Week in Seven Words #584

This covers the week of 3/28/21 - 4/3/21.

foe

In her isolation, she has unraveled. She flails at imagined terrors, as they press in on her from beyond the apartment walls. 

giddiness

Dozens of daffodils swaying by the field.

intermittently

The vaccine website is a test in reflexes. New appointments wink into existence and are just as quickly snapped up.

lukewarm

One book stands out as a suitable gift. But even as I buy it, I get the feeling that it won't inspire enthusiasm.

misty

A rainy haze on the river.

reacquainted

Visiting parts of the park I've neglected for a while, like catching up with old friends. Which trees have fallen, which paths are overgrown, and is the stream still full and flowing?

translated

After creating a video message in another language, I review it multiple times, convinced that I've made a major grammatical error or mixed up two words in an unintentionally filthy way. But it seems OK.

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 #517

This covers the week of 12/15/19 - 12/21/19.

appendicitis
He's vibrating with tension as he waits to hear the news: Appendicitis or not? Surgery scheduled when?

fabrications
Her middle school experiences include kids making up lies about other kids to broadcast on group texts and social media. Fights manufactured from false accusations are a regular form of entertainment for many. No one is completely safe from being targeted.

glacial
They descend an icy stairwell with balloons in cold blue bunches trailing them.

image
Throughout the group conversation, he hints that his sex life is active, that he's successful, and that he's unbothered by anything. He isn't weak. Never weak. Beneath his performance runs an undercurrent of anger and bitterness.

improvisation
I try an indie RPG (role-playing game) for the first time. It's a game where you and the other players make up a storyline on the fly, based on improvisation and with structure provided by a set of rules. This game is set in a film noir universe. Without fully knowing what I'm doing, I make up a detective character and spend much of the time interrogating other characters and staging a clumsy break-in that gets me arrested. I like the collaborative aspect of the world-building and story-telling.

inconvenienced
I know what they'll say: They're busy. It's an excuse I won't argue with, because I'm uncomfortable about making myself an inconvenience. I just wish I wasn't in the category of potential inconvenience.

syntax
Arguing with someone about English grammar is not how I want to spend the next 20 minutes, but here we are.

Week in Seven Words #458

dreamlike
Deep in the park, the air is deliciously cool and fresh in the early evening. A thick yellow light has unrolled like a carpet between walls of shadow. Some of the trees glow. Others have given themselves to a pool of dim, gray water.

multicultural
A young boy speaks rapidly in Chinese, except for the English words "Day of the Dead," a Mexican holiday.

satiety
We discover a small, airy cafe that serves meltingly sweet pancakes and a farmer's breakfast with eggs and potatoes. I don't eat anything else for the rest of the day.

serendipity
I've drifted off course unintentionally, but feel as if I'm being guided to see beautiful things. I've taken a longer route, and it's full of serendipitous pleasures.

spectators
At some point it dawns on us that we're part of a large crowd all waiting to watch a bunch of pumpkins get towed across the water.

sufficient
It's a hole-in-the-wall restaurant, the food is passable, and as long as I can claim one of the few stools by the window, it's a good place to read quietly for half an hour before an appointment.

swamped
The large muddy puddles on the narrow path cause traffic jams in the dark. People with strollers and bulky cameras grind past each other to avoid the ankle-deep muck.

Week in Seven Words #439

enclave
The farther east we walk along the beach, the more Russian we hear. A few young women run up to us at one point and say something in Russian. On seeing our blank expression, they switch to English, and we understand that they'd like their photo taken in front of the ocean.

glossiness
The lawn has a velvet sheen in the sunshine.

mirrors
Facing the ocean are murals depicting its degradation.

plasticky
Along the boardwalk, there's a lot that's cheap and bright: plastic colors, sweet and fried foods, silly sound effects from quick games and rides.

scrawling
The rollercoaster looks like red scribbles on sky blue paper.

shade
It's a pleasant crescent of beach with a patchwork of umbrellas. There are circles of shade from the umbrellas, planks of shade from trees, and shade that shifts like cloth cast by the leaves.

wobbling
He pretends to know it all, but his act is unsteady. His lips turn down at the corners. His eyes widen and look away. To make up for the uncertainties coursing through him, he deepens his voice and tosses an insult.

