Week in Seven Words #571

This covers the week of 12/27/20 - 1/2/21.

advisory

As New Year's Day approaches, Duolingo is telling me something: "Fais plus de sport!"

aurora

I look over her shoulder at the computer game she's playing, Heroine's Quest, and I'm enchanted by its artistry. In one scene, the player character goes ice fishing at night against a backdrop of Northern Lights.

fairyland

In the field, a hollow has filled with rain, and it looks magical in the gray light.

glazed

The stalls at the holiday market look like bright glass cubes. Most of them sell warm food, like apple cider donuts, or they display art, jewelry, and pretty knickknacks.

propping

Some of the paintings crackle with life. Others are weak, supported mostly by the jargon in their captions.

quarantine

Thankfully, they're feeling better, but they're still quarantined, their viruses mingling pleasantly.

strains

Musicians try to pump some cheer into lackluster people. Not enough people for a crowd, and still too many businesses closed.

Week in Seven Words #518

This covers the week of 12/22/19 - 12/28/19.

again
Her dollhouse, I discover, has musical features. So that I won't forget about these features, she replays them repeatedly.

alleviating
In the car, I'm a little nauseous from lack of sleep and a breakfast of a single square of chocolate, which seems to hop around like a checker piece in my stomach. What helps is a walk through the parking lot in the mostly fresh air.

halted
I'm struck most by a sculpture inspired by Abraham and Isaac, the near sacrifice of the son by the father. The father figure looks tense and determined but nonetheless reluctant, holding back at the sight of his adult son kneeling with throat bared. The son is prepared, appears not to resist at all, but his fists are clenched.

potbelly
One museum guard allows me to keep my small backpack on me, as long as I wear it in front, like an artificial potbelly. Another guard tries to get me to return to the coat check with it, but I clutch my potbelly protectively and defend it from removal.

seasonal
Scuffed-up stairs and tired-looking stoops are showered with tinsel and potted shrubs.

spotted
A deer among fallen branches by an empty swimming pool.

wintry
An elegant bridge and brittle ice, bare trees and dark, cold water.

Week in Seven Words #510

This covers the week of 10/27/19 - 11/2/19.

departure
I hurry back to give her a second kiss.

depression
One statue with a ripped out torso embodies depression. Mind and body laid to waste.

feasting
At an Uzbek restaurant: salads in small, shallow dishes and a delicious stew that settles comfortably in my stomach for what seems like days.

mealtimes
A rich salmon salad in the morning. Pecan cookies in the afternoon. Some yogurt for dinner.

sculptures
On one outdoor terrace, a sculpted horse considers the ocean and the narrow streets of an old neighborhood. On the rooftop, a real bird with black and white feathers perches on a steampunk-like contraption. Nearby, a statue skulks, its face lost in the shadows of a hood.

staked
The cat peers out from among broad, dusty leaves.

waterfront
By the ocean: scooters, bikes, paper boats strung up in the air, a rippling flag on a rock among the waves.

Week in Seven Words #491

cozying
When she speaks in English, her tone changes. It makes me think of confidential chats over coffee. It's a voice that invites you to share secrets.

crafts
The artistic touches really do lift the mood in the room. Even if they're just some colorful panels on the napkin dispensers, or a few star-shaped sculptures made of paper dangling from the rafters.

diagnostic
The doctor seems impatient. He orders some tests, and it feels more like a stalling tactic because he's not sure what else to do, but who knows.

ease
She just taps into me, and comfortable conversation flows out.

gentle
The river is dimpled. The silver bridge glistens in the pale, pink light.

pain
Being in pain feels lonely.

pressure
Sometimes people ask you, "Are you well, are you well, are you feeling better?" in a way that stresses you out, because you want to just reassure them. They need to be taken care of, their agitation soothed, regardless of how you're feeling.

Week in Seven Words #449

audience
Among the people listening to the outdoor opera broadcasts: a young couple who have chosen seats close to the giant screen and are now eating noisily and whispering, a young boy who is entranced, a panhandler crouched outside of a pharmacy blocks away, the voice of the soprano an eerie reverberation around him.

categorizing
"It's not a baby," he insists. "It's an action figure." But she doesn't care. Every small human-shaped toy, including Iron Man, is a baby to her.

expressively
The cantor is astonishing. His voice is full of hope and poignancy.

fey
The opening scene is entrancing. The green curls in her hair flow into her shimmering gown, as she reclines among the roots of a tree.

riches
We admire the embroidered birds and flowers on robes the color of pomegranates. We peer at the details on peacock feathers and at rivers ghosting across a canvas. The delicacy of blossoms and snow is exquisite. So are the tigers rippling across the golden panels.

sweets
At the restaurant, they move her to a different chair, one that isn't in view of the gum ball machine. Another way to distract her is to ask her to sing; her repertoire includes the classics, "Take Me Out to the Ballgame," "Baa Baa Black Sheep," and "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star."

upright
With a sketch book positioned on her thigh, she sits before a painting by Artemisia Gentileschi that depicts Esther and Ahasuerus. The sketch focuses on Esther, who is close to fainting; her body looks as if it's about to come apart in different directions.

