Week in Seven Words #496

environmental
By the salty, polluted river, the grass is long and glossy. Purple flowers and soda cans nestle in it.

forum
Worries are better dealt with outdoors. Not in the confines of a familiar room but in a wider space with water, trees, and people.

fuzzily
A caterpillar, small as a piece of macaroni, squiggles on my neck.

multitasking
A woman is simultaneously playing the violin and hula hooping. Packing her talents together in the hopes of collecting more money in her violin case.

noise
She keeps lowering her book with a sigh. The whoosh of the passing cars distracts her. I've written it off as background noise, like the wind. After she calls attention to it, I pause to listen, and I realize how much noise I accept as a given, just a part of life.

seaworthy
Toy sailboats find their balance on a sheet of dark water.

thickly
Rain comes down in thick continuous clots and spatters like white paint on the street.

Week in Seven Words #467

affection
Squeezed into a seat on the subway, a young girl hugs her younger brother on her lap and kisses him repeatedly on the back of the head.

coloring
She soaks her feet in a foot bath with a bath bomb that dyes her legs faintly blue.

idly
The boats on the pier are massive and idle. A gangplank has extended from one of them but no one walks on it. It's a drowsy day.

massively
The massive clouds make the buildings by the harbor look small and brittle.

posture
Asleep in his seat, he has bent forward so much, his face is parallel to the floor.

security
Gates and guards and more gates around an ominous complex that makes us nervous just going near it, as if there's an unseen line we can't cross unless we want to fall under suspicion.

streets
We walk on streets that are chiseled like diamonds, the glass buildings cut in spectacular shapes. We also walk on streets that are narrow and made narrower by heaps of garbage bags.

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 #364

chip
A sunlit, sterile store displays several rows of small devices.

flourishes
During the subway ride, she asks about each stop and what you could see in the local neighborhood. A proprietary feeling for the city comes over me. It doesn't matter if a subway station is grimy and rundown; I look on it with fondness, because it has become my grimy and rundown station.

miniature
The furniture from centuries ago looks doll-like, as if the people then were not only smaller but more delicate and fragile.

motorboat
A high-speed boat skips like a stone across the river.

neonatal
The baby wears a striped hat. She squirms from time to time in her sleep. Her sleep seems intent, energetic.

posing
They dab, dance, and toss their hair on the videos they make with a lip-syncing app.

postpartum
It's a quiet ward, which is surprising. The hospital room has a dim evening glow. For the moment, the baby is being weighed and measured in the nursery. A nurse, who strikes me as sincerely caring, quietly speaks to the mother, both about what to expect in the coming hours and about a maternal health issue that needs to be monitored.

Week in Seven Words #299

cast
One sculpture awaits us barefoot beneath golden trees. Another looks at us and away from us with dozens of eyes.

crepuscular
We lean against the railing of the bridge as the dusk gathers. The river has turned into a sheet of mica. Blank, burning eyes emerge in the dark - a train approaching.

cross-purpose
A conversation on the road, between a pedestrian who lectures a driver on right of way, and a driver who punches his horn in reply.

fairer
These parks are kept clean and lovely, and they're left undeveloped. People can lie on the grass just a few feet from a rocky beach. And there's breadth to the space, so they can pretend they aren't on a crowded island. The sunlight is soft today, and bikers take off their shoes and curl their toes in the grass.

pent
He knows he's not allowed to hit people. So he slams pillows on the floor. But even that isn't allowed. So where's the anger supposed to go?

vessels
On the river: sailboats, yachts, a battleship, barges, banana-colored kayaks, and inflatable dolphins. The waves thrown into disarray by the watercraft.

whelm
Harbor water rises and falls against the statue's anguished face.

Week in Seven Words #293

bay
Foam churns in the wake of the ferry. The city recedes to the size of Legos. I lean back and feel the wind coast over me. The water is deep and glistening.

murmur
From between the rocks, the water whispers.

peering
Sunflowers, leaning out of buckets, press their faces to a bright window.

sheltered
Most of the homes have porches half-screened by flowers and leafy branches.

soft-hued
I'm walking in a world of pastel colors: pink doors, seashells, light blue skies, flowers enfolding fences and homes.

tending
In a dimly lit room with dusky, rose-colored walls and no TV, I press bandaids onto my blisters and settle back in bed with a novel.

vicinity
The famine memorial is spread out in the foreground. Behind it, a glass-fronted convenience store displays large cutouts of a spoon and fork.

Week in Seven Words #283

disengage
She walks ahead of the rest of us, and I understand the mood she's in - restless, unwilling to talk, needing to feel like she's floating free.

dump
Between the chainlink fence and the water is a zone of discarded objects: a pink Disney princess balloon, a bike wheel, green bottles and a soccer ball.

lava
Volcanic colors of sunset over small gray buildings.

lurch
An email I expected arrives. Even though I sensed that something like it was coming, it's no less disappointing.

scalpels
Skyscrapers like silver blades cutting into the night.

squandering
Half an hour gets sucked away on a TV show where people make petty, poorly thought out decisions and end their night drunk and brawling.

watercraft
We walk past the yachts in the marina and marvel at their features, like the hot tubs and lounge chairs. "Which one is yours?" she asks, grinning. I tell her that mine isn't a yacht. It's a leaky rowboat. The amenities include a bucket to bail out water.

