Week in Seven Words #524

This covers the week of 2/2/20 - 2/8/20.

cheerful

A girl riding on her dad's shoulders raises her pink mittens to a drizzly sky.

crunchy

The sunlight crackles on salt-encrusted streets.

eructation

The gutters are belching litter into a foul-smelling wind.

inert

She has no illusions about what she'll learn. She has little hope that she'll do better. The next few hours are just a way to pass the time.

limitations

They fall back on what sound like programmed responses. A "hm" in response to an observation. A tiny set of one-word answers to any questions you may have. Chunks of your own speech echoed at you. Their eyes drift to a wall, a window, and rest expressionlessly.

touches

She thinks of how to make every corner of her home more lovely. The flowers I come across while climbing the stairs make me smile.

withdraws

"I don't belong in school," she says. But where does she belong? She doesn't know. Maybe there's a quiet room somewhere with a door that locks, a pair of ear buds, and a phone.

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.

The Country of the Pointed Firs: Jewett's Exquisite Book

The Country of the Pointed Firs by Sarah Orne Jewett is intense in its depictions of people sharing their lives while also living apart and alone. An author spends a summer in a remote coastal village in Maine, at the end of the 19th century. She meets people who show her parts of their life and the depths of their character. And at the end, she has to leave. It's only a season, full of weight and breadth but also coming quickly to an end.

The book, which I read for the Classics Club Challenge, isn't plot-heavy. It's a collection of meetings, conversations, meditations on nature (human and the natural world), all beautifully written. The people who inhabit the village become extraordinary because of the attention the author gives them. Here's one look at Mrs. Todd, whose house the author stays in for the summer:

It is not often given in a noisy world to come to the places of great grief and silence. An absolute, archaic grief possessed this countrywoman; she seemed like a renewal of some historic soul, with her sorrows and the remoteness of a daily life busied with rustic simplicities and the scents of primeval herbs.

And here is an old man she meets:

There was a patient look on the old man's face, as if the world were a great mistake and he had nobody with whom to speak his own language or find companionship.

The book weaves together beauty and joy with misery and loss. These feelings are inseparable. As the author looks out on nature, she observes the decay and death along with the promise and loveliness:

The tide was setting in, and plenty of small fish were coming with it, unconscious of the silver flashing of the great birds overhead and the quickness of their fierce beaks. The sea was full of life and spirit…

It was not the first time that I was full of wonder at the waste of human ability in this world, as a botanist wonders at the wastefulness of nature, the thousand seeds that die, the unused provision of every sort.

The author grows pretty close to some of the villagers, and the villagers feel fairly close to each other, or at least committed to each other; at the same time, they're separated in private griefs and memories they rarely speak about. They've enlarged their lives by finding a place in an extended family or community, or by gaining an intimate knowledge of nature, whether the woods or the sea. But they're still alone, each distinct and separate in character.

I'm tempted to share many more excerpts from this book, because it's so beautifully written. The author takes a season and tries to give it permanence in text. Even when there's the bittersweet feeling of knowing it all passes, that all these people have died, something of them and the world they live in are still around.

In the life of each of us… there is a place remote and islanded, and given to endless regret or secret happiness; we are each the uncompanioned hermit and recluse of an hour or a day; we understand our fellows of the cell to whatever age of history they may belong.

Week in Seven Words #259

audacious
A cockroach scales the chrome and neon walls of the ice cream parlor like a sci-fi hero.

bluster
A storm whips the houses, cloaks the streetlights.

chagrin
She doesn't want to admit to buying the junk food for herself, so she claims it's for friends or family. It gets me annoyed with how much guilt and shame is associated with food (with some brands even labeling their products 'guilt-free'), as if shame or guilt will reliably motivate people to make healthier choices long-term. And as if it's shameful to have some dessert.

choo-choo
He asks me what I'm sentimental about. The first thing that comes to mind: trains. I still have sentimental ideas about taking a train trip across the US. I know I'm romanticizing Amtrak. Amtrak, of all things. I know about the possible difficulties of long distance train travel, especially in this country, where it's not a popular way to get around. But I really like traveling by train (even in subways sometimes, when the cars aren't crowded). For more than several hours? I don't know. I haven't done it yet.

fostering
What makes for a good friend? Someone who can respect you and accept your essential self. Who can challenge you without belittling you. You can grow, and they will not insist that you need to stay the same or make yourself smaller to suit them. They will not demand that you stick to an outdated version of yourself or a version of you they've built up rigidly in their minds.

sensuously
She presses a lemon to her ear, pauses, puts it down. Picks another one to listen to and decides to keep it. Then she moves on to the peaches. She rolls them against her cheek, one by one, until she finds the peach with the most pleasing caress.

variation
Imperfections enhance beauty.

