Week in Seven Words #562

This covers the week of 10/25/20 - 10/31/20.

deadlines

The assignment drags into the night. At one point I picture myself shutting the laptop, sliding into bed, and forgetting about deadlines. A peaceful thought, but not a realistic possibility.

initiative

On vacant private land, a homeless man is assembling a home. It won't be long before it's torn down. In the meantime, he's brought in materials from other neighborhoods and set up an unsteady shack with tarp. Several feet from it are a barrel and a bucket, some canvas bags and a shopping cart.

nemesis

During two weeks of staying shut up in her apartment, her most exciting moment, she reports, was arming herself with bug spray and a Marble notebook to hunt down a large roach.

profuse

The leaves on the thornless honey locust trees are a vivid yellow. One fountaining yellow tree after another, the pavement spattered in bright leaves.

realism

"For Halloween," he tells me over Skype, "I'm pretending to be an alcoholic." He has a mostly finished bottle of whiskey on his desk, in full view of the camera.

transporting

The idea of buying a house appeals to him much more than the reality of living in one, maintaining it, and cleaning it. So he goes on Redfin and stares longingly at a ranch house in Lancaster, PA that he'll never buy. Because the floor plan is online, he pictures what he would put in each room and wonders whether two recliner chairs would fit in the tiny screened porch.

virion

I spot a kid dressed up as COVID-19, what the virus looks like under a microscope. It's a costume both funny and depressing.

Week in Seven Words #484

bug
At the lecture hall, the walls are a Pepto Bismol pink. I sip Diet Coke to try settling my stomach, before realizing that I probably won't be able to sit upright for two hours, not with this 24-hour bug churning in me.

laptop
A sleek gray rectangle with an impressive amount of power.

renovation
Wires have burst from the walls like intestines. It's a cold and dusty room.

screening
The rooms are in gray and white, the lights are bright, the professionals simulate kindness.

tossed
The birthday card spurts from his hand and splats on the table, where a newspaper will soon slink over it.

trips
Staying up late to look at models of RVs. I imagine fitting one out and just driving for months.

well-wisher
I wish them all well, while feeling out of place among them.

Week in Seven Words #445

advising
With a confidence that comes from distance and emotional detachment, she advises her friend over the phone to end the relationship.

avidity
The band plays jazz by the green-tinted lake. Their most enthusiastic fan is a toddler in a stroller who complains when his parents try to roll him away.

bazaar
The basketball courts have become a bazaar for arts, crafts, and colorful clothes.

feedback
After finishing her lecture, she gets a smarmy remark from an older man that's countered by an encouraging and thoughtful remark from an older woman.

hello
She keeps her sunflowers tilted toward the front door, so when visitors step into her home, the flowers surge at them in a bright greeting.

twangs
He strums a guitar beneath a spray of wisteria. There's no melody, only spurting chords.

view
She has moved into her apartment below ground, and her horizon is a potted plant, a rodent trap, and a padlocked cellar door.

Week in Seven Words #441

balconies
I walk past compact homes with cute balconies. On each balcony, there's a small circular table kept company by a pair of empty chairs – many little scenes set for conversations outdoors at sunset, a drink in hand, a view of the sleepy street.

bland
The shopping center is cold, clean, and gleaming. It has a vague cologne smell and an atmosphere of emptiness.

curiously
The sunflower peeks into the rear windshield of the SUV.

insightful
Sometimes, the people who understand me best are authors I've never met.

regression
I stay out of the discussion because of the rampant infantilization. The participants generally want to scream their point of view without hearing a bit of disagreement. Disagreement makes them feel bad. In the course of their tantrums, they threaten people's jobs, reputations, and safety.

scurry
When I step out the back entrance of the building at night, a rat immediately scurries past my feet, brushing the tips with its body. It disappears into the shrubs and not through the open door, I think.

toppling
At the gym, a man listens to a comedy podcast while doing yoga. He keeps laughing and falling out of position.

