Week in Seven Words #579

This covers the week of 2/21/21 - 2/27/21.

anticipation

Two people at opposite ends of a room. They're holding books, but they aren't reading. When will they talk to each other?

arrangements

It's the first time I've been to synagogue in a year. The room downstairs has been organized into islands of chairs. Some islands have one chair, others two. The service is quieter.

coveting

Birds taking off and landing on the feeders, while nearby a chunky squirrel stares, waiting his chance.

mud

The slip squish of mud. Everywhere mud. Most people grumble, but one kid is discovering the joy of a puddle in a field caked in mud and slush. He's not the one who will be washing his clothes later, which is part of what makes him happy.

protected

Sitting in the pool of warmth from an outdoor heater, the cold air pressing in but pushed back.

skin-deep

Our relationship has cooled from genuine warmth to superficial friendliness.

 

tedious

Tired of online events. The small, detached faces, the audio that fails, the lack of energy, the lure of other browser tabs.

Week in Seven Words #342

alar
She's dressed in every color of the rainbow, from an orange scarf down to sandals dotted in red rhinestones. When she poses before a spray-painted brick wall, the graffiti seems to unfold like wings from her body.

athletes
One of them has conquered water, the other air. They push at the bounds of what's physically possible.

chanciness
She's draped across a bench in an evening dress, a cluster of trees shading her from the morning light. She had gone to a party the evening before, and when it wound down, she hadn't wanted to go home. She spent the night walking until she wore herself out. Her dress shoes have demolished her feet.

confirm
To make sure I'm serious about my intentions to visit, she asks for a pinky promise. Afterwards, a hug.

frizz
He curls up next to me on the couch, his hair tickling my arm as the movie plays.

scouring
Her deep-cleaning skills are impressive. Decades' worth of grime melt away.

steamed
The night air is like a warm towel pressed to my face.

Week in Seven Words #291

consideration
Most of the time what people need is for someone to hear them out. Not immediately jump in with a solution, or a way to rationalize or explain away a problem. Just someone to sit and listen patiently and with a sincere effort to understand.

flicked
Our conversation doesn't mean much. All it does is swat away the silence that would otherwise creep in between us.

sanguinity
There's little to see by the highway except for thin trees and industrial lots. But the flow of traffic is easy, and the sun is out, so there's a light feeling in me, and the world looks beautiful.

selfhood
I have misgivings about the phrase "the real you." It's built on an idea that there's some private version of you that's real, and the rest of you is relatively fake. The thing is, all of you is "the real you." Your different facets, and the way you modify your behavior in different contexts. People can be charming in one situation and behave monstrously in another; or maybe they behave with kindness across a wide range of situations. Maybe part of "the real you" is a tendency to profess opinions that you don't believe in when you're among people you want to impress, while in other situations you speak more freely. One reason I dislike the phrase "the real you" is that people sometimes use it to distance themselves from parts of their personality they don't want to think about. Or they use it to portray someone in an oversimplified way.

slugging
He pauses the TV and stands beside it to give me a lecture on baseball stats. He explains what each number in each little box means. Maybe he thinks he can convince me to stop being indifferent to baseball. I appreciate his effort to involve me in his interests, and the way he steps into a teaching role with enthusiasm. I still couldn't care less about baseball.

warmup
Having my arm used as an impromptu ballet barre.

welcomed
They made me feel at home. That's the warm, lovely feeling I take with me after visiting them.

Week in Seven Words #269

abeyance
Winter is still on the gardens. The paths are empty, the domes and crenellated walls deserted. Everywhere there's a cold, fuzzy silence.

claimed
Geese have claimed the soccer fields, the gazebo by the river. Branches have fallen across the path that feeds into the deep woods. By a gap in the fence, a hole has opened up in the earth and filled with gray water.

confined
Restless people pace inside the mansion, their fingers tracing walnut furniture. Before each window they stop to study the river. They wish they could leap out of their skin and race to the water. Maybe one day. They turn from each window and take up pacing.

crammed
PowerPoint slides frustrate him. They're too small for what he needs to say. His words and numbers run on, in ever tinier fonts, as he fills the available space.

edible
Homes with cream trimming, cherry-colored shutters.

gutted
Even when she talks about a triumph, her voice wavers with pain. She can't believe in her own success. She's convinced that she succeeded only by chance.

percolating
The coffee pours warmth into chilled wet feet and fingers nipped with cold.

"When people stop in front of my place, they bring life to me."

I like this guy. He's got a big heart.

This Is My Home from Mark on Vimeo.

After Googling him I found out he lives in the East Village in Manhattan. I plan to visit him at some point and bring some friends with me.

