Week in Seven Words #542

This covers the week of 6/7/20 - 6/13/20.

concerns

As protestors stream past and chant about defunding the police, two cops talk about their plans for the year. Thanksgiving comes up, and they wonder whether travel will be easier by then and whether restaurants will open up for indoor dining.

depriving

Two young women, both bony thin, compare notes on how they're hardly eating. They sound triumphant.

fainter

As we head deeper into the park, the chants from the protest fade and become a faint disturbance for the bike riders and people picnicking. 

feel-good

A guy in a motorized chair travels on the twisting paths and wishes peace to everyone. Oldies play from a portable radio tucked by his shoulder.

frenzy

The churn of turtles and fish in a dark pond. 

overwhelmed

I'm in the grip of some chaotic feelings. They flood me.

sapped

On the way to a doctor's appointment. The subway still looks depleted. Streets usually churning with shoppers, tourists, and workers are mostly stripped of people. I spot a handful of pedestrians and a few security guards planted in front of buildings.

Week in Seven Words #530

This covers the week of 3/15/20 - 3/21/20.

forage

They trawl through several stores, buying bottles of water where they can.

hurrying

Her semester cut short, she's flying home on short notice from thousands of miles away.

insecurity

His temper is fraying. He's stressed out about the tanking economy and deeply worried about his job.

mixed

We pass joggers, kids playing basketball, a temporary memorial to synagogues destroyed during the Holocaust, many trees, an obelisk, rows of stores closed.

peacefully

On a bench in the garden, a woman is reading. Three patient, relaxed dogs are nestled around her.

unstick

Ducks with white and black backs peel away from the water.

uptick

Some people are going about with masks. More than during the previous week. They give the streets an eerie feeling, normal daily activities mixed with strangeness and unease.

Week in Seven Words #414

artifacts
The clouds look like archaeological findings: pottery shards and splintered spears.

carbs
Enticed by the display of fat, creamy desserts, most of them crowd into the bakery. There's no room inside for them to eat, so they savor their glistening cakes and donuts by the curb. At a convenience store on the same block, I buy an adequate granola bar.

insisting
There's so much in her life that's out of control and wildly unfair, so she finds little ways to try to reclaim power. These efforts can make her appear fussy or ungenerous.

opened
I take a photo of a couple of Minions characters posed on a front lawn, and I send it to him so that he can show it to his son. He replies to my text, and we begin a soul-baring conversation, the kind I wouldn't have expected to start with a Minions photo.

rickety
The atrium is our way station on a windy evening. We're surrounded by men mostly; they're reading newspapers or resting their eyes. When we set our salads on one of the metal tables, it shivers, as if unaccustomed to any weight.

sways
One homeowner has set up speakers on his lawn to play a jazzy version of Schubert's Ave Maria, something a fallen angel would listen to at a blues club over a Bloody Mary.

wended
The train has gone above ground. In the faint, peach-colored light of early evening, it skims past rows of old houses. A languid peace has settled over me in the nearly empty car. I could watch the rooftops slide by for an hour without feeling impatient.

Week in Seven Words #360

brand
He knows it's ridiculous to spend this much money on shoes. He laughs at himself, even as he buys a pair and takes photos of them - first in their box, then on the floor, and after that, with himself in them.

deadened
He's afraid to care too much about anything. His heroes have soured on him. His teachers are dead inside. His friends take pleasure destroying things.

equanimity
The room is wrecked. He stands to the side, nodding slightly to the music from his headphones, as he takes in the work ahead of him.

fabricate
They craft a lie and treat it publicly as truth. It's the only way to keep peace in their family. They tiptoe past uncomfortable topics and avert their eyes from vile behavior.

hinging
She wants to write an email that's persuasive and appeasing. So much is at stake for her, with this one email that may never be read.

splatter
Soft pink tomato guts slick between my fingers.

squeakily
The street is split open with repairs. Mice pour out, seeking other homes.

