Week in Seven Words #548

This covers the week of 7/19/20 - 7/25/20.

barricaded

The side doors to a vacant hotel are barred with luggage carts.

dreading

I wish I were used to these feelings of foreboding by now, the way they stalk through my psyche and claw at my attention.

flag

We notice a duck with blue, black, and white coloring on its wings. It reminds me of a flag. Estonia's flag, maybe? To check, we don't need to consult an atlas or a search engine. All he does is type Estonia into a text message on his phone. He receives a suggested flag emoji for Estonia, and yes, those are the same colors on the duck.

hooray

The documentary about the park is less about information and more about celebration. I'm fine with that, especially because the park has been a refuge when so many other places remain closed. Let's be happy that it exists.

perspiring

Joggers glistening and puffing in the morning. Drops of sweat shivering on shirtless basketball players.

protection

A visit to the dentist is much as it ever was, except for the air filters in every room, the mandatory masks, and the empty chairs between patients in the waiting room. This time, along with the x-rays and cleaning, I get fitted for a night guard, an attempt to protect my teeth from the unconscious grinding I subject them to when I sleep.

training

Three rows of stout old people working out with wooden swords. Their instructor, a senior himself, walks among them and corrects their form. I pretend that what I'm looking at isn't an exercise group but a training session for elderly assassins. (They're effective because most people don't consider them a threat... until it's too late.)

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 #489

capoeira
On a traffic island, as we wait for the light to change, she demonstrates capoeira moves, fight-dancing at a post.

capotain
It occurs to me an hour into my trip that the black sun hat I'm wearing is terribly unflattering. But I'm already miles from home and need that sun protection. Guess I'll have to look like a time-traveling Puritan.

guise
On our way to dinner, she reports what someone else said about me. Whether she's relating the other person's comments accurately or editing them heavily, I don't know. The only result is that I feel uneasy. Not motivated to change, just motivated to spend less time with her and with the third party she's eager to quote.

journeying
The unannounced interruption to subway service makes our trip over an hour longer. We need to get off the train at one stop, take a bus to another stop, get on another train, and finally switch to another bus. After that comes a short shuttle ride. But it makes our arrival even sweeter. We appreciate, even more, the wide-open view of the river, the soft lawns, the flowers pulsing with color among evergreens and rocks. The air is also so clean.

puffiness
The peonies are a creamy pink. They look like pastries.

siddur (סדור)
One woman talks about treasuring the repetition in prayer. Another speaks beautifully about the legacy of the Siddur. I like not just the learnedness of the discussion, but the frankness. People don't often talk about prayer in a way that's both scholarly and personal.

softness
The light falls in a pearly sheet on glass bowls with cacti, on poppies in a cream-colored vase, on a pink crocheted cap.

Week in Seven Words #485

celebratory
We sit at our own table, each of us with a little heap of food, including shawarma. At one point, a man with a sonorous voice sings "Hatikvah," and that's the highlight of the evening.

charmer
He normally has little to say, but with so many ladies around, he becomes more lively and charming. He shares cheesy, non-threatening jokes and plays up how nice he is to his mom.

critique
The day is damp and unexpectedly cold. We meet at a pizzeria and sit at a sticky table, where I read through her writing. It's full of twisty, creative ideas and sparks of humor. But it needs more patience. She likes telling the reader everything upfront about a character's background and personality, when some things should be discovered more slowly.

irritation
Phone calls to three different offices to deal with an insurance claim rejected because of a paperwork error at a doctor's office.

planting
The eggplants go into the ground in bright green shoots. Each plant gets its own mound, where it's tucked in for the next stage of growth. One woman presses her fingers to her lips and caresses the leaves of the ones she has planted.

suckers
They hand out lollipops to struggling students. Your grades may have tanked, but at least you get to saturate your mouth with artificial cherry flavor.

yoga
Contorting into different positions. I'm not sure how this is supposed to be relaxing. Ow, my back.

