astronomy
We find Jupiter with its banded surface, and a tiny, pale Saturn. Strangely, it's our moon that's foggiest and most unclear.
engorged
The meal before the fast is full of water-rich foods, like cucumbers, turnips, green beans, and watermelon.
fascination
When the fountain leaps to life, one boy steps back in startled wonder. The other climbs on the rim to peer closely at the shifting configurations of water.
generational
I prefer the reading voices of the older men, their raspy, trembling dignity. The younger men recite without feeling in a nasally intonation.
glades
In a park installed on old elevated rail tracks, there's an atmosphere of forest enchantment. Some people paddle their feet in a dark stream. Others are tucked on wooden lounge chairs screened by leaves. A handful of children listen to gentle music while painting tiles in the foggy light. We turn a corner and discover a dark, massive sculpture of a human head.
licked
They order marble cheese cake, strawberry shortcake, and a dense chocolate cake with chocolate frosting and chocolate pudding. Without even planning it, I grab one of the extra forks and shave off some of the frosting. It's almost too much in sweetness and richness, and it undermines the resolve I had formed to avoid chocolate for the week.
sunless
A thunderstorm brings dusk to mid-afternoon. Lightning dips into the river like a bony finger.
Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label moon. Show all posts
Monday, March 2, 2020
Thursday, August 16, 2018
Week in Seven Words #419
bleariness
Sleeplessness chases me throughout the week, catching and dragging at each day and leaving the nights unsettled.
electrify
She's shuffle-dancing with sparkling sneakers on a dark street.
enervating
The book club meets in a mildewy room that's washed of color by fluorescent lights.
ricotta
A large, shimmering, melting moon glimpsed in the early morning at the end of the street, over the slate gray river.
subterrene
When he suffers anxiety over a trivial issue, he needs to remind himself to consider the true source of his fears. It isn't the triviality. That's only a mask for the larger, deeper thing that gnaws at him.
unrelenting
Her story is a dead horse flogged with angst. Tens of thousands of words of angst: fire, deaths, abuse, amnesia, comas. She's dragging her characters by the heels through hot coals across a continent.
watering
Each time she plucks a string on her guitar, there's a sensation of a raindrop landing in my mind.
Sleeplessness chases me throughout the week, catching and dragging at each day and leaving the nights unsettled.
electrify
She's shuffle-dancing with sparkling sneakers on a dark street.
enervating
The book club meets in a mildewy room that's washed of color by fluorescent lights.
ricotta
A large, shimmering, melting moon glimpsed in the early morning at the end of the street, over the slate gray river.
subterrene
When he suffers anxiety over a trivial issue, he needs to remind himself to consider the true source of his fears. It isn't the triviality. That's only a mask for the larger, deeper thing that gnaws at him.
unrelenting
Her story is a dead horse flogged with angst. Tens of thousands of words of angst: fire, deaths, abuse, amnesia, comas. She's dragging her characters by the heels through hot coals across a continent.
watering
Each time she plucks a string on her guitar, there's a sensation of a raindrop landing in my mind.
Friday, June 15, 2018
Week in Seven Words #410
curtailing
On a walk down the dark path, I hear the rat traps popping by the side of the building.
enchantment
Leaves are spiraling down, swirling around my head, and a bright moon is peeking past the edge of a skyscraper.
fueling
One chocolate chip cookie helps him through math. The second cookie remains uneaten, and he has poked his pencil through it in frustration.
one-time
I don't know what else is going on in their lives or if they'll even be back next week, but I appreciate that they're here now - a group of men and women playing folk music in the waning light.
rapport
I like how she and I slip into easy conversation as if we haven't not spoken for several years.
slackening
Now and then, I dose myself with an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a show that's funny and undemanding.
tectonics
The assignment moves towards completion, one paragraph after another. The paragraphs sometimes shift position for greater flow and cohesion. It's a slow but inexorable process.
On a walk down the dark path, I hear the rat traps popping by the side of the building.
enchantment
Leaves are spiraling down, swirling around my head, and a bright moon is peeking past the edge of a skyscraper.
fueling
One chocolate chip cookie helps him through math. The second cookie remains uneaten, and he has poked his pencil through it in frustration.
one-time
I don't know what else is going on in their lives or if they'll even be back next week, but I appreciate that they're here now - a group of men and women playing folk music in the waning light.
rapport
I like how she and I slip into easy conversation as if we haven't not spoken for several years.
slackening
Now and then, I dose myself with an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a show that's funny and undemanding.
tectonics
The assignment moves towards completion, one paragraph after another. The paragraphs sometimes shift position for greater flow and cohesion. It's a slow but inexorable process.