Week in Seven Words #351

broadened
Heading outdoors at night, to cars making slow, uncertain turns and buses sighing against the curb. I'm at peace with the world for the moment.

chew
The dish of eggplant parmigiana is about the size of a tire, and I'm too deep in good conversation to eat much of it.

digest
A heavy meal mid-afternoon - soup, salad, potatoes, meat, as sunlight seeps onto the table like honey.

generous
She doesn't hold a grudge, but welcomes everyone and gives hugs and kisses freely. Something in her remains relaxed in the face of how disappointing people can be.

thinning
In the upstairs room, most of the books are gone. In their place are pamphlets.

trooper
Some of the kids score goals or make clean passes that show they've been training. Other kids aren't as skilled, but at least seem to like playing. One boy has a hard time of it. He's kicked in the chest by an angry player from the other team (who gets booted out). Later in the game, the ball slams into his face. It's just not his day, but he stays in the game as long as he can.

zoom
A sunlit path, shrubs on one side, water on the other, and bicycles humming like wasps.

Week in Seven Words #350

account
Prayers, exuberant songs fill the synagogue. In the back, a woman who has a mental illness is bent over a book on her lap. Occasionally, she says something that sounds like, "But, but, but..."

emboldened
We brainstorm stories, and she becomes less timid with her ideas. She's worried that what she writes will somehow be wrong. The idea of mistakes not even mattering in a draft - that anything can go into a draft - is delightful to her.

grounds
We discuss repentance and how to keep it from becoming self-flagellation. Repentance is oriented to practical action - acknowledgement of the wrong done, and sincere efforts to make amends and to make changes to future behavior. Self-flagellation pushes people into purely emotional territory, where they give themselves up to their own sense of wrongness and get stuck in it.

recess
The front steps are the place to go for downtime. If there's a spare half-hour between meetings, and the sun is out, settle down. The narrow street before you becomes the world for a while. Read, close your eyes, maybe hope for an interruption from someone you like.

retrieval
For a moment, I think it's a real dog, dead or injured and floating in the river. But it's only a stuffed animal. Soon after, a boy comes running with his younger sister following. They find a short, spindly branch by the river bank to haul it in.

serenity
It's a peaceful evening, the clouds stitched to the sky in threads of peach and light blue. The wind carries sea salt on its breath. Leaves are murmuring overhead.

sloganeer
It's tacky to put the names of politicians on a kippah. But he likes to turn himself into a walking ad for his favorites.

Good Short Fiction: 3 Tales from 40 Short Stories

Collection: 40 Short Stories: A Portable Anthology (1st ed.)
Editor: Beverly Lawn

Title: Civil Peace
Author: Chinua Achebe
Soon after his country's civil war, a decent man counts his blessings and tries to make a life for himself and his family again. But the end of war doesn't guarantee stability, and everything that he and his family work for and try to save could easily be taken from them. Life is precarious in both war and peacetime, and sometimes the man wonders if there's any form of justice in the world that people can understand. He can't explain why good things or bad things happen; all he can do is make the best of what he has, try to survive, and leave the bigger questions unanswered. Achebe's story has a sweet, bewildered tone; even when robbers show up at the man's house, there's a sad sing-song quality to their words and the writing as a whole, like the voice of their child-selves in a world that makes little sense.

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Title: The Lottery
Author: Shirley Jackson
Even knowing what would happen at the end (this was my second reading), I was tense throughout. I was also able to pick up on more of the foreshadowing this time around.

The story is set in a small town, where people are pleasant to each other, very neighborly, and there's excitement and nervousness about an upcoming lottery. The lottery is a regularly held ritual calling for the participation of all citizens, young and old.

When this story was first published in the late 1940s, it struck a nerve. Jackson had set The Lottery in a location resembling an ordinary small American town. She made a good choice; small American towns with their neighborly people have been the sites of brutal group violence. No matter what its history, there isn't a single community that can allow itself to be complacent; setting a barbaric ritual in what appears to be a pleasant, ordinary place highlights this. The story also questions the foundation of people's lives. If an otherwise friendly bunch of people perpetrate a savage ritual, one that has no apparent purpose, what does this say about the rest of their lives or the way they think? On what principles does their society rest - on traditions upheld without question? Why do they need this ritual?