Week in Seven Words #358

bundled
There's a bundle of blankets on the couch. It takes me a few moments to realize it's a child, staring at the TV through the fog of a cold.

fidget
I need to guard against the antsy expectation of the next thing, the unsettling need to keep scrolling down the page or refreshing it.

genre
They're reading young adult novels set in dystopian societies, and I like their analyses of these books - what makes sense to them, what doesn't, and their take on the characterizations. Their thoughts on what they read have become more complex.

gravel
He's bought neon orange gravel for the fish bowl. When he cleans it in the sink, it makes a crunchy, rustling noise in the spray of cold water.

mortify
I speak to someone who calls himself progressive. To him, being progressive means using certain tortured terminology and immediately shaming people who don't. It's likely the correct terminology will change soon, so he'll have to keep a close eye on developments. Signaling correctness is a key way to avoid ostracism.

pattern
Wine-colored leaves shaped like stars, suspended in perfect stillness under a streetlight.

sharing
The waiter brings out a slice of cake with a candle stuck to it. It's meant for an adult's birthday, but mostly the kids devour it, after it gets sectioned with a steak knife.

Week in Seven Words #204 & 205

204
aseptic
Pearls of dark chocolate and mint, spilled onto Purelled hands.

echoes
Haven't we had this conversation before? In our respective chairs, one of us talking more than the other?

hometown
I take a dialect quiz (focusing on pronunciation, and certain vocab and expressions), and the results are supposed to tell you what region of the US you're from. As it turns out, the way I speak fits closest to these three cities: San Jose, Fremont, and Honolulu. Also, I'm generally a very strong fit with Long Island, NY. Given that I was born in California and spent close to six years of my life in southern California, then the rest of my childhood on Long Island, these are pretty accurate results.

keratinous
The days are slight, as thin as fingernails.

revival
Embers in me that I want to coax back to life.

sorted
The animals have one corner of the floor; the plants have the other. In his world, at this time, they can't mingle.

tonedeaf
"Are you with someone?" he asks, his eyes scanning the room, fishing for additional prospects. "Yes," I say. "If it doesn't work out," he immediately says, in a business-like tone, "could I be the first one to know? Let me know, right after." Yep. That's exactly what I'm going to do. The first thing I'll think of in the aftermath of a break-up is you. And I do in fact get his business card, with two phone numbers. His customer service skills are impeccable.

205
abrade
This is the kind of cold that scrubs away at your cheeks like steel wool.

arctic
I don't know how they do it - plunge into the cold water without their hearts stopping.

cellar
The space beneath my desk is very cold. I could chill wine in there, where the heat hasn't made its way.

earthy
Deft fingers on the mandolin and a rough and honest voice. Magnificent.

satiny
A sky like gray silk.

sisal
They're a married couple with no apparent chemistry. No shared looks, no laughter in their eyes, just a tiredness in the way they move and talk to each other. As if they'd always rather be in different rooms. There's no sense of what's holding them together except for social acceptableness.

versifying
Hours of poetry, some earnestly awful and some of it beautiful. It's been a while since I had the pleasure of listening to poetry read out loud. Even the bad poetry sounds better read out loud.

Week in Seven Words #95

cornucopian
My plate has something of everything: turkey and spicy beef, mashed yams and herbed potatoes, cranberry sauce, broccoli and Brussels sprouts, and a slender wedge of potato pashtida (a Jewish/Israeli frittata/quiche type of food, cooked here without a crust). Apple cider is served for drinks, and for dessert there's some of the sweet corn bread that was baking while we ate dinner.

countenance
Infants can look more solemn, critical and perceptive than the adults around them.

cupcakes
While gift-shopping at a bookstore I see cupcakes everywhere: cupcake calendars, cupcake recipe books, cupcakes on cards. Maybe there's always been a plethora of cupcake products, and I haven't noticed. Now they leap out at me in shades of pastel lavender and dark blotchy chocolate, kittenish pink and creamy white, sporting sprinkles or periwinkle candles.

offshoot
We leave the paved path by the lake and go down a muddier offshoot; damp and soft, it coils past rocks and crackling bushes with berries.

orthography
I love the painstaking way they spell and write, focusing intently on each letter as if they realize how vulnerable language is to error and miscommunication. And each word they spell correctly is a door springing open.

refraction
My new glasses seem to have finally made peace with my brain and eyes.

salvaged
She uses scrap paper, old shoeboxes, felt, string and other odds and ends for her crafts projects; things that her family might have thrown out become the cards and presents she gives them on special occasions.