Wednesday, July 13, 2016
Week in Seven Words #297
bleary
Like a bloodshot eye, the moon flickers faintly red through a film of cloud.
computations
I'm running late to meet with a hiking group in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Based on subway travel time estimations, the group's route, their likelihood of heading out 10-15 minutes late, and the speed at which they'll walk, I guess which subway stop to get off of and wind up only a few minutes out of sync with them.
eased
During our conversation she laughs, and then tells me it's the first time she's laughed all day. It feels good to do that for someone.
graphics
I watch them play a soccer video game with graphics so crisp the players look real. There's also real-time commentary, giving the effect of an actual televised game. It's kind of mind-blowing. From my own childhood I remember a small Mario in profile stomping on mushrooms. A Sega Jurassic Park game had more sophisticated graphics, and it let you play as either Alan Grant or a velociraptor (I enjoyed being the velociraptor). But it hits me now, how much games have changed.
latently
I think about the difficulties of writing a 'weak' main character. Someone struggling with some of life's more basic demands. I don't want the character to become too pathetic or seem too hopeless. I also don't want to hit an unchanging note of defeat for pages on end. There's a challenge in making a character enervated while keeping the story dynamic. And even in the character's weakness, one may see the potential for greater strength developing.
packed
Buildings brimming with activity. The balconies filling up. The windows showing faces, silhouettes, and household clutter.
proselytizing
A homeless man and a monk walk on opposite sides of the street. "I belong to an awesome church," the homeless man calls out. "Join my church." "I like my church," says the monk. The homeless man laughs and says, "My church is for everyone. Your church is part of my church." "No," the monk replies, "my church is the one church for everyone."
Like a bloodshot eye, the moon flickers faintly red through a film of cloud.
computations
I'm running late to meet with a hiking group in an unfamiliar neighborhood. Based on subway travel time estimations, the group's route, their likelihood of heading out 10-15 minutes late, and the speed at which they'll walk, I guess which subway stop to get off of and wind up only a few minutes out of sync with them.
eased
During our conversation she laughs, and then tells me it's the first time she's laughed all day. It feels good to do that for someone.
graphics
I watch them play a soccer video game with graphics so crisp the players look real. There's also real-time commentary, giving the effect of an actual televised game. It's kind of mind-blowing. From my own childhood I remember a small Mario in profile stomping on mushrooms. A Sega Jurassic Park game had more sophisticated graphics, and it let you play as either Alan Grant or a velociraptor (I enjoyed being the velociraptor). But it hits me now, how much games have changed.
latently
I think about the difficulties of writing a 'weak' main character. Someone struggling with some of life's more basic demands. I don't want the character to become too pathetic or seem too hopeless. I also don't want to hit an unchanging note of defeat for pages on end. There's a challenge in making a character enervated while keeping the story dynamic. And even in the character's weakness, one may see the potential for greater strength developing.
packed
Buildings brimming with activity. The balconies filling up. The windows showing faces, silhouettes, and household clutter.
proselytizing
A homeless man and a monk walk on opposite sides of the street. "I belong to an awesome church," the homeless man calls out. "Join my church." "I like my church," says the monk. The homeless man laughs and says, "My church is for everyone. Your church is part of my church." "No," the monk replies, "my church is the one church for everyone."
Wednesday, October 8, 2014
Week in Seven Words #228 & 229
228
gazers
Three teenagers are sitting on a bench, arms around each other, looking for the moon in a daytime sky.
heightened
The silence on the path isn't true silence. The trees are bristling, and animals are scraping unseen against dirt. My feet are crunching on loose rock. The silence is the absence of human voice.
platitudinous
People who tell me to "be myself" often mean "be a self that I approve of and am comfortable with."
punctuating
When I read beneath the green branches, bugs fall onto my book like extra punctuation.
subterrestrial
In part because it's dwarfed by a flag pole, one gets the sense that the old stone building, crouched on the ground, has a small room in it with a door, and that this door opens to a flight of stairs that takes you miles below the city.
sweeping
Wedding photos in the park - the bride's train sweeping over fallen green leaves.
witchery
The shop, dark as a cavern, smells of soap and herbs.
gazers
Three teenagers are sitting on a bench, arms around each other, looking for the moon in a daytime sky.
heightened
The silence on the path isn't true silence. The trees are bristling, and animals are scraping unseen against dirt. My feet are crunching on loose rock. The silence is the absence of human voice.
platitudinous
People who tell me to "be myself" often mean "be a self that I approve of and am comfortable with."
punctuating
When I read beneath the green branches, bugs fall onto my book like extra punctuation.
subterrestrial
In part because it's dwarfed by a flag pole, one gets the sense that the old stone building, crouched on the ground, has a small room in it with a door, and that this door opens to a flight of stairs that takes you miles below the city.
sweeping
Wedding photos in the park - the bride's train sweeping over fallen green leaves.
witchery
The shop, dark as a cavern, smells of soap and herbs.
Tuesday, May 17, 2011
Good Short Fiction: The Sentinel (Arthur C. Clarke)
Title: The Sentinel
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Where I read it: Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen (edited by Stephanie Harrison)
Synopsis
One member of an exploratory expedition on the moon spots a strange and glittering object in the mountains overlooking the Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises). It's probably nothing - just a rock. But he can't help thinking that it's something else entirely.
Some reasons to read it
Author: Arthur C. Clarke
Where I read it: Adaptations: From Short Story to Big Screen (edited by Stephanie Harrison)
Synopsis
One member of an exploratory expedition on the moon spots a strange and glittering object in the mountains overlooking the Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises). It's probably nothing - just a rock. But he can't help thinking that it's something else entirely.
