Week in Seven Words #560

This covers the week of 10/11/20 - 10/17/20.

discoursing

I like how these three female figures from history are posed – around a table in a discussion that one can almost overhear.

flattening

Petulant people with paper-thin identities and a simplistic way of viewing the world try to dictate what others should read, write, and think about. 

glows

I admire the green-gold pattern of leaves in the autumn light. The light glowing gold on the grass.

pushing

Have I tried enough, or have I wilted too quickly at rejection?

ranging

Some of my favorite work assignments are the ones that teach me completely new things. Could be a topic in medicine, technology, or the environment. Could be a travel or tourism assignment, though those are scarcer in a pandemic year. Lately, many assignments have been about psychological problems, such as addiction, anxiety, and various effects of isolation.

scrambled

The class is disjointed and confusing. I catch at passing facts like pebbles tumbling on a stream bed, but I'm missing some of the bigger picture.

softening

It's been a while since we've spoken, and I'm touched by his kind words.

Week in Seven Words #519

This covers the week of 12/29/19 - 1/4/20.

aglow
Eight candles glowing. Rivulets of colorful wax.

deeper
She doesn't stop at fixing the grammatical mistakes. She also thinks of ways to make the text more readable by improving the flow from one sentence to the next. I'm proud of her.

employment
He worries about his work – projects canceled, certain positions trimmed. He wonders if a mass layoff is coming.

excuses
Upset but unsurprised to hear people downplaying or attempting to justify yet another violent anti-Semitic attack.

jackfruit
I've never tried jackfruit before, but I order jackfruit tacos, and they're delicious. I think one difficulty people have when trying vegetarian or vegan dishes is that they compare the meat substitute to meat. If you don't do that – if you just accept the dish as it is, tasty in its own way – it's much more satisfying.

rhythms
One of the good things about this free dance class is that many different people have shown up to try it, including people who are self-conscious about moving too much in front of others. By the halfway point, everyone is flowing around, looking relaxed.

rushed
It isn't long into my visit when I feel a silent pressure mounting against me. I'm being pushed out the door, without an unkind word or physical force. Just a look or two, a pause, a pursed mouth, and I know not to overstay my welcome.

Six Short Stories Showing Professional Decline (or Failure)

Title: The Colonel's Foundation
Author: Louis Auchincloss
Where I Read It: Legal Fictions
What I remember of this story... the main character is a lawyer who belongs to his firm's founding family. Unlike the people who currently run the firm, he isn't shark-like and aggressive; he's more of a gentleman lawyer. To show his colleagues and bosses that he isn't useless, that he can pull his own weight in a cut-throat environment, he takes the case of an eccentric old man who wishes to set up a foundation as part of a will. Things don't go as planned, in this wry story of greed, blindness, and a desperation to prove oneself.

Title: Dark Matter
Author: Martin J. Smith
Where I Read It: Orange County Noir

He reached into the pocket of his robe. When he pulled it out, I saw something black in his hand and swallowed hard. Who carries a gun in their bathrobe?

The narrator serves eviction notices and is now in a house on Balboa Island (in Southern California) where a washed-up rock star lives. The rock star invites him into a world of tremendous dysfunction, including a dead groupie in a bath tub and a tiger on the loose. Just a freaky little story about decaying celebrities and the people they bring down with them.

Title: Of the Cloth
Author: William Trevor
Where I Read It: The Hill Bachelors

The dream came often and he knew it did so because the past was never far from his thoughts. He knew, as well, that the pages could not be turned back, that when the past had been the present it had been uneasy with shortcomings and disappointments, injustice and distress.

Reverend Grattan Fitzmaurice oversees a declining Protestant church in Ireland (a denomination called the Church of Ireland). He notes without apparent resentment that a nearby Catholic church seems lively enough; the story eventually mentions the child abuse scandals, but at this point the damage to the church's popularity and overall participation isn't noticeable.