Week in Seven Words #232 & 233

232

greenhouse
Inside, it's quiet. There are dead plants and a warm, wet smell. A machine is whistling from another room. Rot and the promise of monsters in the middle of the afternoon.

locked
Among flowers, a firefighter, frozen, clutches a small child.

rippled
From the border of her yard, she watched the ships pass in and out of the harbor. Even after they slid from view, she remained where she stood and observed how the water resettled in their wake.

risking
Dashing across a road with no crosswalks, drivers unwilling to slow down or stop.

roaring
Smoke spreads from the grills, and music blares, and motors hum. Festivity means as much noise and odor as possible.

sheeny
Wind sliding over bright sunny water.

unfledged
They're crowing, they're pushing each other around, they've inked their baby-fine skin with flames and hearts. They're so young and so hellbent on piling experience on themselves, no matter what the cost, because they think that's the way to grow up faster.

Week in Seven Words #230 & #231

230

amazon
Stolid and tall, drifting ahead of us like the mast on a ship.

dyed
Red and yellow kayaks, like slices of fruit candy, bobbing on the river.

fissures
They work hard to create the impression of a shared reality, even as their hearts splinter.

grousing
We have no solutions, only complaints. But it's reassuring to find people who complain about the same things. The shared noise is heartening.

haunting
The whine of pigeons flapping by my ears.

mutants
Fisherman by the railroad tracks, what will he find? Rubbery fish? Tires that have come alive with fins and scales?

refrigerated
Harried women in a chilly supermarket; they're carefully made-up, their eyes fogged.

231

attenuated
In a battle that spans multiple eras and realms, who will win: Plants or zombies?

embracing
The pond is still and lets the sky steal across it. It's a safe place for the sky to settle down a short while. No waves or ripples will chase away the clouds.

fidgety
Goal: To rush to the end of the piece and then dance away from the keyboard.

fretting
One trait I want to avoid as much as possible is fretfulness. I don't want to lie prostrate before my fear and call attention to myself with it.

inexorability
He had the vague hope that if he stopped doing anything, time itself would stop. Instead it's flowing around him and nudging him along, while he struggles to keep his footing.

regenerating
I like community gardens grown in old broken places. A scarred part of the city now bears vegetables and redolent plants.

taste
Enough people say they like something, so then others like it too. And some dislike it just because too many others like it.

Scenes from a green Fourth of July

One of the day's highlights was walking by the lake in Central Park and through the Ramble, which is my favorite part of the park.

Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now?
- from "You Reading This, Be Ready" by William Stafford

Week in Seven Words #121

constructive
They're given random scraps and told to build whatever they can imagine. Cars with plastic bottle cap wheels, a walkie-talkie with a straw antenna, a castle made out of cups and toilet paper rolls.

decibel
The music at the frozen yogurt shop is so loud, the place so packed and noisy, that you can't think or talk to the person next to you. You just stare into your cup and eat and eat before it all melts.

fathom
We've gone so deep into the park we can pretend we're no longer in the city. At the pond we find a bench. Though it looks a little wilted in the heat, the pond is a nice spot I think. He sees it as stagnant. I can understand why, but I can't agree. There's always something alive in there. A mix of fish, turtles, plants and microbes. It's a quiet place, and promises whatever you can find in it; the closer you look the more there is. After our conversation, which has kept returning to life's disappointments, to uninformed choices that can't be undone, I want to be in a place like this, out-of-the-way and quietly overflowing with life.

jib
The tiny sailboats have ventured onto the water again.

raw
The cookie dough has already been prepared; now it's only a matter of cutting it and flattening it into cookie-shaped pieces before it goes into the miniature oven. Of the four residents at the table, one can wield a knife quite well. Another tries but can barely manage. A third pops a piece of raw dough in his mouth then resumes staring silently at the rest of it. The fourth curses when you get too near her. "I wouldn't feed that to my cat," she mutters.

trail
Forget the subway and bus; I'll find a new way home. And I do, on land rising steeply over a lake, where the inlets are coated in a vivid green scum, and the path curves beneath low-hanging branches.

wretchedness
The howl of a dog that doesn't know what she did wrong.

