Week in Seven Words #533

This covers the week of 4/5/20 - 4/11/20.

fidgeted

We set up a socially distanced movie night, each of us in our homes texting each other now and then. It's a mini-series adaptation of a book, and I think I would've normally liked it. Now I don't have patience for it.

hectoring

People being ungenerous and snide while telling others to just be kind.

oases

The seders are lovely. Each one an island of relative calm.

shortcuts

Last-minute cleaning. Most of it is actually cleaning; some of it involves stuffing unsorted papers into tote bags.

stalks

One volunteer gardener among the flowering plants that are almost as tall as she is.

storm-tossed

Hit by a tsunami of anxiety, and I don't handle it well.

timed

I know when it's 7 pm because that's when the cheering for healthcare workers starts up.

Week in Seven Words #532

This covers the week of 3/29/20 - 4/4/20.

attending

The convenience store is a cube of white light on a dark street. A masked cashier listens to 80s rock while staring out the window.

clanging

In every building on the block, people are at their windows cheering on healthcare workers. They shout, clap, whoop, bang on pots, and blow on trumpets and recorders. Overall, it's a cheerful sound, but I can't help thinking of jail inmates banging their metal cups against the bars.

distant

This feels like a lost springtime. There are blossoming trees and other kinds of loveliness, but it all seems out of reach, as if it's in a parallel world.

emergencies

Streets emptier and sirens more prevalent.

prettiness

A magnolia blossom cradled in the split trunk of a tree.

restlessness

I don't know where I want to walk. I just walk.

undermines

He wears gloves every time he needs to open a door. With a gloved hand he also pulls down his mask and scratches his face. 

Week in Seven Words #531

This covers the week of 3/22/20 - 3/28/20.

barrage

Social media: callousness, fear mongering, and a little bit of fun.

connects

They organize a worldwide hour of prayer. At such and such a time, say the following psalms, and know that even if you're alone in your room, others are praying with you.

dubiously

Masked dog walkers in the dark. They look furtive, as if they're doing something that's only borderline legal.

flinty

They're concerned but also feel a grim satisfaction over what they see as a long overdue humbling for arrogant humans.

groceries

At night, the grocery store is mostly empty. The few shoppers are listless, moving as if a breeze is pushing them about. A Beach Boys song plays in the background ("Good Vibrations"). From under shelves of snack foods, a rat emerges in a thick blur of motion. It vanishes under a shelf of drinks. 

islanded

They've recently made their yard more drought resistant. Islands of plants in the midst of small colorful rocks. They take refuge in it now, settling on folding chairs to breathe in the crisp air.

topical

Strangers asking me if I have enough toilet paper is something new.

Six Short Stories for a Chilly Evening

These probably won't warm you up. There's something bleak about them.

Title: Death of a Professor

Author: William Trevor

Where I Read It: The Hill Bachelors

A little vipers' pit of academia, where a prank obituary gets published about a professor, and he eventually finds out. Supposedly high-minded people mired in pettiness. From what I remember, any moments of grace in the story come from the professor's marriage, where it seems there's a genuine kindness, a sincere wish to protect feelings and cover up embarrassment.

Title: Gravel 

Author: Alice Munro

Where I Read It: Dear Life

She may have thought she could manage well enough. And I may indeed have thought that she could do anything she wanted to.

Two siblings live with their pregnant mom and her boyfriend by a gravel pit. The pit is just there, waiting to become the site of tragedy. The attempt to make sense of the events around the pit involves what-ifs that are haunting but impossible to resolve. Could the surviving sibling have rushed for help sooner? Did their mom's boyfriend know how to swim? Given how unreliable memory can be, the answers may be completely inaccessible. But the narrator's mind is still caught up in the questions, particularly, Why, why did it have to happen at all. Even if the narrator could somehow travel back in time and into another person's mind, what answers would there be?

Title: The Hospice

Author: Robert Aickman

Where I Read It: The Weird: A Compendium of Strange and Dark Stories

This story wraps you up in dread and eeriness. An unhealthy, creepy, stifling atmosphere.

The main character, Maybury, takes a shortcut and gets lost in a neighborhood of hedges and poor lighting where he's attacked by a cat-like creature. (Possibly a cat, but it's hard to tell. There's much that's hard to explain about this captivating story.) He comes across what may be some lodging for travelers:

THE HOSPICE
GOOD FOOD
SOME ACCOMMODATION

Even though it doesn't appear to be a medical establishment, there's a cloud of sickness over everything. The inhabitants live a kind of regimented, unwholesome existence that isn't fully explained. They gorge themselves at dinner, as if they're getting plumped up for someone else to feed on. The room Maybury is given is hot and has no windows. He's pressed into strange, uncomfortable interactions.

It's unclear what's real. But Maybury seems trapped, as do the others, physically and mentally. Maybury's entrapment begins even before he enters the hospice; it wasn't his idea to take the shortcut. Maybe the residents (prisoners?) of the hospice represent people caught in their own appetites and struggling like flies against sticky paper. That's only one possibility.