Week in Seven Words #6

evaporation
It's not the first time this has happened: seeing the text of a story or poem in a dream. While dreaming I read it, took delight in it, but now that I'm awake the words have vanished, and I can't remember them. Some people have told me that this sort of phenomenon isn't real the way I want it to be, that my waking mind is just filling in some blanks afterwards. But I know I had something, and that it went missing and left no visible trace. I like to think the words are still somewhere in my mind and that they'll come out some other way.

grounded
The first stinging insect of the season that I've spotted. It writhes against the paving and looks like a sharp bright bead in the sunlight. Something probably struck it down; its wings twitch uselessly.

rats
One kind of classic conditioning experiment carried out on lab rats is a startle experiment, in which a rat in a cage is subjected to a very loud sound (which may be paired with a milder warning noise or other stimulus that the rat will come to associate with the imminent fright). Where I live the building-wide fire alarm system has been malfunctioning from early afternoon to early evening; unlike the rats in some of those experiments we don't get the benefit of a warning each time the next ear-shattering fit of shrieking starts up. Also unlike the rats, we at least have the liberty of leaving when we're fed up.

stranded
In the middle of a pedestrian lane sits a cast-iron chair; it was left there probably as a joke of some kind. The chair has delicate curved armrests, and its back has been molded into the shape of a heart. I crouch and peer through the heart at the cloudy sunset down the lane, at the bare trees, a passing biker and a small knot of people discussing their dinner plans. The chair looks lost and a little forlorn, unmoored from a circle of identical chairs chained to a table twenty feet away.

sunshiny
At lunchtime I leave my coat behind when I take a stroll. The sun is warm on my shoulders and neck.

tidy
The hole in the wall has been repaired. The wall is now a clean smooth off-white, and the smell of paint permeates the room. By the side of the bed there's also a small new rug, rainbow-striped; first thing when I get out of bed each morning my feet land on a splash of sharp colors.

voluminous
The train station late at night. The ceiling expands in a pattern of red and gold. The announcements sound like faint echoing chants. Aisles and benches are empty and clean. Here and there a few people sit bowed over their luggage, dozing until it's time for them to depart.

Week in Seven Words #2

crick
The plaintive sound my ceiling made before a portion of it collapsed.

merit
This past Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath) our congregation hosts a group of Jewish adults with Down Syndrome. It's customary at certain points in the services, both on Friday night and Saturday throughout the day, for people to give talks related to the Torah portion of the week. One of our guests takes the floor on Friday night; he smiles at us over a meticulously written page of notes and gives a talk on kindness, fellowship, and intrinsic human worth.

peel
Certain people reveal new facets of themselves. At several points I listen to confessions of doubt, of deep personal frustrations. But not all conversations are as intense as these. There are T.V. shows and plays to talk about, funny anecdotes to share; and after a leisurely lunch I'm introduced to Bananagrams.

prism
The child hears a set of instructions and rules for a game. The instructions are given plainly, clearly. The child nods dutifully and says she understands. But then, when the game begins, she breaks each rule repeatedly and predictably. The game fractures into a series of bright remarks, elaborate actions, colorful pantomimes. A little rainbow of childish mischief.

quaff
There's no other word that comes to mind when I think about how much tea I drink this week. I didn't stock up on some other supplies, but there's plenty of tea at hand - orange pekoe, orange spice, chamomile, cranberry apple, Earl Grey, peppermint. I have tea with almost every meal and sometimes tea instead of meals. In cold weather it's intoxicating, and the scents and flavors make for a sharp contrast with the snow and ice outdoors.

redundant
News anchors and weathermen are wild about snow. They're out in the blizzards and showers, in their coats, woolly caps, fur-trimmed hoods, shouting about how wild it is, how cold, how they've never seen anything like it. "Look how high it's gotten!" Close-ups on dozens of different footprints in the snow. Five different buses crawling down the street. Random people, bundled up and indistinguishable, struggling over what seem like the same set of miniature snow mountains on the roadside. One empty intersection after another. "Never seen anything like it!" they insist.

whoot
Superbowl Sunday - fire poppers, chicken wings, fries, salad. I'm not a fan of football - it's much more fun to watch how people react to the game. One guy is annoyed that his favorite team didn't make it to the Superbowl, so he cheers on every slip up, fumble and mishap made by both teams, while other people tell him (good-naturedly for the most part) to shut up.