Fitzmaurice and his Catholic counterpart don't interact until the death of Con Tonan, a Catholic man who used to work for years in Fitzmaurice's rectory garden. Fitzmaurice attends Tonan's funeral, and later that evening a Catholic priest visits him for a chat. The story portrays peaceful resignation and the realization people sometimes have about the purpose of their lives. For Fitzmaurice it may not have been anything grand, but it meant something – his greatest mission in life may have been to help his Catholic gardener. ("He had never thought of Con Tonan in his garden as a task he'd been given, as a single tendril of the vine to make his own.") Maybe he couldn't sustain the entirety of his congregation, but he was good to someone in apparently small ways that were still important.

The story's atmosphere is a part of its beauty. Making his way through a dark garden, during the evening of his day and of his profession, Grattan Fitzmaurice thinks of Ireland as a whole and finds in his love of it some more common ground to share with the priest:

They loved it [Ireland] in different ways: unspoken in the dark, that was another intimation. For Grattan there was history's tale, regrets and sorrow and distress, the voices of unconquered men, the spirit of women as proud as empresses. For Grattan there were the rivers he knew, the mountains he had never climbed, wild fuchsia by a seashore and the swallows that came back, turf smoke on the air of little towns, the quiet in long glens. The sound, the look, the shape of Ireland, and Ireland's rain and Ireland's sunshine, and Ireland's living and Ireland's dead: all that.

Fitzmaurice, a relic in some ways, is a part of this greater landscape.

Title: Prince of Darkness
Author: J.F. Powers (James Farl Powers)
Where I Read It: American Short Stories Since 1945
Another story with priests! I didn't think I'd find it fascinating to read about a priest who wants his own parish, but the story held my interest. This priest has an image of himself as a rebel or nonconformist of sorts, not always tactfully holding his tongue or pandering to his superiors. However, at a crucial moment, he behaves deferentially. And his 'rebel' stance is really about getting a reaction out of his colleagues, rather than an expression of deeply held principles; he isn't trying to change anything for the better. To parishioners he's indifferent, dismissive in the confessional, and he lives to cater to his soft appetites and to find a cushy position. This selfish, soft, insubstantial character represents some of the deeper problems in the priesthood, including a contempt for female parishioners in particular and an embroilment in petty politics and status-seeking.

Title: The Psychologist Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats
Author: James Tiptree Jr. (Alice Sheldon)
Where I Read It: The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories
Tilman is a psych researcher in an animal lab. His colleagues treat the animals like machines they're breaking apart into components, and it doesn't matter how cruel they are if the cruelty serves science. Tilman, in contrast, has a set of rats he's breeding, and his work involves observing their behavior; he feels kindly towards his rodents and wouldn't try to remove various parts of their nervous system or other organs.

This approach is looked down on, and the head of the department subtly threatens Tilman's career, telling him that his work is too vague. And while Tilman is a gentle guy, there are some hints early in the story of darkness in him, when he contemplates some of his colleagues and students, particularly the ones who are female. Tilman's career changes - some would say for the better - after he drinks absinthe. Crude misogyny and a complete indifference to animal life make him a new scientist ready to impress his boss. (Could he have stuck with his original line of work? He loved pursuing questions, and he was patient. But he gives up in the face of the pressure, and the humanity drains from him.)

Title: Willing
Author: Lorrie Moore
Where I Read It: The Art of the Story

She was unequal to anyone’s wistfulness.

Sidra is an actress whose career has gone nowhere. She abandons her life (in the sense that she lets it run away from her), and it begins in some ways to resemble her roles in its cheapness, aimlessness, and tawdry confrontations with a guy she's sleeping with and doesn't love. Part of what's interesting about this story is how its voice and its main character grab your attention, but once your attention is held, you wonder what it is you're looking at, other than a trainwreck of a human life.