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Title: What We Talk About When We Talk about Love
Author: Raymond Carver
Four people sit around drinking and talking about love, or what they think love is. It's not as if they reach a consensus. One of them is a cardiologist, this time talking about the heart in another sense.

Throughout the story, some examples of "love" are offered up. One person defines the actions of an abusive ex-boyfriend as love. Another talks about an elderly couple who've landed in the ICU after a car accident.

I like the story for its quietness, its skilled use of dialogue, and the way it raises many questions about love and our perceptions of it. What are the narratives about love that we live by, for better or worse?

There was a time when I thought I loved my first wife more than life itself. But now I hate her guts. I do. How do you explain that? What happened to that love?

The characters are in a quiet room, and they all seem detached from their lives, probably because they're drinking and reminiscing, and are also trying to step back and evaluate experiences they usually don't think about. (What, if anything, will they make of their thoughts? Will they change anything in their lives, or are these thoughts on love only left to quiet moments with a drink on hand?) There's minimal information about their surroundings, but sometimes a detail jumps out, like the presence of leaves at a window.

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Other recommended stories in this collection include The Cask of Amontillado (by Edgar Allan Poe), Paul's Case (by Willa Cather), A Good Man Is Hard to Find (by Flannery O'Connor), The Metamorphosis (by Franz Kafka), A White Heron (by Sarah Orne Jewett), and The Open Boat (by Stephen Crane).

[Updated 1/2015]

Week in Seven Words #107

passive-aggressive
The clerks at the library have sullenness down to an art. They would rather be anywhere than here, scanning your books and DVDs, and they let you know it with every dead-eyed resentful look.

quiescent
On the train he nods off beside me, clutching his backpack to his stomach. He's quiet, asleep, self-contained - a great neighbor for a train ride.

ricocheting
Playing soccer in the corridor, I feel like I'm in a pinball machine, trying to keep the ball from zig-zagging into doorways and slamming off the walls.

spelunker
She can't yet clear the couch, not consistently, so she settles for crawling under it, flattening out and squirming around in the dust, only her hind feet showing us where she is.

squinch
A steel bowl and in it strawberries, and over those, blackberries - the kind of blackberries that will always bring to mind Galway Kinnell's poem "Blackberry Eating" where the berries are so plump, firm and juicy you don't just eat them, you squinch and splurge well on them.

tackling
He reads four books to me, making his way through them with determination. The most daunting one is Green Eggs and Ham - 60 odd pages - but once you've seen 'could' and 'would' a few dozen times you're less likely to trip up on those silent 'L's.

truce
The city is gentle dark and damp after the rain. I'd like to think that bad things can't happen on an evening like this.

Week in Seven Words #67

anecdotal
We have the table near the fish tank, and over sushi and beef dumplings we tell funny stories and clink our glasses in a toast.

bedrock
On a blue breezy day we scramble among the rocks that overlook the lake.

greeting
A moment after I step out of the elevator, they emerge from another one. It's a wonderful surprise; they were on their way to meet me, and now I get to see them even sooner than I expected.

irenic
Candles at one end of the table, and in the window a rose pink sunset.

oasis
It's a gift-wrapped day, an oasis in a week that's mostly desert. I spend the day with people I love - walking, exploring, reading, talking.

pachycephalosaurs
Also called bone-headed dinosaurs, something that makes us giggle as we read through the dinosaur book.

suckle
In my arms he fidgets, grumbles, sucks on the lapel of my jacket and cries when it fails to nourish him.

