A neat experience + Drabble

[rushthatspeaks]

My wife and I were walking in Harvard Square this evening looking for somewhere to eat dinner (we eventually wound up at La Creperie, which made us very happy) and passed a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk. This is a common occurrence in Harvard Square. He had a sign up, informing us that he was a homeless veteran, and he was reading a book, which is also relatively common among the Harvard Square itinerant population. As is my habit, I bent over to scan the title of his book, because I am inveterately nosy about what other people are reading, and then grabbed Ruth's arm. "We have to give that man some money," I said.

"Why?" she quite reasonably asked.

"Look what he's reading," I said.

I actually recognized it before seeing the title, having spent many long and laborious hours with that paperback. His copy was battered and beaten and dirty and obviously used, but still legible.

The Shadow of the Torturer, by Gene Wolfe.

We gave him some money. I feel that anyone who will take time out from collecting change to put food in their mouths in order to read Gene Wolfe deserves a bit of compensation.

He says he intends to go right through them.

Somehow, this makes me very happy.



The Beautiful Room is Empty

He never used to care about the rooms he used. Luxury hotels were quietly soft. Barracks were loud. Gingetsu and Ran were welcoming, always; others weren’t, or were. So it went.

His sleeping quarters, now, must have a window.

The window needs to open, just a little. He needs to be able to see it from the bed.

Sometimes the shape of twisted wire sits on the sill; sometimes it hangs on a nail. So it goes. He has taken the door off the birdcage entirely. No one will ever close it again.

He dreams that she sits in it.

Comments

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

1. I love that drabble.

2. I would have definitely contributed to that guy's Wolfe habit too.

[homasse.livejournal.com]

Awwww!

[xsmoonshine.livejournal.com]

Wow, this is very nice. Poor Kazuhiko usually gets forgotten in fanfic. Thank you.

[rysmiel.livejournal.com]

Most excellent homeless person. Around Cambridge and London one tends to see a majority of those who read reading Pratchett, which is not IMO near so cool.

[sovay]

On the train back from D.C. this weekend,* there was a man reading The Shadow of the Torturer while we were both waiting in line in the cafe car. I said I approved of his reading choices and he gave me a very startled look. Maybe it's something in the air.


* From the same trip, and in fact the same walk to the cafe car: two women, one very likely the other's mother, and two small children sitting at a table. One of the children is a girl, about four years old; she's sticking her head under the table and her grandmother is trying to coax her back up again. The other is a boy, maybe six years old, possibly seven or a very slender eight, in serious argument mode. And his mother is saying to him, "No, sweetie, it's true. You come from a long line of Republicans. Mommy broke away. And her Mommy broke away. But her Mommy?" And the boy is saying adamantly, "No! It's not true! I don't believe it!" And so forth. It's good to know they start young . . .

[yhlee.livejournal.com]

Oh! That's lovely. The birdcage. Oh.

(Madly in love with Clover.)