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.

Art and Life in The Picture of Dorian Gray

At the start of The Picture of Dorian Gray, Dorian is a dazzlingly handsome young man who's sitting for a portrait in the studio of Basil Hallward, an artist. Observing both of them is Lord Henry Wotton, who preaches a philosophy of life where sensory pleasures are paramount to everything else. (How much Wotton actually believes in this, or in anything else, isn't clear.)


When the portrait is finished and Dorian looks at it, he realizes that it won't be long before he'll lose his radiant looks; like everyone else, he'll age and die. He wishes he could remain young, and that only his portrait would age.

His wish comes true, though he doesn't realize it at first.

Week in Seven Words #93

cradled
I'm walking on the open palm of a beautiful day. There's water, gold and orange trees, blue skies holding rain clouds at bay. I feel raw and tired inside but the day is gentle.

cultivation
School is giving him a certain knowingness. He's starting to pick up spelling and reading, the ways of the world, the lingo of kindergarten (awesome!).

lane
Taking the long way home I find a lovely street, quiet and shaded with trees. I'm glad I chose to walk off some of my restlessness and map out a new neighborhood on foot.

locus
Two branches of the public library within a block of each other. A prime piece of real estate.

persistence
In the room where I've been run through a proofreading test I see a motivational poster on the wall depicting a pencil stub and the word Persistence, followed by this line: We've exhausted all possibilities... let's get started.

subway
In a strange way I've missed this: the stale breath of the station, the rumble of approaching trains, the clatter of trains pulling into or speeding past the platform.

treasured
Dusk settles in the afternoon. Buildings and statues catch the last light and hold it close for as long as they can.

Recruiting the other senses

| Artists Wanted | In Focus : Pete Eckert from Artists Wanted on Vimeo.

Pete Eckert is a visual artist. He's also blind.

This short video about his work and life is thoughtful and inspiring. I especially liked the synesthetic quality of Eckert's approach to art, how he says that "sound gives an image..." and how his work involves "learning how to see again using sound."

"Autumn in New York..."

"... why does it feel so inviting?"













"Dreamers with empty hands
may sigh for exotic lands;
It's autumn in New York -
it's good to live it again."

(Billie Holiday singing "Autumn in New York" brings a smile to my heart.)

Week in Seven Words #32

birth
For close to an hour I sit with my eyes closed; they feel heavy, but sleep won't come. The airplane cabin is dark, most passengers sleeping, and on a restless impulse I pry up the shade on the nearest window and look outside. We're flying into a sunrise. Alongside the plane the skies are dark, but up ahead there's a thick melting band of beautiful orange. Piled above it are successive stripes of yellow-white, then blues darkening to black; at the foot of the sunrise the cloudscape is gray-blue, like the surface of an alien planet. This is the world I live in, and it's a blessing to see it this way.

collaboration
Each scientist seems like a neuron. The neuron has its own activities, its own rate and intensity of firing, but at the same time its actions are inseparable from what other neurons are doing; connections have formed and will form between neighboring neurons or neurons that are at a remove from each other, and while the activity of a single neuron might be relatively simple, when they fire together, or in response to one another, the patterns of activity give rise to complex knowledge and understanding, a broader and more detailed picture of a given phenomenon or entity in the world.

excursions
There's time to explore, both at the beginning of the day and in the evening; there's time to squint at cathedral gargoyles, sip tea in a crowded room with flowers and wide windows, stroll through a garden in dusk when the midges are out and the skies are overcast, climb the narrow steps to a fun museum where a king is cross-examined, walk alongside a shadowed river, and stand at the site of a massacre, yet another eruption of hate and blood lust.

guests
We're with gracious hosts. They give us a place at their table, delicious food, conversation on all sorts of topics, singing and simcha; they offer us reflections on life, the holidays, human nature and purpose and ask us to share our own thoughts. It's a warm room we're in, with light wood floors, shelves with lots of books, and the table (or tables) where everyone gathers. It's the sort of room that can somehow fit forty people almost as easily as it fits seven.