Week in Seven Words #472

corporate
She prefers working for a smaller company. The larger corporations demand too much conformity.

doe-eyed
The room has deep red wallpaper and animal heads mounted on the walls. Nothing else.

gerunds
I'm looking through picture books for a gift, and it amazes me how skinny books with simple illustrations and one word per page ("Running," "Flying,") have double-digit price tags.

illumination
He returns to the topic of his anger, and how he wishes he had learned earlier in life a whole vocabulary of emotions. To be able to put words to his feelings would have helped him stave off the outbursts that derailed his career. It's never just about words; it's about understanding yourself, the source of your feelings, and the options for how to act.

net
The branches of the bare trees form a diaphanous net that catches the sunlight.

opens
I overcome my own self-consciousness to talk to him, which helps him overcome his self-consciousness. We have a lovely chat.

uniform
From many windows, the same game is flickering. One large TV after another, mounted to a wall and dominating a room with the same shots.

Week in Seven Words #464

appeasing
The small box of chocolates is a gift of appeasement, and I'm pleased to be appeased at this moment.

bite-sized
It's important to trust in small tasks. To fight the tendency of trying to catch up by doing too much all at once, failing, and feeling discouraged.

crinkle
The surface of the lake looks like crinkly photographic film, black and white.

denouement
The day is fading, leaving a last gentle imprint of light on windows and bricks. We walk in silence.

lazily
For a minute, he embodies laziness. He lies on the floor. Pretends to need other people to tug him to his feet and into motion.

loft
We enjoy a discussion that makes us feel cozy and connected, in a room many stories up with a view of steel and blue shadows.

refreshments
None of the foods are appetizing. Not the sticky muffins, not the pretzels crackling like dry grass. But we appreciate that they've been laid out for us; we weren't expecting refreshments.

Week in Seven Words #440

atremble
Strong winds course across the rooftop. The plants and wooden stakes shiver.

booing
One of the ways they bond is by sneering about politicians they both hate.

feelingly
Now that she has started using emotion words, she likes to declare what she feels. ("Angry! Angry.")

focused
He'd be a good person to work with, because he just wants to do the job well without any fuss.

mine
The baby finds the small bag of dried mango that one of her older brothers really likes. She bites into a piece with a growl of satisfied possession. Because he's the closest in age to her, she especially enjoys claiming his stuff.

refreshingly
It's family pool time. One girl is stretched out on a lounge chair reading after a swim. Her dad tosses around her younger brother. The kids weave around each other in the water.

welling
The warm, gentle surprise, when love comes to me unexpectedly.

Week in Seven Words #410

curtailing
On a walk down the dark path, I hear the rat traps popping by the side of the building.

enchantment
Leaves are spiraling down, swirling around my head, and a bright moon is peeking past the edge of a skyscraper.

fueling
One chocolate chip cookie helps him through math. The second cookie remains uneaten, and he has poked his pencil through it in frustration.

one-time
I don't know what else is going on in their lives or if they'll even be back next week, but I appreciate that they're here now - a group of men and women playing folk music in the waning light.

rapport
I like how she and I slip into easy conversation as if we haven't not spoken for several years.

slackening
Now and then, I dose myself with an episode of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a show that's funny and undemanding.

tectonics
The assignment moves towards completion, one paragraph after another. The paragraphs sometimes shift position for greater flow and cohesion. It's a slow but inexorable process.

Week in Seven Words #409

comestibles
The spread of food on the table is her work, what she delivers to the evening. Glistening food, soft, stewy, juicy food, heaps and hills on every platter.

depletion
She doesn't see her birthday as a cause for celebration. She shows me a text on a cracked smartphone screen. It's from her mom, and it conveys disappointment and limp well-wishes.

lingering
A couple of the older kids find the infant activity center fascinating. One of them sits on the floor for a while and spins the transparent sphere that's full of colorful, pebble-like bits of plastic. He doesn't remember, but when he was a baby, he loved doing the same thing.

mastering
An assignment I've taken on becomes much larger and more complex than I had expected. It's anxiety-inducing. But I feel something in me rise up to claim control of the sprawling text and the web of citations.

unobstructed
When I tell him about my problem, his reaction is a relief. He doesn't become violently agitated, dismissive, or contemptuous. He doesn't act as if I've gutted him or as if I need to be pitied. He just listens. He accepts what I'm saying and acknowledges that it's a problem. Although there's no apparent solution, not at present, I feel less alone. It's amazing how powerful it can be when someone sincerely hears you out.

wasted
It's a hydra monster kind of argument. For every spiteful remark or bad idea I chop off, two more spring up.

zookeeper
It's time for him to take care of his reptiles. He sprays them with water, makes sure they're fed. It doesn't matter to him that they're made of plastic or rubber. (In a whisper, an older child asks me, "He does know they're fake, right?")