Week in Seven Words #439

enclave
The farther east we walk along the beach, the more Russian we hear. A few young women run up to us at one point and say something in Russian. On seeing our blank expression, they switch to English, and we understand that they'd like their photo taken in front of the ocean.

glossiness
The lawn has a velvet sheen in the sunshine.

mirrors
Facing the ocean are murals depicting its degradation.

plasticky
Along the boardwalk, there's a lot that's cheap and bright: plastic colors, sweet and fried foods, silly sound effects from quick games and rides.

scrawling
The rollercoaster looks like red scribbles on sky blue paper.

shade
It's a pleasant crescent of beach with a patchwork of umbrellas. There are circles of shade from the umbrellas, planks of shade from trees, and shade that shifts like cloth cast by the leaves.

wobbling
He pretends to know it all, but his act is unsteady. His lips turn down at the corners. His eyes widen and look away. To make up for the uncertainties coursing through him, he deepens his voice and tosses an insult.

Week in Seven Words #437

creations
They're on the rooftop garden, sketching. Paths made of loose stones coil through the grass and overhanging plants. Blanket flowers burst from the greenness in pinwheels of red, orange, and yellow.

heaped
The art installation is a pile of boots, basically. It's a work of calculated indifference.

intently
A young man on the subway recites his own poetry. It's clumsy, in parts, but earnest. He speaks it with sincere intent and force of thought.

invitingly
To reach the porch of the pink house, you would walk on a path of uneven paving stones, past flowering bushes, under a trellis, and between two tables covered in a cloth patterned with sunflowers.

rehearsed
The children are arrayed before their parents to dutifully sing.

various
The neighborhood is a mix of quaint shops, charming cafes, industrial barrenness, churches, and patches of greenery.

yield
When the weeds are cleared away from the container, what's left is a lone pepper.

Week in Seven Words #432

arachnid
The art installation is a spider-like creature risen from a shallow pool, its skinny legs dimpling the water.

bonding
It's amazing to discover a rapport with someone who's different in many ways. We have a low-key, comfortable relationship.

burst
With a roar, the boy charges at the pigeons. After they scatter, he wanders away looking confused, as if suffering from a loss of purpose.

connected
In a hoarse voice, he talks about the 1960s, and at first I don't see the point in what he's saying and why it's relevant to the discussion. Then I get it, as he describes what he calls the fight for the nation's identity. He's tying it to his personal fight, to the risks he's taken to find his own identity – not a set of labels to fix to himself, but discoveries unearthed from a torn up landscape.

humans
At the square, over a dozen people roller-skate in formation, past a guy with a "Jesus loves you!" placard fixed to his chest. Near him, another guy sits on the steps in small sweatpants, his pale ass spilling out. A group of Buddhist monks (or men dressed as monks) burn incense and press flyers onto people. The farmer's market is packing up to the sound of skateboards cracking against the pavement. Homeless people lie on their sides on benches, socks out, looking exhausted.

neologisms
The three of us play Quicktionary and can barely speak sometimes because of how hard we're laughing.

versions
The baby is delighted to look at my photo, but regards the real-life version with caution.

Week in Seven Words #426

blueness
Beyond the whirring tools and the dentist's graceful hands, an episode of Blue Planet plays on a small screen. I have no idea what's going on, aside from seeing great quantities of fish, but the general blueness is relaxing.

brightness
Sometimes a brilliant moment is made of sunlight falling on the white planks of a house and on the spruce that has sprung up beside it.

directing
The toddler stumble-walks with his finger out pointing.

inspiring
Art can be an antidote to oversimplification, smooth and quick explanations, cowardice, and brutality.

mawkish
She tries to entice me to watch the movie by showing me a YouTube clip, but all I see is syrup and little substance and actors who talk as if the dialogue is sticking to their teeth.

oof
The dog gets so excited that her owner has come home that she launches herself at my stomach from several feet away.

roofing
A writing assignment of many words that makes me realize just how important it is to have the right roof over one's head.

