Week in Seven Words #331

cleanup
Dominos and Pictionary cards scattered on a dusty floor.

euphony
She has a knack for finding a frayed nerve ending and plucking at it. But this is one of the moments when she's reassuring, and I feel grateful for that.

examine
The doctor has a quirky sense of humor, sometimes hard to read, which I like except for the occasional moment when I need to know if he means his advice seriously. Other points in his favor - he keeps his kids' drawings in a stack on his desk, and he can find a vein in my arm to draw blood from.

intention
A wedding party takes photos in front of a towering mausoleum where a husband and wife are entombed.

introduction
The dog smashes the puddle, then waits for the reflected trees and buildings to re-form around him.

standpoint
A statue of Joan of Arc on horseback. From behind, it looks like she's marching forward unopposed. At another angle, she's preparing to go down with a fight. A third angle shows her watchful and issuing a warning.

tender
He looks a little hurt, when I joke that his mom needs an hour of solitary quiet.

Week in Seven Words #324

braying
He bullies away the gaps in his knowledge, filling them with loudness.

dispensing
The driver reacts to the near-collision by shouting at everyone else.

follicular
Wind that could tear the hair from your scalp.

jitters
When asking for feedback on her poems, she doesn't expect a blast of criticism, but braces herself just in case. It's an act of vulnerability.

lakeside
The branch has landed in a silken reflection of trees and clouds.

perch
The tree has a bare trunk and a tangled mass of branches at the top, like a nest for a giant bird.

portraiture
I pose badly, she says. It's in the way I hold my chin, look past her shoulder, keep my lips pursed so I won't laugh. But it doesn't matter, because the end result is the same: two sets of ellipses for eyes and glasses, a beaming crescent mouth, and a nose that looks like a raven in flight. I cherish it.

Half-Day in Boston

From the same trip with the Cambridge morning walk and Salem in 25 photos…

Boston Museum of Fine Arts



Mary Baker Eddy Library





At the library, there's the Mapparium - a huge walk-in glass globe you can stand right in the middle of. The globe dates from the 1930s, so it's a snapshot of the world then. Wasn't allowed to take photos in it, but here's a look from the website.

Milkshake Moon Lake

Week in Seven Words #111

de novo
Pockets of purple crocuses on a bare meadow. The first whisper of pink in the trees.

disclose
I don't like to think of the path as a dead-end, because it brings me to a place that's very much alive, full of sunlight on rocks and the slosh and smell of lake water.

idyllic
On a warm winter day he sits bare-legged by the lake and types on his laptop.

outgrowth
The turtles clinging to the fallen branch look like fat brown buds.

strewing
She doesn't keep anything she draws, whether it's abstract shapes or an absent-minded lady or a generous bouquet of flowers. She signs her name on the drawings and leaves them on the table when she's done. This time she gives me one of them as a gift; the rest can be marveled over or binned.

thaumaturgy
In the azalea pond the fish swim in the reflections of trees.

unsociable
In the reading room the austere portraits don't look at you; they pretend you're not there.