Week in Seven Words #570

This covers the week of 12/20/20 - 12/26/20.

cinnamon

Errands sweetened by puffs of cinnamon-laden wind from the vendors' carts.

frustration

"What's the point?" she asks. "What's the point of learning any of this?" And there isn't an easy answer. Telling her that learning can be good for its own sake would be a glib response.

manifests

With creeping wonder and dread, he realizes that his isolation has made him more like his father.

osculation

Kissing by an arched stone bridge, ducks in a gaggle and the water crisp with ice.

skating

It's easier to talk about books, history, and other topics that aren't deeply personal. I don't often unearth the personal in conversation.

snowman

A towering snowman awaits us on the knoll. The next day, he's still there, looking less robust but still stubbornly upright.

wisecrack

When asked to rate his pain on a scale of 1 to 10, he hesitates before saying, "Pi" (a joke from a TV show he's been watching).

Week in Seven Words #399

bearing
We're eating salads outside in the dark by a bike lane and jogging path in the park. From around the bend, we hear a blues song, and it's getting louder, the hoarse, broken, beautiful voice coming our way. A young girl appears, swinging a portable radio.

coexistence
On the rooftop garden, they've planted marigolds with tomatoes, collard greens, lavender, thyme, cucumbers, dill, Jamaican peppers, and other herbs and vegetables. Bees swoop around (I achieve an uneasy coexistence with them), and white butterflies look like petals sprung to life. A monarch butterfly appears too and lingers.

hoofer
One of the men in the subway car is moved to tell us about his dog. "Her name is Ginger Rogers," he says. He pauses, as if waiting for the dog to spring up from where she's curled up at his feet and start dancing.

pierced
His voice, lofty and sonorous, opens me to my anger and frustration. There are multiple entangled reasons for these emotions at this time.

prepping
In the span of a 12-story elevator ride, he shares his business aspirations and lists some of the books he's been reading to push himself into a mindset of success.

shared
It's cozy and delightful to have a movie theater almost entirely to yourself and the person you're with.

tomatoes
Some of the tomatoes are green and heavy. Others are crinkly and emptied out like candy wrappers.

Week in Seven Words #390

abandoning
The loose grouping of historic buildings has the air of a ghost town. The grass in some places is unkempt. A mother and daughter fighting from opposite sides of a bench pierce the quiet but soon leave, as if they were spirits who hadn't known how to find rest. The crackle of bees from a wide porch, a cat sprawled on shaded gravel, highlight the absence of people.

bus
When the buses aren't too crowded, they can be relaxing. They roll and curve gently, sigh when they come to a temporary stop. The other passengers tend to be quiet, mostly caught up in phones or in staring out the window. When in pairs or small groups, they talk only now and then. At one point, a mother, son, and grandmother climb on board. The son lolls in his mother's lap as the bus glides on.

gifted
A mistake following the trail takes me to a quiet, stifling pond, bright green with algae. The air is still and hot. I wonder what I'm doing here, where I can go next, when a heron unfolds and takes flight.

matchsticks
There's a fragile atmosphere in this home, as if a misaligned paper on a desk will prod an ugly argument to life and ruin the evening.

reach
The real estate agent trots up and down the street, as she explains to someone over the phone that she's misplaced her car keys.

screened
It's a tiny museum; the air is cool and smells dusty. If I knew more ahead of time about Tibetan Buddhism, I would understand more about what I'm seeing. There are labels, but few explanations. The shelves are lined with placid gleaming statues and ornate metalwork. The gardens, set on a hill, are walled in by trees and stone and lined with prayer flags.

wariness
The deer watches me in stillness, a question in its eyes. It retreats because it doesn't want to risk the answer I might give it.

Week in Seven Words #359

defended
The robin perches in the heart of a brambly shrub.

denied
Her life has been set to a soundtrack of slammed doors.

farewell
Our good-bye has a taffy-like quality. We say it and stand close, and after talking some more, repeating ourselves, we part slowly, the distance between us stretching by inches.

headgear
My first sight of her is the bike helmet she's still wearing, as she hunches over her phone, her upper body framed by a dark window.

seen
She may not know who has sent her the note expressing thanks, but she's happy that someone has appreciated her efforts.

spangle
They've strung up a few lights to give an otherwise steely, soulless street some color.

splat
The egg he cracks in a neat stroke, but the yolk plops on the floor.