Three Billy Wilder Films on Self-Respect

Much goes on in these movies directed by Billy Wilder, but an important theme in each is self-respect.

Title: The Apartment (1960)
Language: English
Rating: Not rated

The main characters in The Apartment are commodities, useful to the executives in the company they work for. C.C. Baxter (Jack Lemmon) is a corporate drone who lets the higher-ups use his apartment for extra-marital hookups. Fran Kubelik (Shirley MacLaine) is an elevator girl who has made terrible relationship choices. One executive in particular, Jeff Sheldrake (Fred MacMurray), has them living in the palm of his hand. They look to him to make their lives better, even though he's a major source of their problems.

By the end of The Apartment, both Baxter and Kubelik gain some self-respect. The movie plays out as a comedy sometimes, a drama too (with MacLaine's performance really holding the movie together and giving it its emotional weight). It's also a romance, though I didn't care much about Baxter and Kubelik getting together. They break free of Sheldrake, and the movie ends with a card game, which struck me as a reminder that they've now entered a chancier sort of life. They've lost some security in their future. Before, life played out predictably. Their increased self-respect is worth it, but it's risky. At least now they're stronger and can bear those risks.

Week in Seven Words #325

belting
The tulips look like a tipsy choir, open-mouthed and unsteady.

executive
He practices a dramatic swivel in his parents' office chair - revealing himself to the room with menace and flair. Like a responsible adult, I suggest that he pretend to hold a whiskey glass, maybe a cigar.

pesky
She treats my emotions as an inconvenience. Like, why can't I just not have them? Consider how much simpler life would be.

plashing
The shivers of a robin in a bird bath.

pooling
Lemony willow leaves stain the pond. A child showers the ducks with gold and brown crusts.

rive
We part ways, for good I think, and all I am at this point is tired.

strides
"I don't know what I'm doing, but I'll survive by pretending I do," is their way of working, and I don't know if I want to roll my eyes at them or give them a hug.

Week in Seven Words #317

digs
It's an old-timey lobby with wood paneling, cubbyholes for mail, and a brass call bell at the front desk. I expect to see men lounging around in homburgs and high-wasted trousers.

gleam
The corridor has a triangular glass roof. Beyond it are roosting birds and gray sky. Lamplight reflects off the metalwork.

indefinitely
Mirrors extend the front hall infinitely. The doorman sends us up to where the old man lives on every last drop of his fixed income.

limited
By mashing buttons, I score a slam-dunk in video game basketball. When in doubt, mash the buttons. Something will happen. I try it again, making a shot across the full length of the court. I wish I could say it goes in.

relic
I stare at the payphone as if it's prehistoric. My friend comes up behind me and says, "You can... call people on this?"

shibboleth
With the slogan, he identifies his tribe and takes a mental shortcut. The conversation ends.

webbing
Pushing through to the other side of tiredness to finish a project on time.

Week in Seven Words #287

arcana
He's hunched in the shadows with a book spread open on his palm. It's only a textbook, but he looks like a conjurer.

belying
"I love my job," he says, with a dejected expression.

enliven
They've turned the broken corners of the porch into a garden. Missing boards are where flowers nestle now. Plants obscure the splintered railings. A rainbow windsock trails against the chipped paint.

flora
Beneath the stains of black mold, there's a pattern of flowers. On each colorful tile, a different flower: foxglove, pansy, rose.

ingestion
The blue-gray water and settling clouds swallow the sun.

objective
What do you want to be when you grow up? "A nice man," he says. "I'm going to be a very nice man."

willfully
One of her ways of trying to get me to change is to say, "No, you can't be like this." Maybe if she waves her hands in a complicated pattern, the spell will take effect.

