Week in Seven Words #503

From 9/8/19 - 9/14/19.

aggrieved
The middle child feels aggrieved, blamed by an older sibling who sides with a younger one.

butterscotch
The birthday cake is slathered in butterscotch icing. Over the weekend, it disappears in chunky slices that melt away on people's tongues and between their teeth, and in fist-sized balls that a child digs out of its side, and in slivers of icing picked away by restless fingernails.

cyclical
They cycle quickly from "I hate you" to hanging out together laughing to being deeply annoyed with each other again (which they call hate), a mood that soon shifts back to affection.

dinner
My clothes are damp and cold from a heavy rain, but the walk to the restaurant is worth it. A good burger, an easy flow of conversation, just a lovely evening overall.

occupations
The first night, she pretends to be a doctor, and she even knows the word "MRI," though she pronounces it "enMarigh." The second night, she's an ice cream truck driver handing out blueberry and mint scoops on cones.

outplay
Creativity, laughter, and hyper-competitiveness during board games. Once again, I get my ass whooped in Settlers of Catan by a ruthless kid.

roomy
The large dollhouse is reserved for a couple of small dog figurines and a little plastic baby in a drawer.

Week in Seven Words #492

bouts
He makes his wrestler figurines tussle in the grass. When called indoors, he leaves them propped against a lamppost to rest until the next match.

dusky
We walk along the river right after sunset. The buildings blush slightly before going pale in the dark.

fortify
Outside in the dusk I watch fireflies and listen to crickets while thinking, "Hope for the best. Prepare for the worst."

purslane
A weed that has overrun the garden beds is very nutritional. It's amazing how something dismissed as a pest can contain more nutrients than the vegetables it's supplanting.

reproduced
The women all look similar: long, wavy-haired wigs, super high heels, thin figures, babies hanging around them and on them.

snarly
For the entire subway ride, she speaks to her kids in threats. ("I'll slap the sh*t out of you," she snarls at one point.)

teenager
He squirms in the photos, grins while dancing with his friends, and delivers a speech in a dogged way, as a commitment made and seen through.

Week in Seven Words #311

causality
The desk chair that's meant to be sat on, not ridden, breaks. She slides off it with an expression that's part-guilty, part-puzzled. We live in a strange world indeed, where desk chairs just fall apart without warning, she seems to say.

fictive
Watching the Matilda movie from the 1990s, and the only person truly freaking out from Trunchbull is another adult in the room. "Is this... how can this be real? How can she get away with this?" he asks.

lashing
People looking for a purpose and a place find neither, seek someone near them to blame.

likeness
He prefers passive-aggressive insults. Instead of telling me directly what he thinks about my character, mind, and looks, he'll discuss someone I bear a resemblance to and make hostile remarks about the qualities I share with them.

phototropic
In an orange coffee mug, she's growing what looks like a valiant twig. Whatever it is has sprouted a couple of leaves and angled itself towards the window.

scholastically
Pages whirring, books thudding, students sniffling over their assignments.

treasuring
A pink evening glow of laughter and play.

Week in Seven Words #305

canid
The dog, tied up outside, whines low and long over all the things she can smell but not jump on and lick.

capture
I'm reminded of what it's like to play tag in a house. Ducking behind a door and waiting for the pursuer to run past into a different room. At the end, getting caught with a fierce hug.

eventide
Cold, clean air, a muddy lawn, leaves, a swing set at dusk.

fauna
He tells me about the relationship between manatees and elephants, and hippos and whales - just some of the topics we migrate through, using books, toy animals, and YouTube videos as supplements.

fidgeting
They show me a video of what at first looks like a skittering punctuation mark: a pygmy shrew, among soil and rocks and exploratory human fingers.

grumbly
We cram ourselves onto a gondola swing. It creaks in protest, lurching under our weight.

venom
This time, she finds a wound in me that she can tear open wider. My responding anger is so strong. It collects in my throat and chest, and I'm close to letting it fly. Like a snake that's reared back and spread its hood.

Week in Seven Words #301

inventiveness
Trying to figure out how to play with her collection of Shopkins, we come up with a game. I'll pretend I can take only one Shopkins figurine with me on a vacation. One by one, she'll pretend to be the figurines pleading their case. She'll have each one present reasons for why it's the best choice and will address my questions and concerns. ("As ice cream, I'll keep you cool and give you something to eat if all the restaurants serve gross food.") She comes up with creative, funny ideas and also makes some of the figurines self-sabotaging.

luring
Late afternoon shadows make the woods even more inviting. I'm tempted to stay until night, when I'd have a much harder time finding my way out.

restocking
More lungfuls of clean air to take with me to the city.

searching
The tree seeks itself in the leaf-choked stream.

stridulous
During the hike, I hear a faint roar. It's sports commentary, seeping from his headphones.

susceptibilities
Suddenly, we're at the lake. Silky water ringed with colorful trees. It's a view that breaches the hardened places in my mind.

unremarked
After the hours she spends finding and implementing a solution for their Internet outage, they largely ignore her.