Week in Seven Words #120

alfresco
Early Sunday afternoon I sit on a bench by the fountain, my face brushed by its windblown mist as I eat a hamburger.

cultivar
It's one of the best kept secrets of the city: a small rose garden crackling with bumblebees.

fullness
It feels like late summer here in the Ramble. The air in the early evening is heavy and warm; the trees look about as full and green as they'll ever get. I find a quiet place where the path slopes down to the water. Long-stemmed purple flowers grow there, and the light reflecting off the lake shimmers on the tree trunks. It's a deep gold early evening light that soaks into everything.

pastime
From the sidewalk they look like odd modern sculptures in metal or harsh plastic. Just as I'm about to walk by, it hits me: they're game pieces. Game pieces as big as people. I climb the steps to the sunlit plaza where they're displayed, among them chess pawns and the wheelbarrow from Monopoly.

recidivism
They've invented a game where I'm a visitor at a museum who can't help but touch everything that's on display. As a punishment I'm to be repeatedly shot at with plastic space commando guns and dragged into a jail cell from which I will have to break out, so that I may go to the museum again and repeat the process.

stagy
It's an operatic evening. I'm not at the opera myself, but I do walk across a curving stone bridge that looks like it could be a prop for a soprano to stand on and sing. Then I go by the opera house when it's darker. The fountain lights are on, and the windows are golden.

unfurling
At the end of the pier, the river feels like an ocean. All around us are boats, sunlight, and sky, water that doesn't seem to have an end in either direction.

Week in Seven Words #105

coding
The online coding tutorial rewards you with a blue check mark on every exercise you successfully complete, and it's a good feeling to see one surface on the page, a sense of progress and mastery, even if you later realize that you have to go back to those old exercises because you've forgotten something important about the correct placement of semi-colons and the script you're trying to write isn't working anymore.

freeing
I like brainstorming on the train. The rocking motion seems to loosen things up in the mind.

impregnable
The blue doors on the school are like portals in a fortress, admitting no one. I expect that at any moment a sphinx will alight on the steps and demand an answer to a riddle in exchange for entrance.

marigold
The Shakespeare Garden is quietly alive in the winter sunlight. And on a plaque I find this passage from The Winter's Tale:
The marigold, that goes to bed wi' the sun
And with him rises weeping...
The marigold flowers are nowhere in sight; only the promise of them.

relaxed
Boats drifting by on the river. I don't need to know where they're going.

unruffled
Ducks and seagulls are scattered across the lake. When they take wing the water hardly stirs.

whimsies
Two of my favorite things are Thing 1 and Thing 2 from The Cat in the Hat.

"It's good to live it again"

A little over a year ago I posted photos of autumn in New York - more specifically Central Park - that I took on Thanksgiving weekend 2010.

Now just this past Thanksgiving I returned to Central Park with my camera, for another taste of my favorite season in one of the loveliest places I know of.

A glimpse of what could be

From the mind of Lemuel Moody

The Portland Observatory is the last of its kind in the US - an old maritime signal tower, now preserved as a museum and as a great viewing spot overlooking Portland, Maine and the adjacent water and land.



Before new technology came along and made it obsolete, you stood at the top with a telescope, sighted approaching ships, and used flags to signal how many and which kinds of ships were coming, so people on the docks could get ready for the arrival and the unloading of cargo.



It was constructed and initially manned by a retired sea captain, Lemuel Moody. An enterprising and meticulous individual, he lived nearby with his wife and brood, who spent significant chunks of their childhood running up and down the stairs:



These days, along with footsteps, other sounds you hear regularly from the stairs are the words "watch your head", followed by a loud hollow thud.

The lovely views make up for the minor headaches.





You can also spot patterns that at ground-level would go unnoticed.



And once you're back on the ground, don't forget to look up.

Week in Seven Words #20

almost
Moments when I'm close to something, so close and I don't realize it, and later I know that I've turned away too soon.

effloresce
On nearly every street I come across roses. They grow in cluttered gardens, among scraps of metal and plastic toys. They poke through chain-link fences. They thrust themselves up the sides of houses, twine around trellises, and peek over porch rails. Their heads sometimes bow towards the bright green grass.

geometry
The strange shape of sunburns - circling my leg exactly where my socks begin, or my arms where my sleeves end; patching around my knees and calves where I didn't apply suntan lotion evenly, or framing my left wrist where my watch has kept the skin beneath it pale. My skin is sore in triangles, trapezoids, and ellipses.

lighthouse
In the daytime there's an elegance to it, perched on a rocky ledge above the rush and murmur of the bay.

promenade
Quiet streets overlooking the ocean, where boats are peacefully scattered. The air smells like salt water, flowers and mown grass. The houses are large and silent, multi-layered with wide windows, balconies, porches with white wicker chairs.

seawater
When I approach the sea I try to guess what color I'll find it. A misty melting gray in the fog, or fracturing the sunlight on a clear bright day. A hard gemstone blue, or light blue with dark folds and white foam.

tranquil
At the peak of the old maritime signal tower, with a view of rooftops, sea craft, and water all around, I sit next to a soft-spoken guitar player. There's sunshine, music, and from time to time the clomp of people climbing the winding wooden steps.