Week in Seven Words #286

commencing
Mornings are delightful when I get a lot of things done. When I don't, the whole day seems to slow down. Futility and fear creep in with the lengthening shadows.

confronting
When he walks by, he hisses at us through his smile. I don't shrink away, but feel a rising strength, like I could strike back viciously if I needed to. I look over my shoulder to make sure he hasn't turned around and started following us. He's looking back over his shoulder too. Nothing happens. But we were purely animals, at that moment.

festively
The summer dresses on the rack look more like banners in blue, orange, and purple, meant to wave from the front windows of a house.

quake
The thunder sounds like it's emerging from the ground.

rosy
Asked what an ideal vacation would look like, I imagine lots of hiking, train rides, and English country cottages with gardens in bloom.

selfdom
I'd forgotten how funny these magazine quizzes can be, where stating your preference for a forest or a beach helps unlock the secrets of your personality.

trove
In what most people would use as a jewelry box, she keeps a collection of erasers. Some shaped like cupcakes, others like flowers and friendly robots. Also a few without any design, just the standard small pink block.

Week in Seven Words #266

diligence
She shows me how she's patiently worked her way towards a difficult yoga pose, adjusting her legs in increments over weeks. Now she sits with serenity, as if the arrangement of her lower body doesn't register in her conscious mind.

employed
Her job duties include ignoring the phone and investigating vacation spots on Google Maps.

hushed
The sun turns to ashes behind an aluminum fence.

mildly
A mug of tea warming my hands. A conversation that passes with no bitter words.

pulse
The dog, calming on my lap, is a pounding heartbeat wrapped in hair.

stale
The store smells of sawdust and wheaty things. Breathy acoustic versions of pop songs make background noise.

venipuncture
She sinks the needle into one arm, then the other. Gives me a bewildered look, as if to ask, "Are you human?" and leaves to search for a second phlebotomist: the one I call "The Vein Whisperer," who trails her fingers along my forearms, taps the skin, holds the needle poised above the surfacing vessel.

Week in Seven Words #253

covert
She's hidden things behind her books - keys to cabinets, necklace pendants, folded letters. She says it's extra protection against casual burglars; they won't rifle through her shelves. But I also suspect it's her romantic streak. She's always wanted the kind of bookcase that would hide a secret, like a door that springs open when you pull out a volume of Donne's poetry.

demolishing
The book I use as a sledgehammer, to smash obstructions in my mind.

ducking
He has always crouched behind a shield. Currently, it's his wife. As long as he's with her, he's protected. No one looks too closely at him.

filling
Strange how the book leaves us both satisfied and empty.

olio
He has in his speech flavors of other countries. He's brimful of anecdotes about bodyguards and bugged hotel rooms, spicy cuisine and off-the-road ruins.

redolence
A begonia in a copper-colored pot, and a cup of orange spice tea.

reversals
Two months earlier, she was fine. Now she has health problems and a career in tailspin through no fault of her own. She speaks in disbelief about her life.

Week in Seven Words #186

airless
A lack of productivity is suffocating.

bullish
The cashiers summon customers by waving red flags.

complacently
A number of people think that 'natural' automatically means 'desirable' or 'immutable.'

deadwood
Branches snap and fall, no longer able to bear their own weight.

impositions
An inability to handle uncertainty lies at the heart of so much misery and evil.

rack
Can people change in their essentials? It's hard enough to get rid of a single bad habit. What about five or ten of them? What about the dark, habitual thoughts that choke the life out of the mind?

regressed
In the library, two old men fight over a hat. The owner of the hat allegedly took a newspaper away from the other guy, who retaliated by snatching the hat away and refusing to return it. They argue loudly, the hat-owner shrill and indignant, the hat-snatcher muttering filthy insults.

