Week in Seven Words #569

This covers the week of 12/13/20 - 12/19/20.

linguistic

An app with a green owl mascot is helping me work on Hebrew writing and French reading comprehension skills.

nurturing

She's painted the walls of her bedroom a dusky pink and hung up drawings of plants, from lianas to roses. The room feels more vital and cozy, as if everything in it is cupped in warm hands.

rebuild

Of the dumb, shattering decisions people make, from which will they recover and to what extent?

silvered

A silver sheen on the lake and leafless trees.

snowing

The park is powdered, the paths slick.

viruses

I'm glad to hear she's feeling better. One virus dominates the headlines these days, but there are still others, like colds, flus, and stomach bugs – miserable, and sometimes very serious. 

warmer

The heat from the candles washes over my hands, and I feel cozier and more content.

Week in Seven Words #559

This covers the week of 10/4/20 - 10/10/20.

discombobulated

A couple of lively restaurants, and around them blight. Farther south, an eerie funhouse feeling to the streets, as Disney characters shamble around and breakdancers try to work up enthusiasm in disjointed knots of people. A cowboy in underwear poses with his fans.

disruption

Borne out of sleep on a wave of anxiety. 

gauging

The teacher's voice is strained, because she can't see us. She can't know for sure if we're looking confused or distracted. She does ask questions and hopes that she won't be met by the ominous silence of ignorance.

gossamer

Two violinists with scruffy gray beards play Vivaldi at one of the entrances to the park. The music is like spun gold. It threads through traffic and past shouts and laughter.

normality

It's a pleasure to sit at a tiny table that looks like its legs are made of toothpicks and just enjoy a drink, a conversation.

normothermia

I ask him why the building's heat isn't on yet, and he tells me with a wry smile that some people are still using their A/C to keep cool. Are we all of the same species, I wonder.

sun-warmed

At lunch, the sukkah is warm. It has basked in the sun, like the heavy garden next to it.

Week in Seven Words #545

This covers the week of 6/28/20 - 7/4/20.

competitiveness

These days, I'm playing more Scrabble than I have in years. In one game, my opponent creates four seven-letter words. In another game, a different opponent creates two. I'm playing against people who treat Scrabble as a serious pursuit. More than a mere game, it is, at times, a primal conflict.

misdirected

I'm trying to find my way through a beautifully wooded part of the park. There aren't many paths, and I'm sure I know where I'm going, but each time I try to end the walk at a pond, I end up on the edges of a baseball field. The woods keep delivering me to baseball, and I don't even like the sport.

overheated
Dead-eyed people in dusty, faintly pretty parks. A small fountain protests the heat.

patriotism

Throughout the day, there's little evidence of celebration. No flags in windows, and people aren't dressed in red, white, and blue. The one exception is a jogger in shorts that stretch the American flag across his posterior. The first time the day feels celebratory is at night, during a TV broadcast of fireworks – shimmering bursts of liquid color.

pondside

Our walk has earned us front-row seats to massive algae growth. 

rediscovering

For the first time in months, I set foot in a bookstore. The store is mostly empty, and I don't buy anything, but I like being able to walk around and touch the covers, read the jackets and blurbs. 

somewhat

"You always think you're going to do something wrong," she tells me, and my reaction is torn between "Not always" and "Yeah, you have a point."

Week in Seven Words #337

admiring
"Look at this beautiful sand castle!" the boy's mother says, moments before he kicks it apart.

desquamated
The professor's voice is undercut by a steady 'scrape scrape scrape' like wood getting planed by hand. It comes from three seats in front of me. A woman is scratching her arm, showering large flakes of skin.

firewater
Alcohol isn't allowed on the beach, but who would look twice at their coffee thermos, even if they pour its contents into plastic shot glasses.

fluctuate
The skin cooks, and the wind cools it.

intertidal
A dog on the beach frisking away from the incoming water, then leaping after it as it retreats.

pinwheel
The girl takes off her flip-flops, holds one in each hand, and twirls on the sand.

unsurprised
I ask her why she rarely says anything kind to me. I don't get the answer I want to hear, though I do get the one I expect.

Week in Seven Words #184 and #185

#184
ambition
He struggles with reading and math but maybe he'll get the life he wants anyway, his photo in Sports Illustrated and a mansion with many sports cars.

embalmed
Old cakes topped with sugared roses wilt in the dull white light.

faultfinding
It doesn't need to be perfect; it just needs to get done. It doesn't need to be perfect; it just needs to get done.

nasal
A drippy optician, sniffling while squinting at a computer that doesn't work.

resurrection
She pulls back the moth-eaten curtains and discovers a world that's forgotten she exists.

promotion
They've recruited an unfunny comedian to hand out flyers for their comedy club. People will be sure to come.

whitecaps
Light breaks in waves against my brain.