Good Short Fiction: 3 stories from Carry On, Jeeves

Collection: Carry On, Jeeves
Author: P.G. Wodehouse (Pelham Grenville Wodehouse)

Carry On, Jeeves centers on Bertie Wooster, a jovial air-headed upper-class English bachelor, and his manservant, the cool, impeccable and intelligent Jeeves (a "gentleman's gentleman"), who manages Bertie's life and rescues him and his friends from various mishaps. The stories are set in the early 20th century; a gentleman like Bertie could have an easy-going life waking up late, dining at his club, and drinking throughout the day. Carry On, Jeeves is a fun collection; I didn't read more than one or two stories at a time - there are plot points that tend to repeat, though Wodehouse's cleverness with the English language is always a delight and the main reason I read his work. These are the stories that stood out for me:

The Aunt and the Sluggard
Most of the stories feature one of Bertie's close friends who is usually a slacker with a silly nickname (e.g. Biffy or Sippy). In this one the layabout is nicknamed Rocky (short for Rockmetteller); he lives in a cabin out on Long Island, NY where he spends most of the month sleeping and meditating on the movements of earthworms, except for a few days where he writes bad poetry that gets lapped up by American magazines. One reason I'm recommending this story is the poetry, a fine example of Wodehouse's satirical talents:

Be!
Be!
The past is dead,
Tomorrow is not born.
Be today!
Today!

In Wooster-Jeeves stories there's often a domineering aunt or uncle making demands on a slacker nephew. Bertie suffers such oppression from his Aunt Agatha, but in this story the victim is Rocky. His aunt lives out in the Midwest and would like him to send her colorful descriptions of life in New York City; in exchange she'll give him money and keep him in her will. Most men would be ecstatic at such a deal, but Rocky isn't most men; the thought of living in NYC, away from his cabin and earthworms, is horrifying to him.

Fortunately for him Bertie happens to be visiting NYC, and the plan is to send Jeeves out to do research on the city's high life; the image of Jeeves smoking a fat cigar at a cabaret and scrutinizing 5th Avenue fashions is classic. Of course things get complicated when Rocky's aunt, enthralled by his accounts of city life, decides to visit. Meantime Bertie and Jeeves have their own angst to work through. Another recurring plot point in these stories is Bertie rebelling against Jeeves by wearing a hideous outfit or refusing to shave his mustache. It's a regular battle of wills between them. Invariably they work through these rough patches in their relationship, with Bertie seeing the error of his ways.

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Bertie Changes His Mind
It's strange to think of a Wooster-Jeeves story as dark, but this one has a darkness to it. Rather than being told from Bertie's point-of-view, we hear the tale from Jeeves. Jeeves is always clever, resourceful and manipulative, but the way he manages Bertie in this story is a little disturbing - he squashes Bertie's unprecedented desire for a more meaningful life. At the beginning of the story Bertie is out-of-sorts and wonders if there's more to life than waking up late, drinking, and being amiable. He considers inviting his sister and her children to live with him for a time, just to see what it would be like to have kids around. To Jeeves these impulses are alarming. If Bertie seriously contemplates marriage, and finally weds and has children, it will likely result in Jeeves having to find another position. Jeeves likes things as they are; he has a comfortable situation, and he has no intention of letting Bertie disrupt the relationship they have established, with Jeeves as a fatherly puppet master and Bertie as a mostly likeable (though at times recalcitrant) child.

There's some hilarious writing here, especially when Jeeves reflects on his former employer, Montague-Todd. As for the method he uses to cure Bertie of any wishes for a family - it's both funny and humiliating. Poor Bertie. Who knows what kind of man he might have become, and what meaning his life might have had, but by the end of the story he's back to his usual self. Settling down at the end of the day he explains to Jeeves why he's contented with his life again:

"I mean, looking at the clock and wondering if you're going to be late with the good old drinks, and then you coming in with the tray always on time, never a minute late, and shoving it down on the table and biffing off, and the next night coming in and shoving it down and biffing off, and the next night - I mean, it gives you a sort of safe, restful feeling. Soothing! That's the word."

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Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest
Bertie's leisurely stay in New York City is disturbed when he finds out he has to look after 23 year old Wilmot (nicknamed "Motty"), the sheltered son of one of Aunt Agatha's friends, Lady Malvern, who hails from Much Middlefold, Shropshire. Wilmot seems at first to be a peaceable twit who will sit quietly in Bertie's apartment sucking on his walking-stick and leafing through books all evening before retiring to bed with a glass of warm milk. What Bertie doesn't count on is that a young man who has never been granted much independence will go wild in a place like NYC. As he explains to Bertie at one point:

"I've been cooped up in the ancestral home at Much Middlefold, in Shropshire, and till you've been cooped up in Much Middlefold you don't know what cooping is! The only time we get any excitement is when one of the choir-boys is caught sucking chocolate during the sermon. When that happens, we talk about it for days. I've got about a month of New York, and I mean to store up a few happy memories for the long winter evenings."