Week in Seven Words #461

artistry
They give me a beautifully crafted card. It opens like a red flower with many delicate petals.

boneheaded
Two teenaged boys take turns stepping on the head of a rake, to make it fly up at them. They want to see if they can stop it from hitting their face at the last moment.

circulation
The ice breaker activity he proposes: after stating your name, demonstrate your favorite stretch or warm-up exercise. Someone else has already done jumping jacks, so I go with toe touches.

dimension
I've been visiting their house for years and only now discover that they have an attic.

plenty
I study the table in appreciation before the food gets demolished. There are green glistening vegetables, a mound of mashed yam, two small bowls of gleaming cranberry sauce, trays of beef, turkey, and chicken... a feast.

raking
The crackle of leaves. The scrape of the rake. The hiss of leaves compacted in trash bags.

undercurrent
A rough edge of anxiousness and resentment, a perception of favoritism, mars an otherwise fun board game.

Week in Seven Words #442

adorning
The table is crowned with a vase of lilacs and gladioli.

blades
They're cheerful and polished, but their smiles seem carved out of their flesh. Their brightness has the potential to become hard and repellent.

downpour
Heavy rain, so thick it seems to come down in clots. Afterwards, the air is cool and fresh.

limping
It's an odd, disjointed dinner. The conversation drifts frequently to weather disasters. During the silences, people peer at each other uncertainly. One guest is silent and remote, with a pinched look, as if he had been running from exhaustion for a while before it finally overtook him.

sluggishly
The 2 train crawls like an old fat snake that has eaten too much.

throwback
The office suite reminds me of a student center on a college campus. There's a coffee bar, vending machines, puffy sofas sitting low on the ground, and several tables tucked into booths.

verbalizing
A man is jogging with his dog by the lake. "How are you doing, boy?" the man asks. The dog pants. "You doing good?" The dog continues to pant. "Good boy!"

Week in Seven Words #422

myology
A woman at the gym whistles and sings (something like, "Ooh, baby, don't leave me") as she does bicep curls. Her biceps are extremely well-defined. Maybe singing to them helps.

piercing
A teenaged girl poses for a professional photographer. A woman who's her mother, lovely too though blurrier around the edges with age, watches sharply, as if she's using her eyes to chisel her daughter.

pursuits
The toddlers stagger around blowing bubbles that they then try to catch with tiny hula hoops.

role
The latest game she's come up with is to have us pretend we're a variety of people auditioning for Hamilton. Seeing as I know few of the lyrics or melodies by heart, I'm the comic relief.

slogan
Heading down the block, I spot a man wearing a t-shirt that says "The Future Is Female," and a woman with a sweatshirt that says "Messy Hair Don't Care." Her hair is neatly pulled back.

splotch
Someone has brought a half-finished bottle of chocolate syrup to the food drive. Standing among the respectable canned foods and boxes of pasta and oatmeal, it looks sticky and disreputable.

uncomprehending
They think she's incapable of understanding people, when the real issue is that she isn't motivated to, mostly because the people around her don't invite understanding. They prod at her mind and lament that she doesn't think and feel as they do.

Week in Seven Words #400

accompanied
A homeless man with a CD player hooked to his belt searches for bottles while accompanied by Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli singing "Time to Say Goodbye."

limits
The talk focuses on the complications of forgiveness. How does one (or can one) forgive repeat offenses? What if the offender shows no sign of remorse or is unwilling or unable to change? What if the offense is too serious? It's a heavy discussion, and many of the people present either remain silent or speak in short, clipped phrases, as if there's so much more they'd like to say but too little time.

morula
At the birthday party in the park, small pink balloons are tied together in a cluster that brings to mind a diagram of the stages between zygote and embryo, a ball of cells rapidly multiplying.

pointlessly
His words trigger my temper, and I regret letting my anger show. It feels like defeat, to lose control even briefly. It's also pointless. The provocation in and of itself is superficial. The anger has deeper roots and is bound up in problems I wouldn't be able to discuss with him. We're on the level of surface irritations.

student
An old woman is in the middle of a calisthenics routine by the river. A toddler approaches and begins to imitate her: jumping, stretching, squatting, hopping on and off a stair. (In this last one, the toddler crawls on and off rather than trust her legs too much.)

sunnily
The water is tinted gold in the late afternoon. I look up from my book as a dog trots by wearing aviator shades.

suspend
There's a man who sits in the lobby of the synagogue or sometimes on the front steps, like he doesn't want to get too close to the praying but doesn't want to abandon it either.