Week in Seven Words #256

I'm sorry for the nearly month-long absence on this blog. The reason was a combination of lots of work and a needed blog break.

anticipant
She peers into the audience, her face nervous and expectant, knowing her family will be there but needing to see them.

crestfallen
"I stink at this," is what one child says every time she doesn't get something right the first time. Who is she echoing?

easy-going
She sits on the floor in her power suit, at ease when kids tumble around her legs.

huddled
They're the same type of people - same background, same lifestyle - so it doesn't matter what they say to each other; they're happy with the knowledge that they're the same and that their conversation will be safe.

pathetically
Out of pity I buy a small stuffed animal with lumpy ears. A dog, I think. An aspiring dog.

restorative
The clean scent of linens in a drawer.

true
While the others are match sparks and unsteady flames, she's a lamp, steady and gentle in the dark.

Extracts: A Raisin in the Sun by Lorraine Hansberry

Don't you see there isn't any real progress... there is only one large circle that we march in, around and around, each of us with our own little picture in front of us - our own little mirage that we think is the future.

A Raisin in the Sun is a wonderful play, one of the best I've read in a while. Lorraine Hansberry shows how people define themselves and strive for their dreams; in progressing towards what they hope will be a better life, they discover new sources of strength in themselves but also risk self-destruction and undermining others. The play ends on a mix of good spirits and foreboding; the Younger family haven't had it easy up until that point, and they have frightening circumstances to deal with in the future, but they're still alive, fighting with one other and against the world.

Meet the Youngers
The Youngers are a black family living in Chicago's South Side in the years after World War II. The patriarch of the family, Big Walter, has passed away, and his material legacy is an insurance check worth 10,000 dollars - a boon to his family, who have long wanted to get out of their airless, lightless hole of an apartment.

There are six of them: Lena (Mama), Big Walter's widow and the matriarch of the family; their adult children, Walter Lee and Beneatha; and Walter Lee's wife, Ruth, and son, Travis.

Walter Lee is a chauffeur, and both Lena and Ruth work as domestic servants, cooking and cleaning in white people's homes. Unlike Walter Lee, it's apparent that Lena and Ruth don't stop working when they get home; with some help from Beneatha, they take care of all the chores in their apartment, while Walter Lee spends time with his friends, shooting the breeze and cooking up grand business schemes. Beneatha (who at a low point in the play speaks the words excerpted at the start of the post) is a college student, a first for her family. In the course of the play she's also wooed by two very different men - George Murchison and Joseph Asagai - each representing a certain kind of future for her, should she choose one of them.

Dreams deferred, denied, or achieved
Everyone in the Younger family has a dream they want to realize. For Beneatha it's becoming a doctor, and for Walter Lee it's running his own business as a bigshot executive. Lena's primary goal is to move to a real house, something Ruth longs for as well. The only affordable neighborhood within an easy distance of their workplaces in the city is a suburb where only white families live.

Personal flaws and family tension could keep their dreams from materializing. Hansberry might have gone the route of having the family be on the same page, united by the same beliefs and outlook as they fight for a better life, but instead she wrote them as messy and real. Walter Lee fights a good deal with his sister about the man she should marry, and with Lena about what to do with the 10,000 dollars; he wants a chance to be his own boss, and if Beneath got to go to college, why can't he have his opportunity to develop himself?

Walter Lee and Ruth's marriage also goes through a lot of strain. Ruth doesn't have Beneatha's booksmarts or Lena's central position in the family, but it's a testament to Hansberry's writing skills that instead of being a sidelined two-dimensional figure she's distinct, given good lines, a dry wit and a complex character, and made to confront her own difficult choices. As for Lena, she looks at her kids with love and pride and, at times, incomprehension. Of those in the younger generation, Ruth (the aptly named daughter-in-law), is the only one who consistently connects with her.

On top of all the intrafamilial conflict, there are people in their community who would resent their move to a better home, taking it as a sign that the Younger family doesn't know "their place." The one neighbor we do see, Mrs. Johnson, is a riot - a funny portrait of a woman who tries to pass off her nosiness and envy as sincere concern. There are also other people in their community who would more actively undermine their attempts to realize their dream.