7 stories from around the world

Story Collection: World Literature: An Anthology of Great Short Stories, Drama, and Poetry
Editor: Donna Rosenberg

Title: The Doctor's Divorce
Author: S.Y. Agnon (Shmuel Yosef or Shai Agnon)
Translator: (Info not provided)
"The Doctor's Divorce" shows a man trapped in a self-fulfilling prophecy. A doctor starts up a relationship with a nurse at his hospital and marries her; from early on, there are signs that his ability to love people (instead of just claiming possession of them) is questionable. When she tells him there was another man in her past, he begins to pretend in an exaggerated, unconvincing way that it doesn't bother him, even as he thinks about it obsessively. He just knows that the existence of this other man will drive a wedge between him and his wife. And that's what happens, but only because he can't let the matter drop. He kills any chance of intimacy or happiness with his wife; maybe he's incapable of being in a relationship that has either of those qualities.

Worth Watching: Tales of Manhattan (1942)

Title: Tales of Manhattan
Director: Julien Duvivier
Language: English
Rating: Unrated

Tales of Manhattan is made up of a series of vignettes involving a cursed evening coat. Coming in contact with the coat might bring you misfortune, though in many cases the misfortune reveals an important truth or blessing in disguise.

From Wikipedia

Each vignette is distinct, with its own storyline and set of characters. They're also uneven in quality. Sometimes Tales of Manhattan is great; other times you wonder what the filmmakers were thinking. But I'm recommending it anyway, because it's packed with wonderful actors who do some strong work with whatever they're given.

First Tale
A temperamental actor (Charles Boyer) isn't sure that the woman he's having an affair with (Rita Hayworth) will leave her loveless marriage. Boyer has a compelling screen presence, and Hayworth is mesmerizing. A lot of the action is set in an eerie hunting lodge where the walls are crowned with the antlers of slain deer.

Week in Seven Words #157 - #160 (28 word catch-up post)

I'm sorry I was away for a while. I took a break from blogging, and it wasn't planned. Some changes in my schedule, new work, and - just this past week - a vacation I'll be telling you about soon, kept my attention away from the blog. So now there's a backlog of "week in seven words" posts.

This is going to be a mega post of week in seven words. Four weeks' worth. After this, I plan to go back to posting one set per week.

Week in Seven Words #151 & #152

Week in Seven Words #151

affective
When the book I've worked on makes its way into the world I feel a nervous happiness.

kick
Short clips of improv comedy are like shots of an energy drink.

perpetual
The blink of the cursor measures time.

ploy
She tries to give me 'supercalifragalisticexpialidocious' as a mathematical solution. I am unmoved.

progress
Step 1: Recognizing a problem. Step 3: Doing something about it. Step 2: Inertia.

scattered
At the front of the line there's usually someone whose library card is lost among a hundred compartments in a purse or whose money is floating around in a bottomless coat pocket.

sheeted
The water is beaten down by the wind.

------------

Week in Seven Words #152

evacuation
He isn't toilet-trained but he's started to seek out privacy when nature calls. He tries to find a quiet spot in the house where he can stand or sit in his diaper, and if you approach him, he warns you off with a plaintive "No, no..." until he's done.

fluidity
I see the sculpture in the wan cloudy light of a winter afternoon, so I don't realize at first that it has color sliding through it - a pale lavender flowing like liquid through its metal veins.

impressionistic
The view from the window is one gray smear, like a Monet painting of London.

palimpsest
I like historical tours of downtown where you learn that criminals were hanged and traitors shot in the peaceful square where people now eat their lunches by the fountain and text each other.

pragmatically
His expectation of instantaneous results have given way to pragmatism; there's so much more work to do, so much farther to go.

prioritizing
I had a feeling she'd stop being angry with me, because she'd want to know how my date went.

shortcut
He's been asked to sort his toys neatly into drawers. But there are so many of them, and he'd rather be playing than organizing his room. So he labels one drawer the 'everything drawer' and piles as much stuff as possible into it. Unfortunately it doesn't pass inspection.