If Wilmot gets in trouble going on wild benders through the city, Bertie will face the double wrath of his Aunt Agatha and of Wilmot's mother. Thankfully Jeeves finds a devious way of helping Bertie out and making sure Motty will be kept confined.

Jeeves and the Unbidden Guest has the distinction of being the first ever Wooster-Jeeves tale I read. I love Bertie's happy ramblings and how they contrast with Jeeves's worldliness, eloquence and masterful understatements. There's no one who talks like Bertie: "Won't you have an egg or something? Or a sausage or something? Or something?" and -

It's only after a bit of breakfast that I'm able to regard the world with that sunny cheeriness which makes a fellow the universal favourite. I'm never much of a lad till I've engulfed an egg or two and a beaker of coffee.

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*I've added this post to Short Stories on Wednesday #8 at the Bread Crumb Reads blog.

Week in Seven Words #69

circumstances
The same sentence can mean a number of different things depending on the context in which it's uttered, the way it's uttered, who utters it, and who's listening. And from a very young age we grapple with all these sources of information - the words themselves, the words in a web of context. Day-to-day, without thinking about it, we perform these mental feats.

inattention
When the brain is a pool float, bobbing gently on light blue chlorinated waters.

knotted
At the wedding, two guests tie a bunch of cloth napkins into a makeshift rope and start twirling it round and round as a jumprope for the bride. She holds onto the skirt of her gown and jumps, smiling and laughing. Just as she starts to get tired her mother-in-law and then one of her sisters-in-law bounce in, and they hold out for a little while to cheers and shouts of encouragement.

motoring
The drive, late on a Sunday afternoon, is a surprising treat. Quiet suburban neighborhoods with deep green lawns give way to gas stations and highways.

proprietary
To help them prepare for their upcoming visit I send them information about what sites to visit, which neighborhoods to walk through (and which to avoid), and how they can best get around. I'm happy about their visit and also have a proprietary feeling towards the city where I live. I don't always think of this city as home, but in moments like these I feel it's mine.

smores
At the dessert reception a table with marshmallows, melting chocolate, and graham crackers. Guests in formal attire lick their fingers.

zest
Orange creamsicles at the end of a long hot day.

I've guest-blogged today

I've written a post on my "passion for the possibility of words" over at the blog, Come Sit By My Fire. The post also includes a few of my photos.

Relyn, who runs that wonderful blog, has been hosting guest-bloggers this month and inviting them to write about their passions in life (I thank her for inviting me too). It's a great blog to visit generally - she posts good poetry that she finds, shares her beautiful photographs, discusses family, teaching, art (a range of topics), and writes about living life creatively, passionately, with all your heart and soul.

Week in Seven Words #64

exuberance
At different points in the seder there are songs waiting to be embraced, spun around and tossed laughing into the air.

grammatical
He corrects his younger sister on a grammatical error that he used to make not too long ago.

iteration
A warm gray afternoon, drizzle on the magnolia blossoms, mud drying on concrete. We seem to talk in echoes from a previous season.

liberating
The holiday begins, and work for the moment ends.

matzah balls
She makes the best kind – the texture, consistency, and flavor are indescribable.

smoky
I contend with phantoms sometimes.

trio
It's us three. We have a lovely time, though we also miss the people who couldn't come.

Week in Seven Words #59

badge
One afternoon I get an email. I read it with a slow smile that I feel in my chest. Over the next couple of days I think of that email as a badge pinned to me, that only I can see for now.

frizzy
She's a pink zig-zagging imp with a head of flaxen curls.

fuzzy
Language has logic, to an extent. To what extent, we wonder, staring at the spreadsheet in silence.

magnitude
The photos show things that have always seemed solid and sturdy, like houses, floating or flattened with everyone and everything in them.

mantilla
Rundown porches are veiled in pink blossoms.

pungent
From layers of fresh mulch and fertilizer, daffodils start to test the air in small isolated clumps.

snuffed
A candle burns next to the photos of five people who were murdered in their beds; one of them was an infant, her eyes in the photo scrunched up in sleep.