Week in Seven Words #285

ariose
A lovely duet as the sun sets and candles flicker on the table.

clingy
As the waves withdraw, they clutch at the stones, wishing their foam were webbing that could hold them to the shore.

ecstatic
Moments that pass in a vibration of joy.

rework
He pretends it's an editing request, but what he really wants is a new article, from scratch.

serpentine
It's a tree like the head of Medusa, snake-like branches twisting and striking.

unjust
He likes to act as if he's a judge, and I'm the prisoner at the bar. He makes a statement that's exaggerated or untrue, then sits back with his arms folded over his chest and watches me exert myself to correct him. I catch on pretty quickly to what he's doing and end the conversation, which he takes as further proof that he's right. Such are his standards of proof.

wary
He's hunched over his book, but looks up from time to time to see if anyone is coming over to interrupt his reading.

Week in Seven Words #181

boyish
"Did You Ever" is a game that gives me more insight into him. It seems he's been spending his time in a more innocent and straight-laced fashion than I imagined.

buzzing
Antsy and slightly light-headed with thoughts of food.

cramped
Legs falling asleep as I labor over a difficult text.

fated
A pasta dish that isn't meant to be. First I absent-mindedly leave the pasta cooking in the pot for too long, until it turns rubbery. Then I figure, why not have rubbery pasta anyway? So I dump some cheese on it, only to realize that the cheese is looking unusually blue, in spite of not being blue cheese and not overshooting its expiration date.

gooey
The raspberry vinaigrette is too sweet and syrupy for my salad. It's almost as if it would go better with waffles.

oblivious
She's right on the other side of the wall and has no idea they're discussing her with such frustration and disparagement.

withheld
When you ask them what they did today, they enjoy saying "nothing," maybe because it gives them a little power over you. A mystery they can preserve or reveal at will.

Week in Seven Words #153 and #154

Week in Seven Words #153

conveyor
The cineplex is shot through with escalators that go nowhere, dumping you into narrow corridors with dirty red carpets that smell of popcorn and detergent.

eavesdroppers
An alley at night - giggles and dinner party voices and quiet windows where people sit alone and listen to their neighbors making merry.

nova
Wine and the illusion of lasting friendship.

previewing
The thirty minutes of previews I sit through show me that two kinds of things will happen in movies this coming year: 1) people will have gun battles on space ships and crash on unfamiliar planets where they'll have gun battles with beasts while possibly being targeted by sinister conspirators in tight body suits 2) people will fight criminals and go on road trips while cracking jokes and suffering repeated bodily injury.

prey
She's stunned that the one good vegetarian restaurant left in the area has been converted to a meat place. She even goes so far as to ask the people who work there if it was worth it - if they're really making more money now.

unsparing
The lake in the park is like the mirror, cold and silver, in the Sylvia Plath poem.

viewpoint
He talks about how a famous rabbi didn't want to refer to hospitals by the usual Hebrew term of "be'it cholim" (which translates to "house of the sick"). He preferred instead to call it "be'it refuah," or "house of healing," because that would be more hopeful and encouraging to people.

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Week in Seven Words #154

competitive
They're experts at getting to the buffet table first and parking themselves there even after they've filled their plates, to ensure that they'll be the first to get seconds too.

concealed
To her, ignorance is a source of deepest shame. She bluffs, doesn't ask questions, and retreats behind nonsensical answers so she can keep hiding what she doesn't know.

impelled
I love how coincidence can seem like finely tuned machinery (maybe it is?), life steered along with delicate pulleys and conveyor belts. I hear the right words on a day I really needed to hear them. I show up unannounced, and arrive right on time.

phalanges
His finger, almost definitely broken, is puffed up with the skin tight like sausage casing. It's hard to look at it, even harder to hear the pained noises he makes when it gets touched.

reserves
Most of the time when I go to this synagogue's services on Saturdays I feel like my batteries are getting recharged. I want to work on carrying that feeling of connection and quiet contemplation into the rest of the week.

rewarded
No matter what comes of it, I'm happy the experience has made us closer than we have been in years.

vexatious
It has everything a customer service phone line should have: long wait times, an annoying automated voice, convoluted instructions, and operators who greet you brightly before hanging up.

Worth Watching: In Her Shoes (2005)

Title: In Her Shoes
Director: Curtis Hanson
Language: English
Rating: PG-13

Rose (Toni Collette) and Maggie (Cameron Diaz) are sisters and close friends, but their relationship is strained, because they're both different in ways that heighten their insecurities. Maggie is "the pretty one" who is locked into the role of a bimbo and a flake; Rose is "the smart one," considered plain and bookish and dependable. They've lived with this unhealthy dynamic for years, stuck in their respective roles, and it takes a major falling out between them for their lives to change for the better and for their relationship to grow stronger.


