Word: sinuous
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...from dimmed-out Manhattan streets, they encountered a blinding white light. "That's day," said the patroness of surrealism, Peggy Guggenheim, shielding her eyes from a mass of blue-white electric bulbs. "Isn't it awful?" "Day" illuminated a "painting library" (a large room enclosed in a sinuous purple tarpaulin), where art lovers were invited to sit on narrow, legless, armless rockers, and by turning unframed canvases hung from triangular columns, study the exhibits from any angle they desired...
Into its tanks went sea creatures: sharks, channel bass, tropical lungfish, giant morays, sea turtles, penguins, alligators, crabs. There were monstrous fish, fierce and implacable; sullen, unfriendly fish; fish that clung like parasites to other fish, twisting their sinuous tails in the green water, staring at the shadowy faces beyond the glass. The city gave them 300,000 gallons of water a day-clean salt water from the sea, harbor water, fresh water from the upstate mountain streams...
Citizens poking along in the gloom of the blackout were scared stiff when they smelled pungent jungle smells, saw wild eyes glinting in the darkness, felt sinuous, furry flanks sliding past their legs...
Aftermath is the hour of silence after shock, still resonant with annihilation. In it Verdun's great orchestra is reduced, and human life withdrawn to its deepest, simplest roots. Book 17, Vorge Against Quinette (first half of Aftermath) is a cruel and sinuous piece of chamber music by a few instruments. Its theme is death. Book 18, The Sweets of Life, is even quieter, like a gentle, ruminative improvisation. Its theme is love and all that expands from it. Yet on Romains' great talents, these deep and quiet books are scarcely less demanding than Verdun...
...hammock. Sometimes a car approaching would seem to drop clear out of sight with an undulation of the roadway. Yet the bridge was strong. Heavy winds failed to shake it; but when lighter, intermittent breezes swept in from the open Sound, it was agitated by a peculiar weaving, sinuous motion that its builder said looked like the movement of a snake under a rug. Some people got seasick at once when the bridge began to sway; some enjoyed the weird sensation, high above the water, with the wind howling and the bridge throbbing as if it were alive. Its eminent...