Week in Seven Words #42

accommodation
Different people I'm friends with can find it difficult to talk to each other; their approach to life, personality, interests, may not overlap much and so there isn't a lot of common ground for light dinner time discussion, especially if they don't know each other well. I like that they have to work a little harder to make conversation. Sometimes they regard each other speculatively or with bafflement, as if they're assessing species membership; other times they bond briefly over a love of sticky cinnamon kugel.

cataracts
The moon squints through a film of cloud.

delusion
What doesn't get done today will not get done tomorrow but might get done the day after tomorrow.

escapism
When I need a break from work one thing I do is look up bus and train schedules and imagine myself traveling from one town to another. I take my time coming home.

inverted
The roots of the trees swim in gold leaves.

preserving
A young boy, half-shy and half-pleased, gives a little speech in Yiddish. The people at the dinner sing in Yiddish too, and there are echoes of the shtetl in their voices. I've never been to Eastern Europe and did not grow up among Yiddish speakers, but my family's history runs through that part of the world, and there's a bittersweet pain when I think about the way of life systematically wiped out and the way the rich culture still manages to endure.

replete
To step outside and discover that it's just rained, and that after a walk through the cold clean air I'll sit down to a baked apple, golden and brown and smeared with cinnamon.

Week in Seven Words #40

chagrined
Some speakers, confronted with questions they don't know how to answer, stand behind the podium in a long silent pause of processing and confusion; their speech when it comes is halting.

comfy
We sit around a low rectangular table with a delicious makeshift meal spread out - wine, olives, chicken inside of pitas, nuts and honeydew for dessert - and the evening is full of talk, and we're together, cheerful and warm on a cold night.

enduring
Red flowers spread open against gray stone and sky.

heterogeneous
Here they come to look and ask: earnest and nervous or sphinx-like or easy-going with a warm smile or keyed up with caffeine or politely patient or good-natured and tired or world-weary and amusing (and amused).

signers
The sign language interpreters at each lecture are fascinating to watch. It's amazing how they rapidly translate in real time, for all kinds of speakers (mumblers, rapid-fire talkers among them), for all different kinds of words and phrases (variable, parameter, ANOVA), their hands and expressions fluid.

spliced
Past the window the world streams by: light spindly yellow birch groves, mist off an ocean, chain link fences rusted, dubious store fronts, wood plank houses, shells of factories with broken windows, a graveyard bathed in red and yellow leaves.

uncertainty
I agree with him. It can drive you mad.

Week in Seven Words #25

blackout
All at once the lights wink out, the fan holds its breath, the fridge gives a small sigh and is silent; everything has fallen into a dark hush. Though I can narrow down the location of my flashlight to a certain portion of the room, I can't actually see where it is, and unfortunately the flashlight isn't a glow-in-the-dark model. I wind up using the weak light from my laptop as a flashlight to find the actual flashlight. Once the flashlight is in hand, I divert myself for several moments by making its light race around the walls, before remembering that I am in fact a responsible adult and should venture out and see what's going on in the building.

lamentations
On the evening of Tisha B'Av - a day marked by mourning, destruction, and exile - we sit on the floor and read the Book of Lamentations. At one point I think to myself that one of the worst things you can wish on someone is the inability to repent of anything and change for the better.

nutriment
We break the fasting in the second floor library. I slowly put together my bagel, cream cheese, lox, and tomato combo, savoring it, grateful that we have food, that we're all blessed with plenty here and can sit around now chatting. We fasted out of mourning, out of choice, obligation, commitment, and feeling; no dire circumstances threatened us with actual starvation - something not to be taken for granted.

pang
For a moment I'm so moved by his question and the tone in which it's spoken that I can't speak. Then I find my voice again and assure him that I plan to visit soon, in a few weeks - I promise.

skipping
I'm not sure at what age skipping becomes an unacceptable way to get from Point A to Point B; I start thinking about this after watching a four year old decide that the best way to go down a long hallway is to skip. And then I wonder if we stop skipping not only because it becomes socially unacceptable, but also because our impulse to skip just shrivels up as we age, so we can no longer do it lightly and spontaneously; it instead becomes self-conscious and self-mocking.

snippets
On the computer I prune out short segments of speech - pronouns like 'it' and 'him' - and find out firsthand that in isolation they often sound like an indistinct buzz. They become distinct and recognizable only when they're part of the larger speech stream; otherwise they're like stray droplets that evaporate quickly.

topography
The topography of tiredness. From the start of the dinner to about an hour and a half into it, my energy and alertness slips downhill into a trough. Then a long stretch of good conversation perks me up again, until at midnight I'm at a peak, content and wide awake, and thinking things over rather than sinking comfortably into sleep.