luminance
Sunset as seen from a bench in Hyde Park. It seems like we're sitting within a glass marble streaked with peach, gold, blue, and feathery gray.

perambulation
In the early morning we walk on the walls of a city. On each side there are houses with chimney pots, slopes of green gold grass, brick and stone smattered with ivy, cobbled roads feeding into asphalt streets, dark furrowed trees heavy with leaves, and at our feet snails have emerged after the night's rain.

wordless
There are many different kinds of shofar notes on Rosh Hashanah. Sometimes the notes are precise, efficient and somewhat mechanical; the shofar-blower rises, performs his duties skillfully, and then returns to his seat. Other times the shofar seems to strain against the fabric of the air, against the boundaries of sound itself; there's so much feeling and effort, so much longing and appeal. The shofar blasts and rasps and lets out a wild fierce pleading blare of sound. Other times only a gasp emerges; the shofar-blower pauses, takes a deep breath, shuts his eyes in concentration and makes another attempt. During one round of shofar-blowing a two year old child is laughing wildly; the two sounds together are beautiful - the long yearning note of the shofar, straining with every wordless hope and resolution and plea, and the child pealing happily alongside it.

Extracts: the world of Green Gables

I recently rediscovered Anne of Green Gables while visiting family; the copy of the book is one of those lovely older hard-cover volumes with some rich illustrations, both in black and white and in color.

I love the characters, not least Anne Shirley - smart, big-hearted, imaginative and dramatic chatterbox, who starts out as a neglected, spirited orphan and sprouts up into an uncommon and well-loved young woman at Green Gables. And the places in and around Avonlea and Green Gables also become characters in and of themselves, beautiful places full of life and color with lots of "scope for the imagination" as Anne would put it.

Anne came dancing home in the purple winter twilight across the snowy places. Afar in the southwest was the great shimmering, pearl-like sparkle of an evening star in a sky that was pale golden and ethereal rose over gleaming white spaces and dark glens of spruce.

And while traveling in the evening -

There was a magnificent sunset, and the snowy hills and deep blue water of the St. Lawrence Gulf seemed to rim in the splendor like a huge bowl of pearl and sapphire brimmed with wine and fire.

Even the practical and stern (yet quietly soft-hearted) Marilla Cuthbert is not immune to the surroundings:

... but under these reflections was a harmonious consciousness of red fields smoking into pale-purply mists in the declining sun, of long, sharp-pointed fir shadows falling over the meadow beyond the brook, of still crimson-budded maples around a mirror-like wood-pool, of a wakening in the world and a stir of hidden pulses under the gray sod. The spring was abroad in the land and Marilla's sober, middle-aged step was lighter and swifter because of its deep, primal gladness.

Anne likes to give these places names of her own. Here is her first glimpse of Barry's Pond (which she renames the Lake of Shining Waters):

Above the bridge the pond ran up into fringing groves of fir and maple and lay all darkly translucent in their wavering shadows. Here and there a wild plum leaned out from the bank like a white-clad girl tiptoeing to her own reflection. From the marsh at the head of the pond came the clear, mournfully-sweet chorus of the frogs.

And when she looks out the window her first morning at Green Gables:

Below the garden a green field lush with clover sloped down to the hollow where the brook ran and where scores of white birches grew, upspringing airily out of an undergrowth suggestive of delightful possibilities in ferns and mosses and woodsy things generally.

Towards the end of the book, Anne says it best:

"Dear old world," she murmured, "you are very lovely, and I am glad to be alive in you."

Undone - a short film

A wrenching, disturbing, and beautiful film.

From the film-maker:

A stop-motion animation using textured and tactile materials, as well as personal imagery, that represents the progression of Alzheimer’s disease. Inspired by my grandfather.

Undone from Hayley Morris on Vimeo.

While searching for a hearth...

...I found Robert Morgan's "Hearth".

I'd started out with the intention of posting photos of fireplaces - of furniture pressed close around, armchairs and rocking chairs, chestnut and oak, brick and dark wood mantels, the flames warm and coaxing.

Instead I found this poem. A chimney standing alone in a field, the only part of the house standing. And though no one's using this chimney there are still fires to be found in it, although in different forms, like this one:

And bees have found a clover there

bending in the dance of rooted things
where the honey of flames was.

Wonderful use of repetition, lovely precise language; the poet sought out beauty and warmth, found it in a solitary chimney - the kind of place that kindles the imagination of poets passing by.