Some reasons to read it
- Clarke conveys the epic possibility of outer space. He invites us to consider the scope of the universe and the life it possibly harbors. Even the moon, which is close and superficially familiar to us, becomes a mysterious place with a rich unknown past.
We had crossed a hundred miles of it in a week, skirting the foothills of the mountains along the shore of what was once the ancient sea, some thousand million years before. When life was beginning on Earth, it was already dying here. The waters were retreating down the flanks of those stupendous cliffs, retreating into the empty heart of the Moon.
- He mixes some light humor and prosaic details (making sausages for breakfast aboard the exploratory tractor) with passages of unearthly discovery.
- The lyrical lunar names (Mare Crisium, Oceanus Procellarum), which are a part of the poetry of space exploration.
- Suspense builds throughout the story: what is that glittering object spotted among the cliffs and mountains? How did it get there, and what is its purpose?
- The ideas and events in The Sentinel were part of the inspiration for the novel and movie, 2001: A Space Odyssey (however The Sentinel is very different in scope and content - regardless of what you think about 2001, this story is worth reading).
Other stories from this collection include these three, these four, and these three.
Tuesday, January 4, 2011
Many moons and wonders
Till rising and gliding out, I wander’d off by myself,
In the mystical moist night-air, and from time to time,
Look’d up in perfect silence at the stars.
But these photos show us things that can't be seen with the unaided eye. Like Titan and Rhea, two moons of Saturn:
Click on the photo to see more amazing images from space. If unlike Whitman you'd like to know what each one is there's an explanation on every page.
Earth feels precious and improbable to me, after I look at these.
Sunday, November 21, 2010
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.
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.
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Week in Seven Words #34
amber
The honey is a deep gold brown. It caresses the light and draws it in; particles of light shine faintly from inside of it.
commonality
At one point I wind up sharing a dinner table with two men who have, at different points this past year, solicited relationship advice from me. They don't know that they have this experience in common; but I know, and it makes me smile a little for some reason - maybe because it's just another example of life's little quirks of circumstance.
meeting
At the several communal meals I attend, I meet some new people. But even with the people I know already, it feels like I'm meeting them for the first time each time we sit down together at the table. I might have met them before (or even know them quite well), but I can't know for sure what they'll say exactly, or what their mood will be, or what will happen - so it's like meeting them all over again each time, and I look forward to seeing new sides of them or learning new things about them.
ox
There are a few days when I plod around, slow and persistent and a little tired. The work of the coming months, the magnitude of it, makes itself known to me and settles down hard on my shoulders. I keep my head down and try to adjust; sometimes I think the numb accepting patience is better than the alternative - the spikes of anxiety, poking apart my concentration and scattering my thoughts.
pickings
When the tables are abandoned several flies come, rising and falling in delicate, random-seeming patterns over the remains of the food, until the plates are cleared away.
sukkah (סוכה)
Being hugged tight on all side by other bodies, by tables and chairs, by the flexible tent walls of the sukkah. The weather is lovely for the most part; when it gets too hot, some cool air swirls in between the flaps and openings, and at noon there's some shade at least. One night after a strong humid spell a storm breaks out, and rain sluices through the makeshift weave of the ceiling and onto us; the walls sway with the wind, but we just glance at each other and keep talking and laughing.
unclouded
A clear white moon above the shabby silhouette of an apartment building.
The honey is a deep gold brown. It caresses the light and draws it in; particles of light shine faintly from inside of it.
commonality
At one point I wind up sharing a dinner table with two men who have, at different points this past year, solicited relationship advice from me. They don't know that they have this experience in common; but I know, and it makes me smile a little for some reason - maybe because it's just another example of life's little quirks of circumstance.
meeting
At the several communal meals I attend, I meet some new people. But even with the people I know already, it feels like I'm meeting them for the first time each time we sit down together at the table. I might have met them before (or even know them quite well), but I can't know for sure what they'll say exactly, or what their mood will be, or what will happen - so it's like meeting them all over again each time, and I look forward to seeing new sides of them or learning new things about them.
ox
There are a few days when I plod around, slow and persistent and a little tired. The work of the coming months, the magnitude of it, makes itself known to me and settles down hard on my shoulders. I keep my head down and try to adjust; sometimes I think the numb accepting patience is better than the alternative - the spikes of anxiety, poking apart my concentration and scattering my thoughts.
pickings
When the tables are abandoned several flies come, rising and falling in delicate, random-seeming patterns over the remains of the food, until the plates are cleared away.
sukkah (סוכה)
Being hugged tight on all side by other bodies, by tables and chairs, by the flexible tent walls of the sukkah. The weather is lovely for the most part; when it gets too hot, some cool air swirls in between the flaps and openings, and at noon there's some shade at least. One night after a strong humid spell a storm breaks out, and rain sluices through the makeshift weave of the ceiling and onto us; the walls sway with the wind, but we just glance at each other and keep talking and laughing.
unclouded
A clear white moon above the shabby silhouette of an apartment building.
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