Title: Mrs. Manstey's View

Author: Edith Wharton

Where I Read It: Manhattan Noir 2

Perhaps at heart Mrs. Manstey was an artist; at all events she was sensible of many changes of color unnoticed by the average eye, and dear to her as the green of early spring was the black lattice of branches against a cold sulphur sky at the close of a snowy day. She enjoyed, also, the sunny thaws of March, when patches of earth showed through the snow, like inkspots spreading on a sheet of white blotting-paper; and, better still, the haze of boughs, leafless but swollen, which replaced the clear-cut tracery of winter.

Mrs. Manstey is a widow who lives in the back room of a boarding house. The view from her window is her world really, and Wharton captures all the interest and variety the character experiences even from this limited vantage. Then, in a neighboring property, a tall wall goes up...

Title: Some Letters for Ove Lindström

Author: Karin Tidbeck

Where I Read It: Jagannath

This story comes from an anthology that's like a small, odd but lovely tree in the corner of a yard. Each story is a fruit, and some are lush and full with a complex flavor. Others you hesitate to bite into. You push aside some of the fragile branches and find a pair of eyes blinking at you.

In this story, the main character's estranged father has passed away. She had cut off contact with him because of his excessive drinking. Years ago, when the character (whose name is Viveka) was a small child, her mother left the family. There had always been a touch of otherworldly mystery about the mother.

Viveka, who is in between jobs, returns to the place out in the country where she was born. She settles there, cuts herself of – or is being cut off, because what happens in this story feels like a mix of personal crisis with a pressure from some external force. Like a fantasy, as if someone hitting rock bottom will be recalled to another world or another type of existence, instead of just sinking into unglamorous isolation.

Title: Tough Men

Author: Edna O'Brien

Where I Read It: The Love Object

The story portrays a blighted adulthood and a promise of manhood (and its stature or rewards) that hasn't materialized. A shopkeeper waits with two other men for someone else to come by with what seems to be a good investment opportunity. The shabbiness of the scam, the frustration and anger boiling up to no effect are what stood out most for me.

Week in Seven Words #530

This covers the week of 3/15/20 - 3/21/20.

forage

They trawl through several stores, buying bottles of water where they can.

hurrying

Her semester cut short, she's flying home on short notice from thousands of miles away.

insecurity

His temper is fraying. He's stressed out about the tanking economy and deeply worried about his job.

mixed

We pass joggers, kids playing basketball, a temporary memorial to synagogues destroyed during the Holocaust, many trees, an obelisk, rows of stores closed.

peacefully

On a bench in the garden, a woman is reading. Three patient, relaxed dogs are nestled around her.

unstick

Ducks with white and black backs peel away from the water.

uptick

Some people are going about with masks. More than during the previous week. They give the streets an eerie feeling, normal daily activities mixed with strangeness and unease.

Week in Seven Words #529

This covers the week of 3/8/20 - 3/14/20.

cancellations

In one day, most of my calendar evaporates. One cancellation after another. Businesses close. Classes are cut short.

elsewhere

I ask her why she's looking through Zillow. "Escapism," she says.

reportedly

Mixed messages from politicians, pundits, health experts. I wonder if I'm underestimating the seriousness of this virus. Or maybe it hasn't fully sunk in that we're in deeply unusual circumstances and nobody knows how any of this will turn out.

restlessly

Distracted during synagogue services, my eyes and mind roaming the room. 

speculations

We're in a building that tomorrow we won't be able to enter. We talk about the virus and how people think it spreads. We have little idea of what we're talking about. Sharing things we've heard on the news produces a mixed effect: heightened anxiety combined with the relief of unburdening some of our anxieties.

stockpile

The supermarket is clotted with thick lines. People are stocking up.

strangeness

By this point, I'm used to working from home. But it's not the same now. There's an intensified uncertainty and a constriction. The city where I live has become much less familiar.

Week in Seven Words #528

This covers the week of 3/1/20 - 3/7/20.

coughing

I'm starting to look at snifflers and coughers suspiciously. Like the young guy sitting at the other end of the room who keeps coughing wretchedly into his hand. To the person he's sharing a table with, he says he's fine. But he does admit later on, with a sigh, that he's tired.

dated

We use the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine to look at Apple's website from the 1990s. It had a blocky table-based layout. It looked so amazingly clunky and amateurish (by today's standards). 

horror

The students say they don't want to learn more about the Holocaust, because it's too horrible. At least they see the horror in what happened.

overlooked

"Does he ignore me because I'm not as smart as my brother? Is that why he barely talks to me?"

reminder
The dog flops onto my lap, face-up, to remind me that she hasn't gotten tired of belly rubs yet.

unpleasant

I cringe at the dynamics in that home, the disrespect that flows casually to the mom, the vulgar comments about women and girls.

viral

Two things people are talking about all the time: the virus and the presidential election. The presidential election and the virus.