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.

Week in Seven Words #21

accented
Out in the hall a French woman and a Russian woman speak in English, their voices bright and cordial. Soon after, a Greek woman speaks boisterously on the phone, sometimes in English and other times in her native tongue. In a different time and place, two men from Ireland harmonize together on a stage and banter between songs.

limpid
On a day when heat chokes the air and cars snarl along the road, I listen to limpid music; it spills and flows over all the other sounds - horns, brakes, birds, the stutter of machinery, conversation, the creak of trees in the wind.

loop
We could easily have taken the bus, but why not walk? Without walking we wouldn't have as much time to talk, or see the river at thirty minutes to midnight, or come across that sculpture with the words carved into it from several different languages, French and Greek included.

pluvial
There's a primordial fury to the rain; it mashes up the ground, crackles on the windows, and clots the air.

sundered
In the wake of the storm, trees stretch out leafy and shattered on walkways, cars, and roof corners. Branches lie in all angles on the sidewalks and sometimes dangle in the embrace of other branches that have remained aloft and intact.

tunefulness
Music in a long dark room lit with candles in glass, the illustrations on the walls crowding around to listen in shades of red, white and black. With voices that fit well together the musicians sing about old love, new love, a laughing universe, what it would be like to be a work of art, and how they're traveling around in search of feet; at one point they invite a friend to jam with them on the guitar, and she's in a trance, so happy to be up there playing and part of the music.

wresting
It's a song he once knew by heart; now he wrestles different passages out of the piano. Whenever he comes to a lacuna in his memory, he sits with fingers splayed across his forehead and stares with a puzzled frustration at the keys.

Week in Seven Words #11

brighten
After a night of little sleep and a few days in a slump, I don't think I can be inspired that afternoon. I'm mistaken. Her lecture thrums with intelligence and possibility.

countdown
These are days spent counting different things. I don't want to think about how many more afternoons like this I'll have in their company, these people with whom I've found such a shared language. Of course I plan to see them in the future, but it won't be quite the same.

discarded
Walking home I spot a lovely white carnation in a garbage can. It remains upright among discarded newspapers and food cartons. A few blocks later, while crossing a courtyard, I see a squirrel sitting in a large shrubbery pot and tearing through a bun. He probably snatched it up from the garbage can three feet away, where someone had tossed it away nearly whole.

inexpectation
Expect to be continually surprised. What I say may cause a young man to snort wine from his nose. A young woman who pops in and out of my life will stand with me in the entranceway of an apartment building for close to an hour pouring out her doubts and feelings and hopes about some of life's most personal matters. Other people will sometimes be there and sometimes won't be there; every moment they're present is to be savored, for however long it may last.

sealed
While quickly translating text, the sensation of running up against gates tightly shut. We send out our hands and fumble for keyholes or crevices; hopefully the means will occur to us - the root, the context, the sensation of I saw that word ten verses ago, didn't I?

torpid
The urn beneath the drainpipe is flooded. In the froth of rain drops and run-off, long green leaves churn listlessly.

vantage
From ground level it looks like the tree has shed all its blossoms. But from the second floor window, I spy some flowers peeping from the uppermost branches; pink and white, they're surrounded by blowzy brilliant green.

Word of the Year - Unfriend?

Without further ado, the 2009 Word of the Year is: unfriend.

unfriend – verb – To remove someone as a ‘friend’ on a social networking site such as Facebook.

As in, “I decided to unfriend my roommate on Facebook after we had a fight.”

That's... sort of depressing. I mean, that's the best we could come up with? (Granted, last year's was "hypermiling", which sounds like something you do on amphetamines. But "unfriend" sounds sullen and lazy and right at home in junior high.)

Anyway, here's one of the reasons why it was picked, given at the Oxford University Press (USA) blog:

It assumes a verb sense of “friend” that is really not used (at least not since maybe the 17th century!)

Interesting. But still... unfriend. Not that some of the runners-up are any better, though there are certainly several that have more character ('intexticated' is spot-on).

The OUP blog also gives us two "notable word clusters", one centered on Twitter, the other on Obama (there's something fitting about that). Read and enjoy!

Take a moment also to think about some of your favorite words. Two of mine are "brouhaha" and "chalice".