It's their estranged grandmother, Ella (Shirley MacLaine), living it up in a retirement community in Florida, who helps reconcile them.


There's much to enjoy in this movie. There are moving recitations of poems by Elizabeth Bishop and e.e. cummings in scenes that show someone having a moment of breakthrough or connecting with another person in a new and deeper way. The filmmakers take care developing the sisters' relationship and prompt us to think about the way we define ourselves - how is it that we become the people we are, for better or worse, and what changes our self-perceptions?

A chunk of the movie is set in Philadelphia, and it was a treat for me to see Rittenhouse Square, the 30th Street Station, and of course the Art Museum steps, because you can't have a movie set in Philadelphia without someone running up the Art Museum steps. This time with dogs.


I think people who've just heard of this movie in passing assume it's merely fluff, but it's a little deeper than you expect and at times is beautiful. One major aspect of the movie I didn't like was how Rose's job situation is handled - not her need to rediscover herself or change, but the resolution to her work troubles and engagement to the man she winds up dating (and in general, I thought that there's much about the general family relationships, between father, grandmother, and stepmother that remains largely unexplored). As for Maggie, I like how the movie ends for her.

[Updated: 11/16/14]

*All images link back to their source (Flixster Community).

Week in Seven Words #123

buskers
Music waits for us at the subway platforms too - xylophone Disney and Broadway melodies, a guitarist smiling through his performance of The House of the Rising Sun.

incredulous
Being menaced by a sword made out of construction paper.

laboriously
The whine and sigh of taxis, cars, and trucks on the street below, muffled by window glass.

multiprocessing
I sit with my laptop outdoors in front of a dark rectangular pool. When looking up from my work I picture images flickering across the pool, as if it's become a computer screen too, full of scrolling text and pop-up ads.

saccharine
I'm reminded of why I don't like most non-fat frozen yogurts. They taste like sharply sweet coldness.

transport
What an unreal day, floating around on buses and trains.

willful
The child objects to the stroller. As he's folded into it he screams that he wants to walk. When his hollering turns into frustrated tears I can't help feeling bad for him.

Week in Seven Words #65

alleviation
I'm relieved to step into my apartment at the end of the day, shut the door behind me and shut out the world for a little while.

brew
I appreciate her kindness when she offers me a cup of tea. I sip at it as I wait outside, listening to the rise and fall of voices.

caged
I stalk around from one place to another - a corner of the cafe, a public computer, an armchair at the library - as if any one of those spots will contain an escape hatch.

clump
We tend to clump together at every meal, the comfortable bunch of us.

fizzing
Fat bumblebees have emerged in full force, rocketing out of rhododendrons, evergreen shrubs and porch eaves.

peppered
The last day of the holiday we go for a walk. Sticky blossoms shower down on our heads; we pick them out of our hair and off our shoulders.

staggering
I know what the outcome will be, even before I hear it pronounced. I spend the rest of the day frustrated and exhausted, trying to sketch out the bright side to myself and half-succeeding. Good can come out of this. I just wish I'd known what to do early on; it would have saved me time, energy, and this sinking sensation that I still won't get it right.

Week in Seven Words #22

absorption
The intense focus of two dogs discovering a third. The two immediately strain at their leashes and begin to sniff; one of them attends to the third dog's face, the other delicately samples the hindquarters.

crotchety
My foot is slightly swollen and pained. It reminds me of a grumpy companion on a road trip, complaining about distances, uncomfortable car seats, and slight jolts along the way.

currency
The cashier is incredulous when a customer pays her in dollar coins; she at first thinks they're fake, like amusement park tokens. She's new to this country, but thought she'd learned everything about the money; she tells another cashier that a trip to the mint is in order.

elusive
The young child's mind is good at eluding experiments that try to tap into the earliest years of language use; a researcher can feel like a naturalist crouched in a tangle of vines and shrubs, hoping for a chance to cast a net at a sly and mysterious creature.

haft
In some other world, a character I've become acquainted with holds her sword at the ready.

nice
She's someone who's genuinely nice. I don't mean that in the bland way in which 'nice' may be used, when you can't think of a stronger or more interesting quality. She is a fundamentally nice person, and it's a pleasure to be in her company.

rudder
I think I have a firm grasp on the story, but the draft I'm working on drifts off course, and not in a mostly delightful or illuminating way. But at least I get some insights into the characters from this unexpected deviation, along with some words that I'd like to keep working with.