Week in Seven Words #496

environmental
By the salty, polluted river, the grass is long and glossy. Purple flowers and soda cans nestle in it.

forum
Worries are better dealt with outdoors. Not in the confines of a familiar room but in a wider space with water, trees, and people.

fuzzily
A caterpillar, small as a piece of macaroni, squiggles on my neck.

multitasking
A woman is simultaneously playing the violin and hula hooping. Packing her talents together in the hopes of collecting more money in her violin case.

noise
She keeps lowering her book with a sigh. The whoosh of the passing cars distracts her. I've written it off as background noise, like the wind. After she calls attention to it, I pause to listen, and I realize how much noise I accept as a given, just a part of life.

seaworthy
Toy sailboats find their balance on a sheet of dark water.

thickly
Rain comes down in thick continuous clots and spatters like white paint on the street.

Salem, Massachusetts in October: 25 Photos

(From a half-day visit on Columbus Day.)

The Witch House

(It's the home of Jonathan Corwin, one of the judges involved in the Salem witch trials of the late 1600s.)

The Custom House

(At the Salem Maritime National Historic Park.)

Ropes Mansion Garden

(This garden is in back of a home dating to the early 1700s.)

Performance artists

In New York:



and old York:



The one from New York (I'll call her the Blanched Ballerina) was posing in Central Park. The one from England (Purple Pedaler?) was in The Shambles.

It seems like both photos captured them mid-motion, but neither one was moving, just being as still as possible and drawing people towards them with their novel presence.