And finally there's the all-white neighborhood they want to move to. The neighborhood association sends a representative to try to dissuade them from coming to live there; in a morbidly funny moment, Beneatha refers to him as the "Welcoming Committee," a joke taken up by Ruth and Walter Lee:

Mama: What he want?
Ruth: (In the same mood as Beneath and Walter) To welcome you, honey.
Walter: He said they can't hardly wait. He said the one thing they don't have, that they just dying to have out there, is a fine family of fine colored people!

Lorraine Hansberry's own parents fought racial residential segregation in the northern U.S. (read about the Supreme Court Case, Hansberry vs. Lee) and she knew first hand how violent the situation could get, with black families getting fire-bombed out of their homes, attacked by mobs, and worse.

What is progress?
Returning to the excerpt at the top of the post - is progress an illusion? It's fitting that Beneatha makes this pessimistic pronouncement, as someone who's still figuring out her identity.

On the one hand she's the first college-educated person in her family and wants to be a doctor. But if she marries could she still pursue a career in medicine? (Her brother is leaning on her to marry George Murchison, who would be least likely to support her career.) So what is her identity, her role in the family and society at large, meant to be? And what options are available to her as a black woman who wants to go into medicine? She isn't expected to take charge of her family; for better or worse, Lena comes to expect that of Walter Lee, not necessarily because he has good judgment but because he's the man of the house. With her education and career aspirations Beneatha finds herself in an unprecedented position in her family.

Across the generations, the Younger family has progressed out of slavery, then out of the South, to live in their own apartment and to send one family member to college. Even when the "Welcoming Committee" representative from the white neighborhood comes to speak with them, he doesn't threaten them outright, as Beneatha puts it:

Oh - Mama - they don't do it like that any more. He talked Brotherhood. He said everybody ought to learn how to sit down and hate each other with good Christian fellowship.

Progress seems to work uphill, with backsliding and resistance for every bit of ground gained. The newer generations - Walter Lee and Beneatha - are building off of the sacrifices of their parents and forebears in different ways, while also fighting certain battles all over again: not what previous generations fought against - not slavery and not the southern Ku Klux Klan specifically - but against similar forces, in new shapes and forms. They also fight to understand who they are and where they belong in society, and to understand how the legacy of their parents and ancestors affects them; they absorb it, honor it, chafe against it, turn to it sometimes for guidance and mock or ignore it otherwise. The sum total of Big Walter's legacy - along with what Lena has imparted to her kids - is more than 10,000 dollars.

Any push for progress requires risk. Sometimes the desire for a better life is so consuming that it blinds people to potential dangers as they work impatiently towards it. Then again, focusing too much on the dangers keeps people where they are, relatively safe but also miserable and diminished.

Why haven't we seen more of Hansberry?
In addition to being very active in the Civil Rights movement, Lorraine Hansberry made history in theater with A Raisin in the Sun, becoming the youngest American playwright to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award for Best Play. Tragically her life was cut short, at age 34, by pancreatic cancer.

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I read The Modern Library edition of A Raisin in the Sun; it's also the first work I'm writing up for the Classics Club Challenge (you can find the link to the challenge post in the Reading Lists tab at the top of the page as well).

Week in Seven Words #126

armed
I find a black and white photo of her tucked inside a book. It was taken decades ago, during her army training. She stands by a tree and holds a gun, the butt of it resting against the ground; she looks at the photographer with a smile that gives away nothing.

captured
She sits alone in her roller-skating gear and with a smile and a little wave snaps a photo of herself out in the bright world.

missed
On a walk in the park I come across a few actors who are yelling things at each other that sound vaguely Shakespearean but don't carry well in the open air. I ask a couple of people who are leaving, "What play is this?" Silently they point to my feet, where I stand on the giant HAMLET written on the pavement in pink chalk. (To thine own clueless self be true.) Speaking of which, Polonius comes out soon after, and you can tell he's an experienced actor. His voice projects, and he speaks his lines well. Too bad he has to die sooner than everyone else.

packing
I'm starting to associate my old apartment with boxes and hamburgers and papers that multiply every time I look the other way.

sapless
I watch eleven and a half minutes (yes I counted) of yet another T.V. show for kids where the characters don't have distinct personalities - they all do the same things and sound alike when they speak. Their misunderstandings are minor and are resolved almost immediately. The message for kids is that if you and your friends are as similar as possible there's less of a chance that you'll be inconvenienced by disagreements, compromises, and independent thoughts.

siesta
In the shade of the beech tree the mallards are napping.

sitting duck
When the car is stuck in traffic, and the frustrated driver is just spoiling for a fight, there you are, captive in the passenger's seat.

