Week in Seven Words #539

This covers the week of 5/17/20 - 5/23/20.

acquainting
I hear about them secondhand, and I'm happy they're doing well. I don't feel an urge to see them. Social distancing has clarified a few things about relationships – the friends I'm closer to, and the acquaintances I'm fine with sending pleasant wishes to from a distance.

careening

Bike riders and pedestrians shouldn't be sharing a narrow path.

conquest

Rats extend their shadowy empire to heavy shrubs, parked cars, defenseless basements. 

fuels

One assignment this week is a deep dive into the energy industry. Fascinating how much technology goes into producing fuel.

lawyers

One lawyer has a special kind of smarminess. It fills his eyes like oil. The other lawyer is sedate and detached, as if half his mind is on other cases or personal concerns.

mechanical

One jogger lets out huge stiff bursts of air, as if he's a machine pumping across the park.

muzzled

Children peddle around furiously on bikes and tricycles. Their eyes are bright above their masks.

Week in Seven Words #448

dandelion
The fountain looks like a dandelion in a fuzzy state. Instead of sending seeds into the wind, it releases soft white droplets.

embassy
From around the corner of the block, through a lobby, to a cramped waiting room, which doesn't have enough chairs, down a roped-off corridor, into an elevator, and finally up to the sanctum, a broad, gleaming chamber with plenty of cushy chairs and bureaucrats forcing smiles from behind the counter.

eye-rolling
Low-key, humorous grumbling from people well-acquainted with bureaucratic inefficiencies.

over
She writes about the end of a friendship but gets frustrated when the words make the relationship and its dissolution sound trivial. She wants whoever is reading it to understand how much it hurt her.

rictus
It's supposed to be a discussion group but it has a cultish infomercial feel to it where everyone is relentlessly bright and empty-eyed.

spiritedly
Her resting face gives the impression of boredom, but her thoughts are energetic, and if you talk to her about an interesting topic, she becomes animated, her eyes brighter and a smile ready to flicker to life.

variable
Just when I'm thinking the street is bland, full of the dull mirrors of office building glass, I spot an enormous church with a dome.

Week in Seven Words #118

affirmative
One piece of advice I'm slowly taking to heart is to say "yes" more often. Meaning that when I think of an idea and the good possibilities it might lead to, I shouldn't immediately start enacting the Script of Self-Doubt ("but wait"/"I can't"/"because, well..."/"it's too much"/"I couldn't really"/"I've never"/"what if...?"). Yes. Yes. Yes!

flashbulb
Lightning at my window in the middle of the night.

footing
A few seats ahead of me on the train are a pair of feet. First they wiggle in the air, then they settle next to the window. The toenails are turquoise.

hindrance
Many employers don't just want you to send them a resume and cover letter - they also insist that you fill out an online job application form. The problem is, the application forms usually ask for the same information that you'd find on a resume, plus they're clunky, inflexible, and cause your browser to quit unexpectedly. What's the point of them? Another hoop to jump through? A way of discouraging applicants who give in to their frustration and quit?

presque vu
The Hummous Kitchen is packed early in the evening, and in the crowd there's an old man with a distinct face, the kind of face you don't forget. Sure enough it isn't his face we've forgotten, but his name. Was he on T.V.? Maybe on Seinfeld or something? Where have we seen this guy? We get a tip-of-the tongue feeling that stays with us throughout the meal. Afterwards a search on Wikipedia through a list of Jewish American actors born in certain decades produces a match - it's Fyvush Finkel. Now I can claim to have spotted two celebrities in New York City. Finkel at the Hummous Kitchen and, a few years back, Lauren Bacall walking her dog near Central Park West.

quotidian
Stitching together the daily routines that had fallen apart the week before.

slate
Solemn and undisturbed - the city in the gray early morning.