Week in Seven Words #505

This covers the week of 9/22/19 - 9/28/19.

cramps
Curled up on the couch with intense cramping, waiting for the OTC painkiller to kick in. My feet swivel in time to the pulses of pain, and I try to let the murder mystery novel I'm reading distract me.

curiosity
She shows an interest in Revolutionary-era Boston, after I show her an image of Samuel Adams beer.

drub
In the back room of the board game cafe, the wall is scuffed and dented. A small sign hangs on it, asking customers not to kick it or bang on it with their fists.

hoard
I find a notebook for her, in light blue and decorated with hot air balloons, in which she'll probably want to write the poems and song lyrics she isn't yet ready to share with anyone.

tidying
I clean my shoes and donate some boots, towels, and pillow cases. Under the couch, I find dust clumps that look like small gray wigs.

unquiet
She's trying to find a chair, or configuration of chairs, that will suit her. She slides from one to the other. She chooses a middle seat, before scrambling back to settle against the wall. I don't think she'll find anything she likes, because the discomfort is embedded in her mind. She can't uproot it by means of rearranging chairs.

unthinking
She's frustrated that they don't consider a cold to be an illness. They take no care to cover their mouths when they cough or sneeze.

Week in Seven Words #476

displeased
A blast of temper sends him stomping away from the table to shout at his kids.

dully
Grimy windows, gray weather, the smell of unwashed sweaters, a short line for sandwiches.

glistening
The apartment gleams after a thorough cleaning.

impression
They like the board game because it's politically incorrect; it asks for impersonations of accents, mannerisms, facial expressions. But they don't count on the awkwardness of enjoying the game in public. Shortly after one of the players has shared her version of an accent from India, they notice two people from India at a nearby table. Immediately, they feel sheepish. They laugh uncertainly.

interspecies
He talks about how his dog is kinder than most humans. Maybe that's the case, but it's interesting to consider what he means by kindness. With dogs, as long as you bond with them, they'll usually be on your side no matter what; it isn't a hard decision on their part, requiring some mental or spiritual effort. With humans, kind words and actions are a conscious choice. Kindness is complex, and it can be difficult, especially in a complicated situation or when you're feeling irritated or impatient. A dog's loyalty can feel wonderful, but does it make sense to compare it to human kindness?

squirmy
He hits on an uncomfortable truth about his parents' marriage, and the room goes tense with silence and funny breathing and forced, puzzled looks, as if the kid doesn't know what he's talking about.

texting
In a week, she goes from defiantly using a flip phone to texting frequently, delightedly, on her new smartphone. Including a masterful use of emojis.

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.

Week in Seven Words #443

damply
She spreads her coat on the floor and invites two kids to squash up on it for a story. Raindrops squeeze from the coat into the carpet, as the pages of the picture book flip.

duodenum
I head deep into the belly of the store, which is full of glitter, stickers, crafts, and lines as long as intestines.

how
He says that after a tragedy people shouldn't ask 'why,' they should ask 'how.'

misdirect
They use arguing as a strategy of escapism. If they're full of outrage over one thing or another, they can avoid dealing with other emotions and underlying problems.

reticence
"What do you do?" they ask him. "I think of myself as a philosopher," he says, and seems to mean it. As he is silent for most of the evening, and gives brief, vague replies at other times, it's difficult to determine what he thinks about.

torn
He wants to grieve on his own. But he's also terrified of being alone at a time like this.

unmentioned
We're going to pretend that there's no reason (and maybe there is no conscious reason) that we haven't seen each other in a while.

Week in Seven Words #413

angriness
At first, his mood expands to generosity. Then it contracts to a tight anger that makes the air difficult to breathe. The anger doesn't last long. It gradually lightens into an occasional snide remark, delivered with a smile.

flickers
The dance of candlelight in a dark room.

hygiene
Images from Blue Planet play out in front of me while the dentist scrapes away at my teeth.

infectious
He clutches a handkerchief to his mouth and looks around furtively, after coughing in a way that brings to mind the expression 'patient zero.'

jerkily
During foosball, we both adopt the 'random spasm' strategy, meaning that we don't know who will hit the ball or when or where, but sometimes a goal happens anyway.

resistance
I slip back into a bad habit, but it doesn't last as long this time. I can step out of its clutches more quickly.

toddling
He's a happy, loved little boy. Helped along in his walking, he looks around to see who's watching him carry out this amazing feat.