Eloquently idle

Play
Subtle, clever brain, wiser than I am,
by what devious means do you contrive
to remian idle? Teach me, O master.
-- William Carlos Williams

Week in Seven Words #27

airy
I'm happy to see her in a sustained good mood, when she seems lighter on her feet and is prone to laughter.

cochlear
Our sensory perceptions are limited by our brains and bodies; there are colors and frequencies for instance that we can't sense unaided, and everything we do sense is filtered through our unique composition of cells - it's the only physical reality we know. The man lecturing at the front of the room used to rely on a hearing aid, but after becoming completely deaf he began using a cochlear implant - a small computer that's now a part of his body; he speaks of how his brain adjusted to it, and of what it's like to experience auditory perception through such a device.

fizzy
Popsicles melting together on a paper plate - lime, strawberry, wild berry - a psychedelic puddle.

fork
It's not that I fail to notice that the road splits in two - I notice it, vaguely - it's just that I walk down the wrong fork; actually it's less walking and more a determined barreling stride, because I'm already running late, and I don't want to keep my friend waiting. I don't notice anything amiss until I'm at a quiet residential street (cue crickets chirping), just past an enormous domed church, and my friend calls my cellphone and describes landmarks I don't see.

lush
They're so fine and bright and moist, those green grapes; we pretend to pluck them out of the painting and pop them in our mouths.

scale
Stones and columns from other continents and eras, reassembled in dark dramatic rooms. People stroll past and study the pillars, statues, and slabs of stone; they pose with a self-conscious smile in front of carvings with wild blank eyes, or they unfold their cell phones and snap up the heavy granite in quick pictures.

whirligig
All of the actors in this production of A Midsummer Night's Dream have a sense of playfulness and fun. Some of them have a sense of the words too, the cadence, letting the poetry roll off their tongue as they clatter around the stage; those who don't have a feel for the words tend to swallow them or scream them and rely mostly on slapstick fights and comic faces to pull them through. The best blend of well-spoken lines, comic timing, and physical humor is in the rendition of Pyramus and Thisbe at the end - with Bottom giving Pyramus one of the goriest deaths ever, after which the actress playing Thisbe tiptoes up to his self-mutilated, gutted, decapitated, flayed, disemboweled corpse (because in his great anguish he couldn't just stab himself) and whispers, "Asleep, my love?"

Week in Seven Words #24

consistency
I can count on this restaurant to provide the right kind of avocado - not too mushy or too hard, and embedded in the chewy seaweed and sticky white rice of a delectable sushi roll.

cubes
A plate of juicy pineapple - fat glistening cubes of pineapple - by the window fan in the warm room.

dangling
I don't focus enough on my words and the implications of my work; I attend too closely to the expressions of the people in the audience. Their faces are often inscrutable; from time to time they nod, quirk an eyebrow, smile just a little. Though it's important to keep one's audience in mind during a talk I think I take it just a little too far, searching their faces for the most miniscule glimpse of their true thoughts.

mellow
Leaning against the train window, eyes half-closed, with the sun setting at my left ear.

procrastination
It stems in large part from a fear of failure.

puzzlement
A camp counselor asks a reasonable question: "Why did you touch the waffle-maker? You know it's hot!"

tickled
She picks a few fuzzy feathery pink flowers from a tree and instructs me to tuck them into my pocket so that my hands will be free when we play catch.

Week in Seven Words #23

deliquesce
Ice cream, half-scooped and half-puddled, seeps through the mouth and dissolves on the tongue. Heat, sweat and sweetness on a summer afternoon.

dipping
The flowers dip their long green fronds in the water, the way people might sit at the edge of a swimming pool and paddle their feet.

flux
Watching them play it's difficult to predict when they'll get along peaceably and when they'll slip into mischievous pestering or earnest scuffles. Another possibility is that they'll drift to different parts of the room and focus on individual pursuits involving characters, shoes, blocks, blankets, keyboards and cars.

jarred
Whole days, derailed. A sick gnawing anxiousness and pain.

molten
The fountain is full of cool fire. Plashing white plumes surge out of its basin, and the sun is shattered on its waters.

sorry
Sometimes he invests the word with just a little too much power; he thinks that any bit of mischief or inflicted hurt will be instantaneously undone with the utterance of an earnest 'sorry'.

stripes
Flags ripple against a light blue sky.