Week in Seven Words #580

This covers the week of 2/28/21 - 3/6/21.

compulsions

We're caught in traps of compulsive behavior – web surfing, phone scrolling, screen watching.

deceptively

What looks like ice on the lake is only the glare of sunlight.

enlarged

The eyes always come out too large in the drawings. Large, placid ellipses.

held

His body shakes with his need to talk, to have someone listen.

liquefy

A land melting into mud and puddles that seem like ponds.

retrospect

Months from now, I sense this worry will seem superficial, a distraction from larger problems.

warmth

A golden retriever finds us as we sit shoulder-to-shoulder on the sunlit bench.

Week in Seven Words #457

differentiation
The advice you give someone may have worked for you, but won't work for them. They don't have to live your choices.

expressive
Some trees look like they have eyes, mouths, and, at times, whole faces imprinted on the bark. On one tree, what looks like multiple faces are emerging, their expressions stunned.

guarding
One motif that stands out in our walk: aggressive yellow jackets who are territorial about public garbage cans.

gullet
He eats out of a tub of ice cream while watching his favorite basketball team lose.

ocular
Walking along with two heavy grocery bags and one eye scrunched shut, after something has lodged against my eyeball on a windy day.

precarious
Holding the wine glass over my head as the kids kick a soccer ball around the room.

sensory
She prepares a strange tangerine tea. It smells good but tastes like a bitter oil.

Week in Seven Words #276

firsthand
They tell him not to take a swig from the hot sauce bottle. But how will he know what it's like for his tongue to catch fire? He compromises and shakes just a few drops into his mouth. Then buries his face in a pillow on the couch.

fleet
We're going to have an intense, pleasing conversation across a table covered in desserts. And afterwards, we won't bother keeping in touch.

frigid
Three winter-blasted souls. They're perched on a sofa, their eyes sharp and cold. When I nod 'hello,' they don't reply.

manhandled
I'm like a suitcase. She drags me over to the window where I'll be out of the way.

particulars
The young child insists that the elevator's '5' button is really a 'B.' He points out curves and lines to support his argument.

respiring
Brown grass and bracken in the clean air of the hills.

vocalization
After oral surgery, he tries a full sentence. All we hear is a groan that ends on a whine. There's probably a question mark at the end of the sentence.

Three Du Maurier Stories from Don't Look Now

Collection: Don't Look Now: Selected Stories of Daphne du Maurier
Author: Daphne du Maurier

For some of the stories, I didn't accept the premise; sometimes there was an over-reliance on coincidence and clairvoyance. But even in those cases, I enjoyed the atmosphere of the story.

Du Maurier is great at upending reality and writing about people who, in one way or another, are trapped in their own minds. They perceive a reality that they can't communicate to others; other people don't want to (or can't) understand them or believe them. Everywhere they go, they're failed by family, friends, the police, doctors, everyone we usually think can help. She understands this kind of terror and isolation. Even when one of her characters experiences clairvoyance, which you'd think would give them a greater understanding of what's going on around them, they're still blind in all the ways that matter.

Her stories will definitely stick with you. These are the three I liked best:

What are your sources of inspiration?

Week in Seven Words #46

bespectacled
She tells me about her new glasses, what they look like, how she realized at school with the blackboard and clock getting fuzzier and fuzzier that she'd need them. Her words remind me of when I put on my own first pair of glasses, the summer before fifth grade. How I slid them up my nose in the optician's shop, and the little squares on the shop's screen door leapt out sharply, along with the trees beyond and the license plates on the cars parked by the curb.

cerise
The clouds are a powdery pink, and the glass walls of the building blush in the sunset.

commiseration
They're overworked, I'm overworked. We'll muddle through this together.

enigma
A wooden stairwell, carpeted, the air thick with potpurri and the banisters twined in holly. On the wall above the first landing a mirror hangs too high for people to see their reflection. In some places it's spotted a moldy black. I wonder, if I were to drag over a stepladder, what I'd see in its surface.

finals
Students, pale and sniffly from stress and lack of sleep.

lair
For a few hours each week I need to use an office in their building. The office they give me doesn't open at first to any keys; who knows what’s happened, I’m told, and who was the last person to have set foot in it - maybe the lock was changed. An aura of mystery builds around the room, until at last I’m given a key that works. The lock clicks, I find a small dark room, no window, no visible light switch, a desk rearing up with its legs sticking out like a creature making a last desperate defense of its lair. An empty thermos and a granola bar sit on the other desk. From the floor a phone occasionally purrs; its blinking red light hints at messages that may never be heard by human ears.

lull
People-watching from a library window. The first reckless forerunners of snow spin through the air.

Week in Seven Words #45

chapped
My knuckles crack open in the cold.

culmination
All eight candles are lit along with the presiding shamash; the light they give is defiant and cheerful.

fragment
A slender journal in Hebrew, and the story of a girl who lived decades ago and died young. She left a deep impression on her teacher, who wrote about her elevated spirit and discerning mind; this teacher wanted to preserve her writing and keep her memory alive. In her black and white photo she looks serious and severely lovely.

listing
The project drifts off course and onto some rocks. It groans, tilts, and waits in weary silence for intervention.

peepers
Their eyes appear on the screen as two blank white circles on a black square. The circles squeeze to nothing and spring to full circumference; they waver and blur and shift from side to side. They seem to belong to a cartoon character blinking out of a dark room.

tight-lipped
My front door won't admit me, and at first I'm not sure why.

twinkle
Snow drifts down in the late afternoon. It's the best time of day for it, knowing that there are warm places waiting for me at the end of the day's work.