The little AU: Interludes and Whispers: The transitory nature of man
The little AU: Interludes and Whispers: The transitory nature of man
slashfairy
~~
Not so much of a one to show his learning, Karl is not an uneducated man. He may not have finished uni, opting instead to try his hand at acting for a career, but he reads, he watches, and he learns from everything he does.
So he knows his word roots- not as a scholar of languages or a classically educated man would, but as someone who gets curious and finds he needs to know how one thing relates to another.
It strikes him, as he turns the calendar page on his desk, notes that it's the Vernal Equinox, and registers in the back of his mind somewhere that again today does not mean the slow slide into winter but the easy ramble toward summer. Vernal starts him on some thread of associations that takes him past roses and gardens to sheep -perhaps via The Little Prince and his Rose, and the sheep who tried to eat it, but he couldn't say for sure- to sheep in New Zealand, and how lambing isn't for another six months, to lambing itself, and the way they come out so nearly ready to stand, to Hunter as an infant slippery with vernix.
He puts the thought aside while filming, but later when he picks Hunter up from school the question of Spring comes up.
They go home to the grey house, but not for long- this long break is taking them back to the house on Bluff road. They pack the few things they need to bring with them, water the plants, make sure the sink's empty, the toilets flushed, and the trash taken out, then whistle up the dogs and pile into Karl's jeep.
The drive up the coast takes them past new vineyards and old sheep-fields. They talk about seasons, Hunter full of things he learned in school about axial tilt and "Esquinoxes", and how We're in one right now, Dad, an Esquinox, and Karl doesn't correct him. Easy enough to understand how reading Eskimo and Equinox could melt them together in a little boy's mind. Time enough to untangle them later.
After they get to the house, after walking the dogs on this beach that's so different from the Venice Beach house beach, after dinner and a bath and a story, when Hunter's asleep and Karl's heard from Orli and talked to Viggo, he goes to the big dictionary on the stand in the study and looks up the two words.
He'd expected them to be related, and maybe further back they were. But varnish, not as vernal, or Spring. Vernix, in the end, comes from the city of Berenice in ancient Cyrenaica, and is Greek in origin, while vernal comes from, well, from vern, which means Spring.
Spring does put a kind of gloss on the world, when it's not about the shoots thrusting aside the earth, and leaves creating themselves out of air and sunlight by the second. And varnish does preserve a kind of youth, keeping the wood that boats are made from strong and flexible and able to bear a ship across the surface of the earth on the wind's breath.
Six weeks, seven, and filming will be over. Maybe by then, mid-Spring, they'll have a week or two together, all three of them. That's when he'll renew his faith that however short and impermanent life as a whole is, each moment of it is the moment when eternal grace hovers just overhead, aching to fall into us and raise us up like new growth, like fine ideas, like dew evaporating off a rose.
previously: the December boy
next: Sometimes
slashfairy
~~
Not so much of a one to show his learning, Karl is not an uneducated man. He may not have finished uni, opting instead to try his hand at acting for a career, but he reads, he watches, and he learns from everything he does.
So he knows his word roots- not as a scholar of languages or a classically educated man would, but as someone who gets curious and finds he needs to know how one thing relates to another.
It strikes him, as he turns the calendar page on his desk, notes that it's the Vernal Equinox, and registers in the back of his mind somewhere that again today does not mean the slow slide into winter but the easy ramble toward summer. Vernal starts him on some thread of associations that takes him past roses and gardens to sheep -perhaps via The Little Prince and his Rose, and the sheep who tried to eat it, but he couldn't say for sure- to sheep in New Zealand, and how lambing isn't for another six months, to lambing itself, and the way they come out so nearly ready to stand, to Hunter as an infant slippery with vernix.
He puts the thought aside while filming, but later when he picks Hunter up from school the question of Spring comes up.
They go home to the grey house, but not for long- this long break is taking them back to the house on Bluff road. They pack the few things they need to bring with them, water the plants, make sure the sink's empty, the toilets flushed, and the trash taken out, then whistle up the dogs and pile into Karl's jeep.
The drive up the coast takes them past new vineyards and old sheep-fields. They talk about seasons, Hunter full of things he learned in school about axial tilt and "Esquinoxes", and how We're in one right now, Dad, an Esquinox, and Karl doesn't correct him. Easy enough to understand how reading Eskimo and Equinox could melt them together in a little boy's mind. Time enough to untangle them later.
After they get to the house, after walking the dogs on this beach that's so different from the Venice Beach house beach, after dinner and a bath and a story, when Hunter's asleep and Karl's heard from Orli and talked to Viggo, he goes to the big dictionary on the stand in the study and looks up the two words.
He'd expected them to be related, and maybe further back they were. But varnish, not as vernal, or Spring. Vernix, in the end, comes from the city of Berenice in ancient Cyrenaica, and is Greek in origin, while vernal comes from, well, from vern, which means Spring.
Spring does put a kind of gloss on the world, when it's not about the shoots thrusting aside the earth, and leaves creating themselves out of air and sunlight by the second. And varnish does preserve a kind of youth, keeping the wood that boats are made from strong and flexible and able to bear a ship across the surface of the earth on the wind's breath.
Six weeks, seven, and filming will be over. Maybe by then, mid-Spring, they'll have a week or two together, all three of them. That's when he'll renew his faith that however short and impermanent life as a whole is, each moment of it is the moment when eternal grace hovers just overhead, aching to fall into us and raise us up like new growth, like fine ideas, like dew evaporating off a rose.
previously: the December boy
next: Sometimes