Three Short Stories About Daughters and Their Not-So-Maternal Mothers

Title: The Girl Who Left Her Sock on the Floor
Author: Deborah Eisenberg
Where I Read It: The Art of the Story

“Fading smells of bodies clung to the air like plaintive ghosts, their last friendly overtures vanquished by the stronger smells of disinfectants. An indecipherable muttering came from other ghosts, sequestered in a TV suspended from the ceiling.”

Francie is at school on a scholarship when her mother dies. The girl is burdened by a sense that she has been unloved and disapproved of; her mother gave her care that didn't feel caring, as it came with a heap of anger and bitterness. Francie may also have been kept from important truths about her life.

The hospital floated in the middle of a vast ocean of construction, or maybe it was demolition; a nation in itself, of which all humans were, at every moment, potential citizens. The inevitable false move, and it was wham, onto the gurney, with workers grabbing smocks and gloves to plunge into the cavity of you, and the lights that burned all night. Outside this building you lived as though nothing were happening to you that you didn't know about. But here, there was simply no pretending.

Francie confronts the inescapable. There's her mother's sudden death. There's the aloneness, and being left in the dark to fumble towards a new life and deal with questions that can't be ignored. Adults look at Francie like they don't know where to put her or how to get her out of the way, and Francie herself doesn't really know where she belongs, only that she can't escape her life. The legacy of mother to daughter is one of a dark, cutting, and uncomfortable weight, the burden of a fury that never abated. The question is if Francie will ever find a place in her life where she can live at greater ease with herself.

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.

Week in Seven Words #400

accompanied
A homeless man with a CD player hooked to his belt searches for bottles while accompanied by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli singing "Time to Say Goodbye."

limits
The talk focuses on the complications of forgiveness. How does one (or can one) forgive repeat offenses? What if the offender shows no sign of remorse or is unwilling or unable to change? What if the offense is too serious? It's a heavy discussion, and many of the people present either remain silent or speak in short, clipped phrases, as if there's so much more they'd like to say but too little time.

morula
At the birthday party in the park, small pink balloons are tied together in a cluster that brings to mind a diagram of the stages between zygote and embryo, a ball of cells rapidly multiplying.

pointlessly
His words trigger my temper, and I regret letting my anger show. It feels like defeat, to lose control even briefly. It's also pointless. The provocation in and of itself is superficial. The anger has deeper roots and is bound up in problems I wouldn't be able to discuss with him. We're on the level of surface irritations.

student
An old woman is in the middle of a calisthenics routine by the river. A toddler approaches and begins to imitate her: jumping, stretching, squatting, hopping on and off a stair. (In this last one, the toddler crawls on and off rather than trust her legs too much.)

sunnily
The water is tinted gold in the late afternoon. I look up from my book as a dog trots by wearing aviator shades.

suspend
There's a man who sits in the lobby of the synagogue or sometimes on the front steps, like he doesn't want to get too close to the praying but doesn't want to abandon it either.

Week in Seven Words #399

bearing
We're eating salads outside in the dark by a bike lane and jogging path in the park. From around the bend, we hear a blues song, and it's getting louder, the hoarse, broken, beautiful voice coming our way. A young girl appears, swinging a portable radio.

coexistence
On the rooftop garden, they've planted marigolds with tomatoes, collard greens, lavender, thyme, cucumbers, dill, Jamaican peppers, and other herbs and vegetables. Bees swoop around (I achieve an uneasy coexistence with them), and white butterflies look like petals sprung to life. A monarch butterfly appears too and lingers.

hoofer
One of the men in the subway car is moved to tell us about his dog. "Her name is Ginger Rogers," he says. He pauses, as if waiting for the dog to spring up from where she's curled up at his feet and start dancing.

pierced
His voice, lofty and sonorous, opens me to my anger and frustration. There are multiple entangled reasons for these emotions at this time.

prepping
In the span of a 12-story elevator ride, he shares his business aspirations and lists some of the books he's been reading to push himself into a mindset of success.

shared
It's cozy and delightful to have a movie theater almost entirely to yourself and the person you're with.

tomatoes
Some of the tomatoes are green and heavy. Others are crinkly and emptied out like candy wrappers.