Week in Seven Words #20

almost
Moments when I'm close to something, so close and I don't realize it, and later I know that I've turned away too soon.

effloresce
On nearly every street I come across roses. They grow in cluttered gardens, among scraps of metal and plastic toys. They poke through chain-link fences. They thrust themselves up the sides of houses, twine around trellises, and peek over porch rails. Their heads sometimes bow towards the bright green grass.

geometry
The strange shape of sunburns - circling my leg exactly where my socks begin, or my arms where my sleeves end; patching around my knees and calves where I didn't apply suntan lotion evenly, or framing my left wrist where my watch has kept the skin beneath it pale. My skin is sore in triangles, trapezoids, and ellipses.

lighthouse
In the daytime there's an elegance to it, perched on a rocky ledge above the rush and murmur of the bay.

promenade
Quiet streets overlooking the ocean, where boats are peacefully scattered. The air smells like salt water, flowers and mown grass. The houses are large and silent, multi-layered with wide windows, balconies, porches with white wicker chairs.

seawater
When I approach the sea I try to guess what color I'll find it. A misty melting gray in the fog, or fracturing the sunlight on a clear bright day. A hard gemstone blue, or light blue with dark folds and white foam.

tranquil
At the peak of the old maritime signal tower, with a view of rooftops, sea craft, and water all around, I sit next to a soft-spoken guitar player. There's sunshine, music, and from time to time the clomp of people climbing the winding wooden steps.

Week in Seven Words #9

anagrams
One game after another, on tables pushed close to sunny windows. The afternoon drifts by to the sharp click of letter tiles, laughter and friendly teasing, and the magic of the mental lexicon.

charoset (חרוסת)
Apples, bananas, walnuts, and wine; dashes of cinnamon. A recipe from home, lovingly made and spread thickly on matzah.

chelonian
A dozen or so turtles, sunning on rocks and logs. For several minutes they don't move; they could very well be fixtures in this man-made pond, statues carved of pale stone. But then one begins to inch up a log, its legs delicately testing out the wood. Another, who seemed as content as any of the others, suddenly lets itself drop. With a quiet splash it hits the water, where it bobs for a while in one place - as if it's stunned, and needs to get used to the stark difference between rock and water.

earnestness
Wisecracks are acceptable, so are sarcasm, irony, and flippancy. Let's not talk about important things as if they're important; let's express our passions and opinions with a smirk, a wink, a shrug as if to say these things don't matter much. It's startling when someone speaks or writes with directness and feeling. It shakes us up to hear or read something passionately worded, carefully thought out, with no sly and apologetic half-smile afterwards ("Whatever, I was just kidding...") I treasure an hour spent in that armchair taking in words that are unabashedly full of purpose and poetry, words of praise, words grappling with some of life's most important matters.

fret
In the midst of foolish worries I get distracted. Because of my distraction, I'm careless. Because of my carelessness I commit significant blunders that I did not at all anticipate; they weren't a part of my original worries. I think about these blunders and their consequences; fresh worries gnaw at me. Again, I'm distracted. Again, I slip towards carelessness. Somehow I catch myself this time, give myself a pat on the figurative shoulder ("Settle down, you've learned something, and it's not the end of the world so do please focus...") and with that the evening continues.

halcyon
A couple of quiet days with only the occasional squabble. There's rain at the windows, and we're gathered in one room, which feels warmer and more homey than usual. A game of Scrabble, paging through books in the yellow light, napping on the daybed, lunching on salads and cold meats. It's a good visit all around, ending with warm words and kisses to the cheeks and forehead. For a short while I feel like I'm lifted up above the many tasks I need to complete in a month's time. These are days that restore and renew; I wish for their peace to spill over into other days.

Seder
What do I love about each Seder? There's the singing, so many beautiful songs, somehow even more beautiful because we don't all match in key, tempo, or even melody; there are some songs that also speed up towards the end, and after a few cups of wine part of the fun is feeling your tongue flail around as you try to get the words out at an acceptable pace. Then there are the stories - the main one in the Haggadah, but also others told around the table along with questions that we don't usually stop to ask on other days and jokes that are more than a few lines long and are themselves beautifully crafted tales with clever conclusions. There's also the mix of people; individuals who normally wouldn't plan to eat together are all at the same table now and discovering interesting things about each other.