them. If they persist in bothering her, she ignores them harder. This seems to have worked for her so far.

kidding
He's been kicked out of a group for making a silly joke. Not even a hateful one, just a joke that might be considered tasteless and silly at worst, meriting an eye roll. He can't believe it's happened, but he feels more sane when I hear him out and agree with him. ("Yes, this really happened, and yes, it's nuts.")

quicksilver
This Indie RPG game is set in a cyberpunk world with industrial espionage. As with the film noir one I tried, what I like best is the improvisation (which is often creative and goofy) and the collaborative construction of a rapidly changing story.

reheat
They serve an overpriced, salty sandwich, and I figure it's the last time I'll go there for lunch. But while I'm there, I value it as a rest stop from the cold weather. A place to refuel before I keep walking.

unmissable
Another free dance class – the music is fun, the mirrors track my stumbles on quick turns.

Week in Seven Words #514

This covers the week of 11/24/19 - 11/30/19.

cafeteria
Gossip, bickering, utensils rustling, the scrape of chairs, the shuffle of sore feet.

cathode
He's happy that I've finally agreed to let him buy me a TV to replace the outdated (but still functioning) cube I've been using so far.

choosing
I sign up for some health insurance, avoiding a pushy salesperson and opting for website enrollment. Not really happy with different aspects of the coverage, but it seems the best of a sorry bunch.

fishy
Currently, his favorite stuffed animals are fish. He lines them up on the carpet, while his older brother asks if it's normal for a kid to have so many stuffed fish. (Responding with a pun, carp-e diem, probably isn't acceptable.)

germy
Bogged down with a cold, she receives orders to quarantine herself at one end of the table.

liberate
I loosen the manacles of emotional manipulation and set out to do as I planned.

perusing
Even late in the evening, the bookstore is full of people who have wedged themselves onto windowsills and into narrow aisles to read.

Week in Seven Words #501

babbling
Round every corner you turn, there's a TV. At least one of them is on at all times, sometimes two.

business
"Please don't take a photo of my work," she says, emerging from her art booth. "Buy it."

disobedience
She hops on my lap to lick watermelon droplets from the table. She disregards the calls for her to stop, and the reminders that she's not supposed to eat from the table, because watermelon is worth being disobedient for. Besides, as a good dog, she gets a lot of leniency, because her main offenses are eating from the table and attempting to steal and eat toilet paper. Nothing serious.

expecting
Feeling a bit sore and bruised inside after receiving entirely positive, detailed feedback on a piece, only to be told vaguely that it's not a good fit.

meatless
Eating a chicken sandwich that tastes mostly like salt, ketchup, and bread.

sinks
The heart-shaped anniversary balloon was bobbing around by the ceiling. Now it sinks towards the tile floor, where it's kicked around by restless feet.

stag
A male deer, looking puzzled and wary, slips into a backyard away from us. We watch him through the gap in the faded wood fence.

Week in Seven Words #499

delightful
"I hope I never get tired of this stuff," she says, about cartoonish sculptures on the 14th Street platform of the A and C subway lines. She doesn't want to become jaded.

dining
We eat burgers in a lovely cellar-like restaurant, noisy but cozy.

immerses
She's demolishing a large bag of potato chips while watching a Korean soap opera on her phone.

learned
During the first half of the class, she acts as if she knows everything, and only gradually becomes more open to seeing new ways of solving problems. Others never develop that openness.

patience
The instructor acts as if he has clumsily assembled his patience out of plywood. With each question, each hand waving in the air, it splinters.

sofas
Some of the sofa cushions feel like taut air bubbles shifting under me. One of them, though, has just the right balance between staying firm and giving way.

upper-class
Two elegant, well-groomed dogs are crossing the plaza with a mincing walk, and I wonder if they're 18th century aristocrats who have been reincarnated as canines.

Week in Seven Words #475

catnap
As his wife and kids explore the plaza, a man dozes on a ledge with his feet in an empty stroller.

chatter
The kids, small and roughly the same age, form a messy row at the restaurant counter. They remind me of teacups, piping, clattering, releasing whirls of steam.

deliberation
The hamburger is a salt lick, but the conversation is good. Half-eaten food and intense discussion.

headlights
Lights dance on the ceiling in dots and rhombuses.

quelling
"Can we go on the rides?" the child asks. "This is a museum," her mother replies. "There are no rides."

summoned
In the park, music from a hoarse violin. A bird makes tentative hops towards the violinist.

transporter
Celebrating the conclusion of a stressful obligation with a personal pizza and episodes of a show set in outer space, many light years from here.