Week in Seven Words #372

dust
Cleaning out shelves, coming across movies I used to like and books I've forgotten about.

eluding
Chasing an almost-chocolate flavor in a supposedly healthier variant of ice cream.

murine
The dog looks mouse-like with her new haircut, especially when she wiggles between our feet in search of crumbs.

propped
The woman sitting next to me is pregnant and uses her belly as a shelf for the book so we can both read from it.

shape
In the dark, it's the neon shorts, t-shirts, and crop tops that are the most visible parts of the joggers, who advance in a 3x3 squad. They look like a collection of colorful squares and rectangles that rise and fall piston-like against a gray screen.

unconvincing
He sings about "sticking it to the man" (or something to that effect), and it sounds tired and lame. The sentiments of rebellion have been commercialized.

viridian
By the streetlights, the trees have an icy green-blue tint, as if they've been flavored with mint.

Week in Seven Words #321

fawner
Finding something I wrote in all earnestness when I was young, when I so earnestly wanted to please.

putrefaction
Cleaning deep under my desk, I find something that makes me wish I'd cleaned sooner.

racket
Connect Four pieces clattering on the table like a slot machine jackpot.

respiratory
One guy grunts at the weights, another groans at the weights, a third vacuums the carpet, and a fourth gasps on a treadmill.

spillage
They'd like me to be a receptacle for their unpleasant emotions. A sponge that will soak up their excesses.

taboo
The standup routine is raunchier than anything they've watched before, giving them new words to mouth in wonder.

tumble
In every season there's something to make you slip: ice, leaves, a slurry of mud and motor oil, blossoms rotting.

Week in Seven Words #266

diligence
She shows me how she's patiently worked her way towards a difficult yoga pose, adjusting her legs in increments over weeks. Now she sits with serenity, as if the arrangement of her lower body doesn't register in her conscious mind.

employed
Her job duties include ignoring the phone and investigating vacation spots on Google Maps.

hushed
The sun turns to ashes behind an aluminum fence.

mildly
A mug of tea warming my hands. A conversation that passes with no bitter words.

pulse
The dog, calming on my lap, is a pounding heartbeat wrapped in hair.

stale
The store smells of sawdust and wheaty things. Breathy acoustic versions of pop songs make background noise.

venipuncture
She sinks the needle into one arm, then the other. Gives me a bewildered look, as if to ask, "Are you human?" and leaves to search for a second phlebotomist: the one I call "The Vein Whisperer," who trails her fingers along my forearms, taps the skin, holds the needle poised above the surfacing vessel.

Week in Seven Words #240

clatter
A sculpture park pockmarked with construction - few differences between the art displayed and the machinery making room for new installations.

distances
Her long-legged stride represents how she's made her way through life.

huddling
Clouds roll in over the river. On the rocks, a sea gull, a soda can, and a bundle of clothes that may have someone in them.

oscillate
The conversation fans out to West Africa, Korean soap opera stars, karaoke, and the way people lock their thoughts into binaries during arguments - two solutions to every problem, two possible opinions in complete opposition.

smudges
Pigeons hold court in the shadows of the bridge.

stock
He barrels out of the convenience store with a shopping cart full of cupcakes and beer. No partying in half-measures.

twinging
Walking a long distance outdoors, especially on uneven ground, gets at muscles that remain dormant during a gym routine.

Week in Seven Words #109

discreetly
The leaves when they return will conceal rubble, graffiti, and skeletal fences.

fritillaries
Van Gogh painted flowers that vibrate and gardens that rise up to meet you.

hissy
On the grill the hamburgers are spitting grease.

latent
I like watching people sprint up the art museum steps pretending they're Rocky. Rocky's statue isn't at the top of the steps though; it's planted at the bottom, where people who can't or don't want to race up the steps and pump their arms in the air can still stand next to him and flex their biceps for the camera. Somewhere in those unused muscles is the strength of a boxer.

pristine
For his nephew he laid out almond blossoms on a blue background - the skies of early spring, explored by blossoms and criss-crossing branches.

suggested
In each portrait there's a story - a harlequin in a winter forest, a lady who doesn't meet your eyes, a man who is considering his profits while smoking a pipe.

tarrying
Back in Halloween someone strung up a plastic skeleton outside the apartment building across the street. On New Year's Day it was still there wearing a festive hat. The hat has since disappeared, and it received nothing for Valentine's Day. Now it grins down on the street, anticipating spring like the rest of us.