Five Short Stories About Terribly Dysfunctional Marriages

This is a fruitful topic for short fiction.

Title: Don’t Sit Under the Apple Tree
Author: Helen Nielsen
Where I Read It: Troubled Daughters, Twisted Wives
The main character thinks she's past the point of making terrible mistakes with men, that her life is stable now, but she's wrong. Her husband makes her feel that she needs to be on a pedestal - and then ultimately prove that she's like all other women by falling off it. It's that sort of relationship pattern. In any case, she starts getting calls from someone in her past. She assumes she's being blackmailed or stalked. She's smart and careful in general, but not about the people close to her. This story has murder and betrayal.

Title: Her Three Days
Author: Sembène Ousmane
Translator: Len Ortzen
Where I Read It: The Anchor Book of Modern African Stories
The story is set in a culture with polygamous marriages, and the main character is one of four wives. She's awaiting the three days her husband is meant to spend with her and recognizes that she's falling out of favor with him. I remember her observation about the pretenses in her marriage, the lies she needs to tell to make the marriage seem worthwhile. She has to pretend that her husband is a good man, because her identity is bound to his stature and character. If she has submitted to a man who isn't worthy of respect, what does this say about the meaning of her life and its worth?

Week in Seven Words #381

boyishly
He rehearses his chorus song sweetly and a little goofily.

delighting
He's delighted by the rides he's taken on the subway. He likes observing people's behavior, how they make use of limited space and what they do to pass the time during their commute. As an older man, he hasn't become jaded. He loves to investigate and explore, and the mundane can be fascinating.

garbed
Leafy trees look like they're wearing green ruffled blouses.

memorization
She brings flash cards to the table. Her mouth is pressed to a thin line as she flips them over by her plate. Her food goes largely ignored.

relieving
People often unleash their anger on an easy target, but here she doesn't - she's nice to the waitress, who was nervous about getting blamed for the restaurant's mistake.

secured
It's been a while since I received a bear hug. It lasts long enough for the warmth to settle into my bones, but stops short of making me feel trapped.

sedated
The meal is heavy. The diners sag, and their eyelids flicker against the weight of sleep.

Week in Seven Words #377

behold
Revisiting the same text, I find in it something new. Better yet, I have someone to discuss it with.

charmed
There's a snow globe approach to history that preserves a golden moment. It's untainted and unchanging, this little world of pretty homes and valleys and people smiling without end. It never existed outside of the glass, but that doesn't matter to the people who admire it.

gritted
The meal is in some ways about endurance. It's about not losing my temper when faced with crassness, disrespect, and a smarminess that's tempting to smack off someone's face.

obsolescence
As he opens his mouth, he realizes that no one he wants to talk to is paying attention. He looks around the room once more, hoping for eye contact, before settling back in his chair and staring at his plate.

peep
The tree leans over the path to inspect the fire hydrant hidden in the shrub.

pinch
The mistake was preventable, I was careless, and I hurt someone else too.

satisfying
The soup makes for a complete meal. Each spoonful of this amazing soup is a blessing.

Our Little Sister (2015): Exploring Forgiveness and Trust

Title: Our Little Sister
Director: Hirokazu Koreeda
Language: Japanese
Rating: PG

Our Little Sister is a movie that brings more beauty into the world, not just entertainment. It doesn't show unnecessary drama. Any tension arises from the characters' circumstances; the writers didn't shoehorn arguments into the plot. Much of the movie is grounded in what makes life beautiful, like sharing food and conversation with loved ones. I also like how the movie explores forgiveness and trust.