Week in Seven Words #472

corporate
She prefers working for a smaller company. The larger corporations demand too much conformity.

doe-eyed
The room has deep red wallpaper and animal heads mounted on the walls. Nothing else.

gerunds
I'm looking through picture books for a gift, and it amazes me how skinny books with simple illustrations and one word per page ("Running," "Flying,") have double-digit price tags.

illumination
He returns to the topic of his anger, and how he wishes he had learned earlier in life a whole vocabulary of emotions. To be able to put words to his feelings would have helped him stave off the outbursts that derailed his career. It's never just about words; it's about understanding yourself, the source of your feelings, and the options for how to act.

net
The branches of the bare trees form a diaphanous net that catches the sunlight.

opens
I overcome my own self-consciousness to talk to him, which helps him overcome his self-consciousness. We have a lovely chat.

uniform
From many windows, the same game is flickering. One large TV after another, mounted to a wall and dominating a room with the same shots.

Some Notes on Network (1976), the Dark Look at TV "News"

Title: Network (1976)
Director: Sidney Lumet
Language: English
Rating: R (for language mostly)

For years, Howard Beale (Peter Finch) was a respected, level-headed figure in TV news, but he’s about to get laid-off for poor ratings. After he has an on-air breakdown, one of the network executives, Diana Christensen (Faye Dunaway), sees the ratings potentials of keeping him on. She convinces Frank Hackett (Robert Duvall), a hatchet man for the corporation that bought the network, to push for the Howard Beale Show, which turns into a major success.

This is a funny and dark movie that can be painful to watch because so much of our current culture is in it, even though the movie was made in the 1970s. The Internet and other mass media are basically Network on steroids. Some thoughts on the film:

Two Screen Adaptations About Orphan Girls Who Change the Lives of People Around Them for the Better

Title: Anne of Green Gables (1985)
Director: Kevin Sullivan
Language: English
Rating: G

This two-episode TV mini-series adaptation of the Lucy Maud Montgomery book is enjoyable for multiple reasons, including the stunning Canadian landscapes.

Shades of autumn, spring and summer greenery, the sparkling ocean - it's a feast of the four seasons, full of natural beauty.

The casting is good too. Both the roles of Anne Shirley and Diana Barry are played well (by Megan Follows and Schuyler Grant respectively). As for the adult characters, I love how Colleen Dewhurst and Richard Farnsworth play Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert, the aging sister and brother who initially wanted to take on an orphan boy to help them with their farm, but instead had Anne arrive at the local train station. I like how Marilla's hardness is tempered by a sense of justice and a wellspring of kindness, buried deep, that Anne eventually brings out. And how Matthew is pretty soft on Anne right from the start.

One thing I found both amusing and disturbing is how Anne often expresses emotions in a lofty, stage-like fashion, almost as if she is detached from them or afraid to discuss them more bluntly. It makes sense for a character who has dealt with loneliness and neglect by play-acting and disappearing mentally from a harsh environment to more beautiful imaginary worlds.

Overall, it's an excellent mini-series: lovely, engaging, spirited, and fun to become absorbed in for a while.

Title: The Secret Garden (1993)
Director: Agnieszka Holland
Language: English
Rating: G

One of the most beautiful parts of the movie is a time-lapse sequence showing the arrival of spring, with flowers opening, plants pushing slowly out of the soil, and the land becoming green. The images have a rich, visceral quality that I love.

This adaptation of the Frances Hodgson Burnett book is full of such beauty. It's also a movie infused with hopefulness, where the dark neglected places in the land and in people still have potential for life, with enough nurturing.

I didn't find the adult characters compelling, and the movie is too rushed towards the end, but it's still delightful. The younger actors are excellent. Kate Maberly carries the movie as Mary Lennox. The child of wealthy but neglectful colonials in India, she becomes an orphan living in her reclusive uncle's estate in the Yorkshire moors and finds in herself a great capacity for self-sufficiency and love.

Dickon, the boy of the moors who can communicate with animals, is played well by Andrew Knott, and I enjoyed the peevish, wounded theatrics (and genuine pain) conveyed by Heydon Prowse as Colin. Also, Laura Crossley plays Martha, a housemaid and Dickon's sister, with a wonderful honesty and sweetness.

So much in this movie hinges on the sense of place. The large house with the echoing cries, drafty corridors, and abandoned rooms inspires fear and curiosity. And the garden has a character of its own, full of fairy-like enchantment and possibility.

