The little AU: Winter Hopes: Vanity
The little AU: Winter Hopes: Vanity
slashfairy
~~
"Everybody is vain," he'd said, in some interview, "worried about how people perceive them," rambling on as is his way when he's talking extemporaneously, ellipses and dashes audible between the little grimaces as he reaches for words to dress his thoughts in.
He rambles in his dreams, roams from pillar to post, so tired he lets them take him where they will, until he wakes confused as to time and place and doesn't really realize he's home until after he's been to the bathroom, run his hand through his hair, and come out looking for mate, dogs, lovers.
Any anchor, he thinks, any port in a storm, and knows the storms are yet to come for this year, you ain't seen nothin' yet, no sirree.
Still rambling. Still tired.
Karl comes from behind the counter to hug him: so small, he's become, an early version of his older self, and let him become that older self, please, Karl prays...
Orli brings the kettle of hot water over, pours it over the mate leaves in the gourd, puts it back. Pushes it over to him, then [not quite] leads him over to the dining room table where the seats have acquired cushions while he's been back East. That he doesn't comment on the cushion, only sighs a bit when he sits down, tells Orlando that they were the right thing to do.
He tells them little bits- how he muffed a line here, dropped his voice too low there; how he wonders if Dylan's song came across the way he meant it to. They let him go on for a few moments, knowing it for what it is- the rechecking of a performance from vanity, yes, but also from knowing oneself to be the vessel into which someone else's life has been poured, for the space of time of the performance.
It is empty, vain, he thinks someplace in the back of his mind where the thoughts tumble and churn, it is empty to be always concerned with how one looks- and yet only the empty vessel can carry the fire, which is no vanity at all.
After a while he is like himself, nearly, just tired from travel, from work, from family things. He eats a bit of what they fix, then lets them talk him into having one more quiet day at home, instead of taking on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune like some doomed Shakespearean character.
A cracked vessel holds only emptiness is the last thing he thinks before falling asleep on the deck, letting the winter sun fall on him, grateful for its yellow pale warmth. His hands gesture once before coming to rest atop the Navajo blanket over his lap- a gesture that, if it were to be finished, might be that of a potter finishing a pot, whole and simple and complete, a pot whose emptiness is no vanity at all, but the highest of uses: made to serve something else, well.
quote is from this 2005(?) interview
previously: Moment
next: Patience
slashfairy
~~
"Everybody is vain," he'd said, in some interview, "worried about how people perceive them," rambling on as is his way when he's talking extemporaneously, ellipses and dashes audible between the little grimaces as he reaches for words to dress his thoughts in.
He rambles in his dreams, roams from pillar to post, so tired he lets them take him where they will, until he wakes confused as to time and place and doesn't really realize he's home until after he's been to the bathroom, run his hand through his hair, and come out looking for mate, dogs, lovers.
Any anchor, he thinks, any port in a storm, and knows the storms are yet to come for this year, you ain't seen nothin' yet, no sirree.
Still rambling. Still tired.
Karl comes from behind the counter to hug him: so small, he's become, an early version of his older self, and let him become that older self, please, Karl prays...
Orli brings the kettle of hot water over, pours it over the mate leaves in the gourd, puts it back. Pushes it over to him, then [not quite] leads him over to the dining room table where the seats have acquired cushions while he's been back East. That he doesn't comment on the cushion, only sighs a bit when he sits down, tells Orlando that they were the right thing to do.
He tells them little bits- how he muffed a line here, dropped his voice too low there; how he wonders if Dylan's song came across the way he meant it to. They let him go on for a few moments, knowing it for what it is- the rechecking of a performance from vanity, yes, but also from knowing oneself to be the vessel into which someone else's life has been poured, for the space of time of the performance.
It is empty, vain, he thinks someplace in the back of his mind where the thoughts tumble and churn, it is empty to be always concerned with how one looks- and yet only the empty vessel can carry the fire, which is no vanity at all.
After a while he is like himself, nearly, just tired from travel, from work, from family things. He eats a bit of what they fix, then lets them talk him into having one more quiet day at home, instead of taking on the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune like some doomed Shakespearean character.
A cracked vessel holds only emptiness is the last thing he thinks before falling asleep on the deck, letting the winter sun fall on him, grateful for its yellow pale warmth. His hands gesture once before coming to rest atop the Navajo blanket over his lap- a gesture that, if it were to be finished, might be that of a potter finishing a pot, whole and simple and complete, a pot whose emptiness is no vanity at all, but the highest of uses: made to serve something else, well.
quote is from this 2005(?) interview
previously: Moment
next: Patience