Week in Seven Words #412

amusements
This time, the game we play is one where I try to tickle her belly, and she tries to block me. When she grows bored with it, she stands under the dining table for a while, her hand on her mom's knee.

apportion
Her younger siblings agree that she should distribute the chocolates. She slices open the box and displays the possibilities. She reads the chocolatey description of each truffle and its contents. As they crowd around, she cuts the truffles into halves and thirds for sampling.

pooled
The candles melt into a pond of rose, purple, and sea green.

reawaken
Good books reinvigorate the conversation you have with yourself and the world.

release
She's abandoning her social media accounts, one by one, to unclutter her mind and free her time.

scales
The soprano warms up her voice in the ringing acoustics of a church.

scorning
It's a grubby work of art. It shows a meanness of character, a cynicism that denies beauty.

Earth Day walk

It started at Cadman Plaza Park in Brooklyn, where there's a memorial for WWII.


Then south to Borough Hall, where I joined a walking group. We headed west into Brooklyn Heights to look out over the East River.

Week in Seven Words #398

breathtaking
There's a beach by a quarry, and it's one of the best places I've been to, beautiful and invigorating. It's made up of slabs of rock strewn along the shore. Just picking one to sit on is a pleasure. I rest for a while with the sun on my shoulders. I could have spent days there.

kayaker
A river wends through red, green, and gold grass. A kayak emerges from under a bridge, and sunlight shimmers in its wake.

seaside
Walking to the farthest reach of the jetty, I have a feeling of being embraced by blue. The sky, with some blue-white smears of cloud, the harbor spreading out on all sides, and the water trickling through the clumsy string of rocks - blue all around.

secretive
It's an old house, with enormous trees fussing around it and petting it with their branches, and shrubs rearing up to screen it protectively. It keeps silent about the people who lived there and what they saw from its windows. What we have are some facts embellished by imagination.

sweeten
It's a town of fudge and ice cream and pastels, flowers in window boxes and clapboard churches overlooking the ocean.

visage
In an art museum, I like the portraits best. They're characters expressing stories.

wondrous
The sound of a blue whale's heartbeat.

Week in Seven Words #388

barnyard
Baby goats press against the legs of the man who feeds them; they peer out from the folds of his trousers. Chickens walk around in their strange, obsessive way, making discontented noises.

drafts
The artists have set up studios in derelict homes. Most of the rooms are empty; some are papered in sketches. Here and there, a dash of paint disturbs a long stretch of dust.

meditation
With their bodies, they seem to form letters of the alphabet. Their spines curve, and their arms rise and bend. Their instructor walks among them and gently edits the poses.

petrichor
A walk between downpours. Everything is soaked in the smell of after-rain.

snarling
The music growls and punches holes in the quiet.

spasms
The worm, freshly plucked, flops around in the bird's beak.

unsophisticated
The fountain looks like it's juggling balls of foam. People sigh as they watch it; some record it on their phones. I like seeing this lack of jadedness. People taking pleasure in a simple, beautiful sight.

Week in Seven Words #386

clubhouse
The conference room smells like grease, leather, and aftershave. The attendees, mostly men, scarf down pizza and sit on colorful plastic chairs. They're talking about cutting-edge technology, while pretending that they're in a school cafeteria. There are board games stacked on every table.

colossal
The giant seated ballerina looks like a float that broke off from a parade and came to rest among skyscrapers.

future
Ten years ago, did you imagine your life as it is now? (When I ask her this, she shakes her head and frowns.) So that means that ten years from now, your life may also become something you can't currently imagine. Hopefully in a good way. You aren't stuck.

needling
After demanding that he prove his identity, they ask him a bunch of questions about himself. Like, "What's your nickname for string cheese?" He answers each one, but they look skeptical, telling him that they're not sure it's really him. These are the kind of mind games older siblings come up with.

overtures
Building a fragile trust with the baby, who smiles with saliva-bubbly lips and then breaks into a wail.

pause
Sunlight, green leaves, and a pale gray pond in the early morning.

prelude
Balloons float off into a dusky sky as the orchestra warms up.

Week in Seven Words #374

glancing
She wishes her experiences would have more weight and texture. She thinks she's skimming over everything, recognizing but not appreciating beauty.

interior
The suggestiveness of a bookcase, paintings, plants, and piles of papers glimpsed through a window.

jittery
Wind chimes chattering by an empty street.

pangs
The mural reminds her of home - a two-story house in a wooded lot, with a driveway shaped like the head of a cobra.

slip
I try to feel around the edges of her carefully curated personality for what I think is there - her, her self, whatever that means.

strained
Waiting to learn the outcome of her hospital visit. Stomach clenching every time the phone rings.

suburbia
The sidewalk has disintegrated to a narrow shoulder of road, and I'm reminded of the suburb I grew up in. A nail salon, an Italian restaurant, a bagel store, and a laundromat in a clot beside an artery of traffic.