Three adult sisters who live together learn that their estranged father has passed away. He had abandoned his family for a love affair with a woman who became his second wife. His first wife, the sisters' mother, also wound up abandoning them at some point after. The eldest sister, Sachi (Haruka Ayase), stepped into the role of mother for her younger sisters.

When they attend his funeral, they meet their teenaged half-sister, Suzu (Suzu Hirose), for the first time. Their reaction to her is curiosity and kindness, and they invite her to live with them.

Week in Seven Words #361

absorptive
They have a quick, vicious temper. They'll unleash it without absorbing its effects; they may even forget, an hour later, just how angry they were. The absorption is left to me.

auxiliary
She's finished reading the Harry Potter series, but doesn't want to let it go. Potter Puppet Pal videos are among the media she's found to maintain her connection to the Wizarding World.

crayons
Teens with fruit punch hair bump shoulders as they drift through the park.

defense
For indoor soccer, the footrest is the goal. In the middle of the game, the dog trots over and lies down in front of it to lick the floor.

irrelevant
"He's entitled to his own opinion!" she tells me the day after. An irrelevant comment, as I never argued about anyone's right to share an opinion. As for the content of the opinion, I can't argue about that either, without being called names or told that I don't really mean what I'm saying.

melting
The gingerbread truffle bursts and melts on my tongue. I think with even more gratitude about the person who gave it to me.

runny
Throughout the store, there are sniffly kids with smeary noses and slurpy coughs.

Week in Seven Words #357

dessert
Pumpkin pie filling rises between the tines of my fork.

hooked
The choice of entertainment falls to the youngest child. He picks a documentary on fish that weigh a lot. Everyone winds up gathering at the TV to watch.

hushing
She calms her patients with soft string music, a dish-sized fountain, and a murmured mantra.

inordinate
A parent, embarrassed by his children's bickering, loses his temper. His overreaction is significantly more embarrassing than anything his children have done.

juxtaposition
One of the apps on her phone lets her make movie trailers. The latest one features a bad-tempered dance instructor and the floating head of a unicorn.

membrane
The waiting room is part of a suite of doctors' offices. The sofa cushions are stiff. I toy with a book, without reading it. Through a thin wall, I hear wracking coughs and a low, anxious voice.

reconnecting
It's been a year since we last spoke, and it would be a shame if we never spoke again. I email her, and she replies with warmth and surprise. We're still friends.

Week in Seven Words #355

distraction
We leave the TV on in the other room and play boardgames to the background noise of dismal news.

glimmering
Part of his job is to quell people's dread. Even when he's solemn, there's a gleam in his eye, reflecting a bright shore that he assures people he can see.

lopsidedness
They ignore anything that reflects poorly on the politicians they support, while magnifying every pore and blemish in their opponents.

moods
Sometimes a hot, unreasoning anger seizes them, and they look like they're about to rip each other apart. Then a switch flips, and they cheerfully subside and watch TV.

paints
She considers the best color for her bedroom walls and skims through a book of soothing pinks - coral, rose, crepe, salmon.

prime
The best colors emerge in the afternoon. Gold light on leaves and dusky red bricks. The soft blue of the sky calls to mind feathers and eggshells.

retention
They're fooled by an excerpt that's taken out of context and given sinister meaning. It's something they saw in passing on the internet and absorbed without questioning.

Two 1940s movies with WWII vets struggling in post-war life

Title: Act of Violence (1949)
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Language: English
Rating: Unrated

At first, Act of Violence seems like a straightforward crime thriller set in post-war suburbia. Joe Parkson (Robert Ryan) is a stalker menacing a peaceful home. He carries a gun and looks like he could use it without flinching. But Joe isn't a criminal, though he may become a murderer by the movie's end.