Week in Seven Words #416

blurting
Speak hastily, regret deeply.

feebleness
Her goals are made of sand. She shapes the beginnings of a castle, and a gentle wave sloshes over it and smoothes it down until it looks like a decayed tooth. She doesn't attempt to rebuild it.

pablum
They ask me to sit with them and watch the first several minutes of a reality TV show I last saw years ago. Nothing about it has changed. It's as if the participants are all scooped out of some tub of homogeneous 20-somethings.

pristinely
As a cleanup crew feeds branches into a woodchipper, a young boy watches avidly. I wonder what fresh impressions are forming in his mind, in the mind of anyone really who has never watched Fargo.

protested
The truck, with its rear tire stuck, growls against the curb and coughs up exhaust.

reveling
She applies her forehead and cheeks, as much as her mouth, to a gigantic chocolate bar. Smeared in chocolate, she smiles for the camera.

thickening
Cotton swabs of fog over the river.

Week in Seven Words #410

curtailing
On a walk down the dark path, I hear the rat traps popping by the side of the building.

enchantment
Leaves are spiraling down, swirling around my head, and a bright moon is peeking past the edge of a skyscraper.

fueling
One chocolate chip cookie helps him through math. The second cookie remains uneaten, and he has poked his pencil through it in frustration.

one-time
I don't know what else is going on in their lives or if they'll even be back next week, but I appreciate that they're here now - a group of men and women playing folk music in the waning light.

rapport
I like how she and I slip into easy conversation as if we haven't not spoken for several years.

slackening
Now and then, I dose myself with an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a show that's funny and undemanding.

tectonics
The assignment moves towards completion, one paragraph after another. The paragraphs sometimes shift position for greater flow and cohesion. It's a slow but inexorable process.

Week in Seven Words #401

exasperated
She drops yet another reminder that she wants to see me married, and I can't help it, I just start laughing, to her astonishment.

guardedly
The difficulty of dealing with someone who's regularly unreasonable. Trying to anticipate what I'll be able to say and how I'll need to say it.

moisture
When tipped forward, the watering can spurts and sprinkles, and the leaves shiver. The handful of fat tomatoes still clinging to the vines begin to glisten.

motherly
She's a moon-faced woman with a pink, voluminous lap where her daughter sits as on a throne.

ratings
There's a woman faking anger on TV, because she wants your anger to be real. The woman would like to let her viewers know that they're smart, like her. They know what's really going on out there. They need to stick it to the haters, the craven, dishonest fools who are currently watching some other show.

shying
There's a strangely human vulnerability to the injured bird that tucks itself among the leafy plants. Its feathers are disordered. It hops away at approaching feet but doesn't fly.

stirrings
I'm surrounded by people, but the afternoon feels surprisingly empty. A quick nap helps. And then song, and a prayer service at the day's end.

Funny Songs from Crazy Ex-Girlfriend

I don't watch this show, but someone sent me the first clip, which made me laugh. It starts out like a typical inspiring song about facing your fears and goes on to become a series of terrible suggestions.


I found this second clip from the show - a hardcore electronic dance music video about someone getting ready for guests.

Week in Seven Words #368

chow
She's catering the party. The doughy, salty, sweet dishes are spread across the counter.

redirect
The park has been carved out of a rocky hill. You think you're heading north, but really, you're climbing to a lookout point. It's a beautiful detour. You head back down, and again attempt to make your way north. Now you're in a garden. Could these stairs take you out of the park? No, you wind up at another lookout point. Best make yourself comfortable. Here's a bench.

serpentarium
He has turned a part of the basement into a sanctuary for snakes. They live in drawers and pails. Many of them are stuffed animals, and the rest are plastic, but he takes the trouble to feed them and set up a program for breeding them.

shorting
There's this frustrating thing that happens in conversations. People hear the name of a person or thing they don't like, and their brain blows a fuse. From thoughtful, complete sentences, they go to slogans and taunting names. They begin to raise their voice, and the intelligence leaves their eyes.

suggesting
As she sleeps, expressions drift across her face - a wrinkle of fussiness, the glow of a passing smile.

surfing
With his face mashed into a couch cushion he says, "Why am I watching this garbage when there's other garbage on?"

tidily
They have trim beards and pleasant smiles, colorful graphs on PowerPoint slides. And they make economics sound so straightforward.

Week in Seven Words #316

astonishment
She's always struggled with writing, so it's with stunned pride that she sees her piece on the wall, winner of a weekly contest.

flashy
She hits replay on the music video (please don't let this get stuck in my head), and there it is again, the Vegas-style Egypt with a talking sphinx throne.

gust
Stirrings of hope and love, late at night. I encourage these feelings with a pep talk, like using bellows for a fireplace.

inactivity
It wouldn't take much for me to vomit. A sudden movement, maybe. I fold myself into bed on my side, knees to chest, and hope that sleep will ease the nausea.

incensed
As four of us play Monopoly, she sits apart, a few feet from the TV, to better shout at the pundits and politicians.

ripply
Floating on "Dreams" by The Cranberries in breaks between assignments.

surrender
Critical thinking, he assures me, is impossible. There's even a script for giving up on it. ("Other people are thoughtless and extreme, and I'm just reacting to them. They're making me do this. If they didn't, I wouldn't.")