Two Recent Walks: Governors Island and Harlem

Last time I visited Governors Island was five years ago, when it was still in earlier stages of development and pretty eerie. In late June, I took the five-minute ferry trip from Lower Manhattan to walk around it again. There's more going on there now, and it's a lovely place to walk, bike, and picnic, play around on slides or zip-lines, and enjoy some art and history.

Highlights for me included the view of the NYC harbor from the area of the island known as The Hills. (The crowd of people in pink clothes were attending Pinknic, a rosé wine festival.)



Another part of the island I enjoyed was the small urban farm and composting center. I was happy to see birds that aren't pigeons.

Living with Music (and noise, lots of noise)

Ralph Ellison starts his essay, "Living with Music," remembering an apartment he used to live in during the late 1940s with thin walls and unfiltered noise from outside. He describes neighbors who would blast music, drunk people who would sing (or scream for quiet) outside, and one neighbor in particular living in the apartment above who was dedicated to studying singing… all day long, as Ellison tried to focus on his writing.

In those days it was either live with music or die with noise, and we chose rather desperately to live.

There are a few things I love about this essay. One is Ellison exploring the distinctions people make between music and noise. Another is the way music is the means of both trying to understand people and attempting to block them out or knock them down. For instance, his upstairs neighbor - she reminds him of when he would practice trumpet growing up (to a mix of detractors wishing he’d stay quiet and supporters wondering if he’d be the next Louis Armstrong). He comes to admire her and her dedication to song. Her practicing also drives him nuts sometimes, and he blasts music (the same pieces she’s practicing, but performed by world-class musicians) as a way of trying to silence her. She doesn’t rise to the bait or quit practicing, and they eventually settle into a way of coexisting based on understanding and greater courtesy. Meantime, he rediscovers an appreciation of music that he mostly gave up when he set aside his trumpet.

Music is also a way for him to bring together different aspects of his culture and self. He loves classical pieces, jazz, Negro spirituals, and writes about the error of seeing only stark divisions between different types of music:

There was a mistaken notion on the part of some of the teachers that classical music had nothing to do with the rhythms, relaxed or hectic, of daily living, and that one should crook the little finger when listening to such refined strains.

I also want to leave this excerpt, when he reflects on serious jazz players:

Life could be harsh, loud and wrong if it wished, but they lived it fully, and when they expressed their attitude towards the world it was with a fluid style that reduced the chaos of living to form.

Each “must learn the best of the past, and add to it his personal vision.” Playing jazz is only one way of doing this. And any such endeavor usually starts with, and many times doesn’t get past, “an effect like that of a jackass hiccupping off a big meal of briars” (Ellison describing his own trumpet music). But one could argue the attempt is still worthwhile. (Though maybe not for people forced to overhear you as you figure things out. Like, in the case of writing, the teachers who have to read your work when you're trying to learn how to wax poetic...)

(This was one of my selections for Deal Me In 2017.)

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 #324

braying
He bullies away the gaps in his knowledge, filling them with loudness.

dispensing
The driver reacts to the near-collision by shouting at everyone else.

follicular
Wind that could tear the hair from your scalp.

jitters
When asking for feedback on her poems, she doesn't expect a blast of criticism, but braces herself just in case. It's an act of vulnerability.

lakeside
The branch has landed in a silken reflection of trees and clouds.

perch
The tree has a bare trunk and a tangled mass of branches at the top, like a nest for a giant bird.

portraiture
I pose badly, she says. It's in the way I hold my chin, look past her shoulder, keep my lips pursed so I won't laugh. But it doesn't matter, because the end result is the same: two sets of ellipses for eyes and glasses, a beaming crescent mouth, and a nose that looks like a raven in flight. I cherish it.

Week in Seven Words #323

arcs
Pushing him on the swing, his small, solid back against my palm.

fragrance
Peeling the lid off a bin full of sheets and towels and bringing them to my nose for a deep breath.

naturally
We dissect twigs and seed pods with plastic knives that he calls "plant knives." Afterwards, he shows me some plastic animal pets, including a rat with a yellow splotch on its back that he calls a "sunspot rat." (It also has white spots on it, but he says those are there to make it look sick so other animals don't eat it.)

olfactorily
The dog is nearly beside herself with the need to press her nose into people.

points
In the first round of our drawing competition, we both draw tigers, and he declares himself the winner. Second round, after I've drawn his sunspot rat, he graciously calls a draw.

pressures
The silence of what we're not telling each other makes the car feel like it's going to implode.

stealth
They take hide-and-seek to another level, not only finding the most improbable places to hide but texting each other updates on the seeker's location.