The man he is after is Frank Enley (Van Heflin). They served together in the war and spent time in a German POW camp. Frank now has a wife, Edith (Janet Leigh), and a baby son. He's well-respected in his community; people consider him a war hero. To Joe, Frank's cheerful, prosperous life is an injustice. Joe remembers what Frank did in the POW camp, and what his fellow POWs suffered for it. Joe is permanently injured and easily written off as crazy, but at least he survived and will now have his vengeance.

Act of Violence should be a better known movie for its strong acting, the tone of uneasiness throughout, and the difficult questions it raises. What would you do to stay alive? How do you manage to live with yourself, if you've either deliberately committed evil or made a terrible mistake? Are things you did under extraordinary circumstances reflective of your everyday character?

Joe and Frank wrestle with these questions post-war. As do the women in their lives - Edith, who learns disturbing information about her husband; Ann (Phyllis Thaxter), who as Joe's girlfriend tries to persuade him to abandon his revenge mission; and an aging prostitute, Pat (Mary Astor), who finds Frank when he's trying to hide from Joe. The movie doesn't make the mistake of turning Joe into a righteous hero and Frank into a full-fledged villain; Frank's reasons for acting as he did during the war are muddled, and Joe is so consumed by anger that he's becoming less of a person and more of a destructive force that will burn itself out.

Week in Seven Words #328

chainsaws
I hear the anger behind their words more than the words themselves. It's a smug, desperate, vindictive anger that rips through their speech.

clustering
Men in black coats gather at a bus shelter by an abandoned lot. Rain dribbles off their hats.

ferociously
Rounds of Monopoly Deal, with groans, squeals, and eyes narrowed over fanned cards.

furtively
Tables pushed together in a U-formation soon bear a load of beer, soda, and nachos with melted cheese. Between the chairs, a cockroach creeps, tasting possibilities.

innocently
When he finds out I'm Jewish, he asks why people hate Jews. The Jews are in danger, he says. He's a third grader who has never, to his knowledge, met a Jew before.

tide
Returning from a weekend away to an ocean of laundry.

transcendently
As an adult, she finds coloring books relaxing. Some of the pages she's working on show mythic creatures. Using colored pencils, she makes a phoenix shimmer with fire.

Week in Seven Words #318

branding
She married someone who picks at her like tissue on the bottom of his shoe. With a determined smile, she spins his sullenness as shy charm, his malice as social awkwardness.

chlorosis
Under the fluorescent lights, the fake plants look anemic. So do the people - washed out, moving as if their feet were planted in deep, sucking mud.

diminishing
All the information we've found suggests there's no way the problem will disappear on its own. (Yes it will, he says.) Let's try a treatment. Giving it a try costs almost nothing. (It's unnecessary.) Why? (Because.)

methamphetamine
She gets a hit of anger from the TV news, her round-the-clock drug.

riddles
They're tech-savvy, but that doesn't mean they don't like offline games. Case in point - her scavenger hunt with clues planted among stuffed animals and kitchen appliances.

sequestered
Once people go into the little soundproof room in their mind, it doesn't matter how hard you pound on the door. I forget this, even though I've seen it often and done it myself.

sleeky
PowerPoint, pizza, multi-colored plastic chairs - it's like I'm back in grad school.

Week in Seven Words #305

canid
The dog, tied up outside, whines low and long over all the things she can smell but not jump on and lick.

capture
I'm reminded of what it's like to play tag in a house. Ducking behind a door and waiting for the pursuer to run past into a different room. At the end, getting caught with a fierce hug.

eventide
Cold, clean air, a muddy lawn, leaves, a swing set at dusk.

fauna
He tells me about the relationship between manatees and elephants, and hippos and whales - just some of the topics we migrate through, using books, toy animals, and YouTube videos as supplements.

fidgeting
They show me a video of what at first looks like a skittering punctuation mark: a pygmy shrew, among soil and rocks and exploratory human fingers.

grumbly
We cram ourselves onto a gondola swing. It creaks in protest, lurching under our weight.

venom
This time, she finds a wound in me that she can tear open wider. My responding anger is so strong. It collects in my throat and chest, and I'm close to letting it fly. Like a snake that's reared back and spread its hood.