Week in Seven Words #90

crackling
After lunch we emerge from the sukkah to find that the day has brightened, the trees sketching flame onto mild blue skies.

hospitable
In the main room of their apartment the light will be on all day and all night. The walls are pale and bright, and after the food is cleared away games are laid out on the table. Desserts make the rounds, and I get into an intense conversation that lasts until the early morning hours.

somewhere
It's a quiet street for the most part, but then a car will cut through the dark with its headlights, or a bike will whirr by, and down the block I'll hear one half of a cellphone conversation. Everyone moves with a destination in mind; there are no meanderers just taking in the trees and the muted street lamps. I wonder where they're going. One woman swings a grocery bag between limp fingers and lets herself into a house. She disappears, and the door clicks shut behind her.

strata
Our conversation is a series of cloud patterns: dense and concentrated sometimes, at other times gapping or thinning, spilling sunlight.

tantalizing
A squirrel steals into the sukkah, where an unattended backpack calls to it. Maybe there's food inside, a sandwich half-eaten or a cookie from the cafeteria. The squirrel worries the zipper on one of the smaller pockets before climbing on top of the backpack and nuzzling against the folds and straps.

vigorous
My first glimpse of the holiday evening festivities: people bobbing up and down before a lighted window. As I come closer to the building, I hear a faint roar of singing and stomping.

wide-eyed
Three women are at the center of the dancing circle. Two are holding Torah scrolls, and one is holding a young child. The child has stuck her thumb in her mouth and is staring wide-eyed at the women whirling around her.

Week in Seven Words #55

anterograde
He was a man with anterograde amnesia - he could encode no new episodic memories. He had some past memories to anchor him a little, give him a sense of identity. Otherwise he was adrift. He inhabited narrow parcels of time, probably no more than half a minute long (and often less), whatever his short term memory could hold. He did not remember people he had just met, or what he had just been saying or doing, or what others said and did to him. Every morning when he woke up he felt as if he was awakening after a long sleep, years-long. He would lean over to a diary at his bedside and write that he was finally awake. Then he would discover a previous entry documenting the same thing (that he had finally woken up!) and with a feeling of uneasy dismissal he would cross out that previous entry, thinking it impossible that he could have written such a thing. Most of his life felt like that - the recent seconds slipping, and then a sensation of waking up fresh to the world, not remembering why he was sitting on the couch (his couch?) or why there was a dinner plate in front of him.

floe
Less than two weeks ago the field was caked from end to end in snow and ice, brilliant in the sunshine, with a couple of benches bobbing around like rowboats on an arctic sea. This week the snow has crept away, uncovering dry brown grass. Boys and girls in sweatshirts, tee-shirts, and shorts rush out to play frisbee. Nearby some guys play volleyball barefoot on a sandy court; their big golden dog dashes around their bare legs.

halting
The words come with difficulty, over the phone or face-to-face, but once I find them and say them some relief comes to me; things haven't turned out badly or as awkwardly as I feared. I can even laugh.

observer
Several times this week I watch myself from a somewhat detached vantage point within my mind, like a master observing the workings of an automaton that she ostensibly controls. There I am speaking to one group of people, then to another, and there I am walking, one foot before the other, and listening patiently, and being in turn observed by others. And in response to a lot of what I see I think, "why"?

penmanship
Bad hand-writing makes for a sort of malleable identity. What's meant to be a 'G' looks like an 'S'; a lowercase i is more like a lowercase o. One person no longer exists on the roster, and several have wriggled out of order, out to explore new alphabetical territory.

venture
Diagrams on a board; illustrations dotted out on yellow notepad paper. We map out another attempt at overcoming a difficult problem.

zephyr
For the first time in months I sit outside on a bench and read. I don't get much reading done; the breeze tempts me to distraction.

Week in Seven Words #40

chagrined
Some speakers, confronted with questions they don't know how to answer, stand behind the podium in a long silent pause of processing and confusion; their speech when it comes is halting.

comfy
We sit around a low rectangular table with a delicious makeshift meal spread out - wine, olives, chicken inside of pitas, nuts and honeydew for dessert - and the evening is full of talk, and we're together, cheerful and warm on a cold night.

enduring
Red flowers spread open against gray stone and sky.

heterogeneous
Here they come to look and ask: earnest and nervous or sphinx-like or easy-going with a warm smile or keyed up with caffeine or politely patient or good-natured and tired or world-weary and amusing (and amused).

signers
The sign language interpreters at each lecture are fascinating to watch. It's amazing how they rapidly translate in real time, for all kinds of speakers (mumblers, rapid-fire talkers among them), for all different kinds of words and phrases (variable, parameter, ANOVA), their hands and expressions fluid.

spliced
Past the window the world streams by: light spindly yellow birch groves, mist off an ocean, chain link fences rusted, dubious store fronts, wood plank houses, shells of factories with broken windows, a graveyard bathed in red and yellow leaves.

uncertainty
I agree with him. It can drive you mad.

While searching for a hearth...

...I found Robert Morgan's "Hearth".

I'd started out with the intention of posting photos of fireplaces - of furniture pressed close around, armchairs and rocking chairs, chestnut and oak, brick and dark wood mantels, the flames warm and coaxing.

Instead I found this poem. A chimney standing alone in a field, the only part of the house standing. And though no one's using this chimney there are still fires to be found in it, although in different forms, like this one:

And bees have found a clover there

bending in the dance of rooted things
where the honey of flames was.

Wonderful use of repetition, lovely precise language; the poet sought out beauty and warmth, found it in a solitary chimney - the kind of place that kindles the imagination of poets passing by.