Week in Seven Words #141

fallback
When I go somewhere new and don't know anybody, instead of hanging around awkwardly with my drink and thinking about who I should approach and whether anyone will approach me, I try to find a bookcase; then I can half-browse for books, half-scope out the room without feeling like a spotlight is on me.

inhale
When shouting/singing/dancing/whirling people pour into the room and fill it wall-to-wall, I slip outside for a breather.

pinched
Why are so many educators humorless? When they make jokes they look pained and nervous, as if they've colored outside the lines and won't get a sticker for their work.

plastron
As he lectures us in a nasal voice, admitting no interruptions, he reminds me of a tortoise. A pedantic tortoise in an pea green coat. Thinking about him this way makes him more human to me.

pretenses
Passive-aggressive silence is more effective, and obnoxious, than an explicit renunciation.

steep
The Prayer for Rain permeates us.

thawing
At last the heat is on, and the floor no longer feels like permafrost.

Week in Seven Words #125

assured
He loves looking at photos of his parents and older siblings. When you point them out one by one and name them he smiles confidently. To them he belongs, and they belong to him.

convection
Throughout the heatwave I resolutely (many would say idiotically) leave the air conditioning off; there's a breeze coming in through the window - a warm breeze, but at least the air is circulating – and I can live with that. When the thunderstorm finally rips through the city, I notice at once how the quality of the air changes, pouring in cool and damp. I don't think I've ever loved thunderstorms more.

curious
On the subway a young man is openly reading a paperback copy of Fifty Shades of Gray. From time to time he looks up from the book and stares into the middle distance.

fortitude
I'm having a pleasant time, even though the sun's in my eyes and the rock I'm sitting on is trying to pry open a new orifice in my body.

parched
On a hot dark night people are gathered moth-like around the lit fountain.

pigments
At the restaurant he turns the table into a palette on which he mixes the dull green of smushed peas with glossy drippings of soy sauce and bright ketchup red.

reeled
I can't remember the last time I set foot in a movie theater (was it for The Fantastic Mr. Fox in 2009?), but I enjoy the experience. It's a week night, so it isn't too crowded. I like the hugeness of the sights and sounds. I even like the previews (no matter how bad a movie turns out to be, the previews are pretty much always entertaining).

Week in Seven Words #78

cascade
I could be a cartoon - a wide-eyed foolish girl in a canoe paddling towards a waterfall. I know it's there, right ahead. I can hear it, I can feel the impending descent in my bones, but I think that if I brace myself in my seat and hold the oar a little tighter I'll glide over the edge gracefully. Maybe the best I can hope for at this point is to make it amusing - the canoe shoots out, hangs in the air; I smile, look down, say "uh oh" in a goofy voice, and plummet. Laughter will help me crawl out of the wreckage later.

eupnea
Stepping out into a cool morning that promises rain, I walk slowly and focus on breathing.

excitable
The yolks sizzle and crisp in the pan. Cheese bubbles, and the salsa spits red and green.

lounging
Stunned by the heat of the afternoon, I sprawl on my bed with a book and read by the light that beats in through the blinds.

metamorphosis
The large owlish sunglasses change her face so much that only the fact that she's staring in my direction and smiling makes me stop walking and take a closer look.

overextend
For everything I do I wonder if I could be doing something better, more worthwhile. I'm so caught up in 'what-ifs' that I get little done.

vitiligo
The remaining roses are a pale brittle pink, as if they have a skin condition.

Week in Seven Words #77

exhaust
Each car streams the heat from its exhaust pipe across my shins.

frangible
Time crumbles away in sweat, sleeplessness, and apathy.

heatwave
The air presses down like an iron, smoothing my clothes flat onto my skin.

kinetic
She makes her day sound exciting, each detail a delight, and something new to learn at every ordinary place she visits.

leadlight
The leaves look like pieces of green stained glass. It's reassuring to see that even when the heat is brutal and they're scorched, they can still endure beautifully.

nitpicky
He argues into his cell phone, loudly and unselfconsciously, about the precise number of tissues he used the night before to blow his nose.

pillbug
There's a little cell inside me, accessed by a hatch, and sometimes I disappear into it, curling up like a pillbug.

Week in Seven Words #23

deliquesce
Ice cream, half-scooped and half-puddled, seeps through the mouth and dissolves on the tongue. Heat, sweat and sweetness on a summer afternoon.

dipping
The flowers dip their long green fronds in the water, the way people might sit at the edge of a swimming pool and paddle their feet.

flux
Watching them play it's difficult to predict when they'll get along peaceably and when they'll slip into mischievous pestering or earnest scuffles. Another possibility is that they'll drift to different parts of the room and focus on individual pursuits involving characters, shoes, blocks, blankets, keyboards and cars.

jarred
Whole days, derailed. A sick gnawing anxiousness and pain.

molten
The fountain is full of cool fire. Plashing white plumes surge out of its basin, and the sun is shattered on its waters.

sorry
Sometimes he invests the word with just a little too much power; he thinks that any bit of mischief or inflicted hurt will be instantaneously undone with the utterance of an earnest 'sorry'.

stripes
Flags ripple against a light blue sky.