Week in Seven Words #338

ballerina
All of the dancers are talented, but one in particular has presence. She creates a mesmerizing character, and even when she isn't moving, she commands attention.

carrying
When possible, I don't use a purse. I like a small colorful backpack, secured on both shoulders and well-stocked.

distracted
The theater is dark, and she's bored. Her phone casts a square of white light that irritates other people, but gives her a pleasant scroll through all the headlines and texts that have cropped up in the last hour.

feat
With some of the dancers, the effort is obvious. They can't hide a straining muscle or how a limb struggles to extend. Beside them dance the ones who seem to need no effort.

jester
I want to make her laugh, so I do a chicken dance and jazz hands.

menace
They reach over the railing to pet the horse in the enclosure. A park ranger warns them off. "It bites," he says. They immediately back off. The horse remains still, revealing nothing.

skimming
Insects glide over the sand like silvery sci-fi drones.

Week in Seven Words #291

consideration
Most of the time what people need is for someone to hear them out. Not immediately jump in with a solution, or a way to rationalize or explain away a problem. Just someone to sit and listen patiently and with a sincere effort to understand.

flicked
Our conversation doesn't mean much. All it does is swat away the silence that would otherwise creep in between us.

sanguinity
There's little to see by the highway except for thin trees and industrial lots. But the flow of traffic is easy, and the sun is out, so there's a light feeling in me, and the world looks beautiful.

selfhood
I have misgivings about the phrase "the real you." It's built on an idea that there's some private version of you that's real, and the rest of you is relatively fake. The thing is, all of you is "the real you." Your different facets, and the way you modify your behavior in different contexts. People can be charming in one situation and behave monstrously in another; or maybe they behave with kindness across a wide range of situations. Maybe part of "the real you" is a tendency to profess opinions that you don't believe in when you're among people you want to impress, while in other situations you speak more freely. One reason I dislike the phrase "the real you" is that people sometimes use it to distance themselves from parts of their personality they don't want to think about. Or they use it to portray someone in an oversimplified way.

slugging
He pauses the TV and stands beside it to give me a lecture on baseball stats. He explains what each number in each little box means. Maybe he thinks he can convince me to stop being indifferent to baseball. I appreciate his effort to involve me in his interests, and the way he steps into a teaching role with enthusiasm. I still couldn't care less about baseball.

warmup
Having my arm used as an impromptu ballet barre.

welcomed
They made me feel at home. That's the warm, lovely feeling I take with me after visiting them.

Dancer Taking in Paris

Earlier this year, the Opéra National de Paris YouTube channel posted short videos directed by Benjamin Millepied. They feature different dancers from the Paris Opera Ballet. This one focuses on Dorothée Gilbert and, all around her, Paris.

Week in Seven Words #137

confab
Two elderly wheelchair-bound ladies sit side by side in an elevator. One reaches over to the other, clasps her hand, and says, "Your hair is white." A pause, before the other replies, "I haven't been in the sun for so long." They lapse into silence.

danseuses
Little girls in a ballet class, spinning, spinning, stumbling, one of them picking her nose as she twirls.

gastric
He wrinkles his nose at the pink frosting on the cupcakes. I tell him the color doesn't matter because once it's in his stomach it's going to look like the pizza he just ate.

irrelevance
Phone static swallows up most of what he's telling me. The only thing I can make out is his reference to I Love Lucy.

pixieish
She's half-pixie, bangs her head on the table, smiles, clutches my hand, wants a co-conspirator in mischief and song.

sheltering
Do any of them think of this as their safe place? It has a warren of bookshelves and desks, a lounge, a little room with computers, and no windows looking out onto the outside world.

unpredictable
A local train turns express, sweeping me off to a stop I didn't intend to go to.