Week in Seven Words #271

cultivated
Three ladies leafing through books in a room hung with tapestries.

delivery
A rattling cart, laden with aluminum trays of warm fragrant meat.

getaway
The only splash of color in the office comes from a banner with a beach scene: sunset, gold sand, palms imprinted on curling waves.

muted
Without the usual roar from the TV, there's a startling quiet in the house.

overcompensating
His know-it-all attitude masks a fear of the world and an uncertainty about his place in it.

treacherous
Dinner isn't so much a minefield as a sea dotted with icebergs. What's above the surface is dangerous enough; below, there are contours and formations we can't bear to think about.

upgrade
"Our online system works well. People can find things easily and save their search results reliably. Clearly we're doing something wrong."

Week in Seven Words #260

digested
He admits to getting most of his news from The Daily Show as a way to relieve anxiety about the awfulness of current events. When the news is delivered in humorous form, he's better able to accept it.

entrapped
In the subway station, a toddler is shrieking. She's stuck in one of the vertical turnstiles. The bars pin her into a small dark space. They shiver when she pushes against them, but they don't swing around to let her out.

hints
There are signs of life on the stairwell - cigarette butts, a candy wrapper, a bookmark with a black kitten.

lushly
A wine-colored taffeta gown swaying at the ankles.

productive
Anxiety often stifles creativity, but sometimes it's a source of new ideas - a solution I hadn't thought of before, a twist to a plot that hadn't occurred to me until the problem began to eat its way through my mind.

stormy
The eye of the media is on them, and with it comes the windy noise of commentary. It will pass soon.

swapped
Instead of trains, he pushes trucks onto the tracks; dump trucks linked to cement mixers that are hooked up to tractor-trailers.

An Amy Schumer Reality TV Spoof

Week in Seven Words #247

assuaged
The restaurant feels impersonal, all the furniture spare and made of metal, but they serve rich comfort food.

barred
When I see the number of missed calls that have accumulated in my cell phone, I'm glad I kept it on 'silent.' Otherwise, I wouldn't have had the morning to myself, to explore as I like.

enchanting
Plum-colored houses with white picket fences. Cobbled lanes and sunken gardens.

gratifying
Tourists licking ice cream in the salt-flavored air.

singular
A lonely giant on a charcoal ledge looks away from the moon.

soaped
Back-to-back episodes of Shark Tank, the TV flickering in a dark room. My mind gently wiped clean of the day's emotions.

tenacious
His wife strikes me as hard and bright, a woman who's difficult to get to know but worth knowing.

Week in Seven Words #208 & 209

208

contrary
I tell her that she can sit on the rug, if she likes. She smiles and sits just off the rug, by an inch.

defenses
Kids scale the dirty hills of snow on the curbside. They turn them into ice forts, seared black by the breath of dragons.

promenading
Broken ice parades on the river. One piece looks like a miniature mountain, another like a shallow bowl of soup. A third is bearing birds towards the ocean.

scavenge
Shoppers tear apart a store gone bankrupt.

sophisticate
He's too young to understand the jokes, but old enough to want to laugh along.

sourcing
A small diner. Photos of organically grown vegetables over a grotty ketchup dispenser.

spitting
The beat taps and hisses beneath the melodic line.

Week in Seven Words #193

counterpoints
Most of their conversation consists of the same complaints getting aired, followed by the same bits of reassurance and advice. The advice-giver's voice remains steady, a series of low round notes. The complainer alternates between an agitated but soft melodic line and the occasional crescendo to keep us all on the edge of our seats.

flagging
The buses can't travel a block without wheezing. The newspapers twist in pain beside the curb.

hijinks
What they've tuned into reminds me of some of the T.V. shows I used to watch as a kid. The ones with multi-talented teens who seem to do everything at their high school except study and go to classes.

prisoner
Traces of a plaster face on the wall, the white mouth shaped into a tiny 'O' and the eyes blank.

soupy
Steam seems to come off of everyone at the restaurant. All the diners are dumplings.

tact
She listens with all outwards signs of compassion. Inwardly she's wondering how much time has passed and how best to interrupt without seeming to interrupt.

torrent
The wind rushes across the river in the dark, flooding the street and making the leaf-shadows dance.