Authority Essay

Authority Essay

College Composition

by Danielle Vine

 

Walking through the front door can be a trick.  The wind is all too happy to take the door from you, so a firm grasp is necessary.  Only one of the two large oak doors opens, and if you aren’t careful, then you’ll kindly have your face smashed in by someone leaving.  Time is a great teacher, and I’ve learned the trick.  Swing the door open and stay on the outside of it.  Peer around the corner, and if all is clear, only then can you enter. 

If you chose to enter the library through the children’s department then the doors would be glass – much more helpful.  However, I want to drop off my returns before I go looking for my new books.  If I chose to drop them off after I had accumulated my new treasures, then I’d have to tote them around with me the whole time, and that can really wear on the shoulders.

If I stop to talk with the man at the returns desk, then I will add at least another ten minutes to my time there.  So unless I have little to do, then I duck out of his way and avoid eye-contact.  I know better.

Once in, I have forty-five minutes until closing time.  Perfect.  Although doing my business at the end of the day annoys some of the librarians, it always gets done faster and more effectively.  With less crowds, I don’t have to worry about squeezing around people in the aisles or waiting for a computer.

If I chose to use the computers at the library, there is always the chance that I will have to wait in line.  Or that the old computers will crash, or freeze up.  That’s why I always do my computer work at home.  I find any and all books that I will want through the online URSUS system, and copy down their local call numbers.  I bring that slip of paper with me and find them accordingly.  Only if I think of something last minute do I use their computers.  And if they don’t have something I want?  Then I order it and wait for the email that confirms that it is waiting for me at the front desk.

The elevator is always a bad idea.  In the time it takes for it to come to you, you could be halfway up the stairs.  By the time the doors finally close behind you, you could be on the floor you want to be on.  By the time the door reopen on your expected floor, you could be cracking that looked for book open and smelling its pages.  Unless you have a hard time with stairs, the elevator is a bad idea. 

Once I’ve gathered all of my books, I head to the front desk and show my I.D. card.  Much faster than my actual library card.  The scanning strip on the library card always gives them trouble, and it often takes several tries. One look at my name on my I.D. card and they are all set.

I request my items from their hold shelf, and take my new books out of my bag for them to scan.  I make a bit of small talk with the librarian while she scans my books – just to pass the time while she scans my books (not because I’m actually interested in her cats).  Then I head back to the front door, check outside for anyone hiding on the other side of the door, and descend the steps. 

 

All within 15 minutes so that I don’t have to pay the parking meter.

Week 14 - #1

           Succession

#1  She’s all ready for bed, though she still has a few hours before sleep.  Pajama bottoms, ratty tank top, freshly washed face, messy bun.  Facebook to check and laundry to do, and she’s the one to get it all done. 

“Did you not like my music?” she asks a roommate. 

A vague reply and a question in return. 

“No, I don’t care what we listen to.”  She finishes the conversation.  So not going there.

#2 She knows that she’s behind, and she’s pretty stressed about it.  So what does she do?  The headphones go in, and her project comes out.  She sits in front of it and works away.  She only stops every once in a while to pop some more food in her mouth.  Facebook is by her side, but she’s not paying much attention to it.  She swings from one end of the spectrum to the other – changing her face from deeply concerned (brows creased and biting her lip), to carefree (tapping her foot to the music and giggling at something on her computer screen).  Swinging from one end of the spectrum to the other. 

#3 Rushing to her shelf, she rustles through a stack of papers.  “Now this is getting annoying.”  Without being asked, she continues, “I can’t find my paper!” After checking a few loose papers, she grabs a stack and sits down with it, turning them furiously, stopping only to inspect and reject.  She pushes the stack from her lap, strewing it across her bed.  Her legs swing over the mattress and rest on the floor.  Her head falls into her hands and she sniffs. 

“Are you crying?” asks a roommate. 

“No.” 

“Yeah you are.” 

“No, this time I’m really not.”  She lifts her head from her hands to prove the fact. 

Messaging her temples, she sits for a few minutes before picking up a loose paper by her side.  “There it is!”

Prompt #64

The wind blows in my face, and gently breaks my resolve to stay in the fresh air.  Something gets caught in my hair, and I run my fingers through the strands to pluck it out.  A thorn.  The wind took it from its home and threw it at me, from where?  I retrace the steps of the wind to find out.

The tear-stained face of a child.  Most of the reasons that moves a child to cry are reasons that do not last long.  A scraped knee, a sudden burst of anger or sadness.  But not these tears.  These tears were not born from a childish passion or a foolish fancy.  These tears were birthed on the day the father walked out, and they will never stop falling.

The source of the thorn can’t be far now.  A winding dirt road will lead me to its mother.  The mother of a thorn must be bitter, bitter indeed.

The day he left, his wife fainted in surprise and shock.  How could she not know that he was spending his nights with another?  It was a holiday – ruined forever for her and her children.  He asked her to pretend for his sake, for the sake of the day. She refused, how could he think she wouldn’t?

The road is riddled with holes on my way to this thorn bush.  I stumble, and the winding road does not forgive my misstep.  My knees are bloodied, but I cannot stop.  My need to find the mother of the thorn lifts me gently from my knees, drives me, pushes me on.

He walked out, but it didn’t stop there.  Oh for the simplicity of a father who could not be found!  But no, torturous agony was there lot.  Miserable creature that he had become, his greatest pleasure was to make his own children suffer.  If their suffering meant his old wife’s suffering, then his goal was achieved.  Who can lose that much of their soul?  How can a heart forget?

My heart beats faster as I near a bend in the road, and smell that sharp and metallic smell.  Is it the thorn bush I'm looking for?  Or is it the blood oozing from my knees?

He is descending into the abyss every day, and every day I’ll continue to struggle with forgiveness.  His children will never be the same for it, and neither will his old wife.  Perhaps she will find love again – love as it should have been in the first place.  Or perhaps she will stay as she is – hoping for someone and attempting to please men, setting a poor standard for her children to live up to.  

The thorn bush is not a bush – it’s a tree.  The thorns are ready to release and find new homes, nestled in the flesh of others.  Burying themselves deep in the warm blood that gives life and the prospect of hope.  Birthing pain, and infection, and disease.  Why is this their lot, why do they perform this task?  I suppose it is because they are thorns.

Prompt #65

The box itself is cardboard – but a lively print decorates it’s surface to fool perspective buyers.  

Spread over the contents is a plastic bag that once held a trinket I bought in Gettysburg.  The trinket is gone, but the bag with colored pictures and words remains.

There is a stack of letters tied in ribbon.  I haven’t rid myself of them yet.  They are too heavy with memories for me to lift.

There is a dried daisy chain that always makes me smile.  She was so good at making these, then looping them around her friend’s heads.  Entwining hearts and weeds in one fluid motion.

Driftwood yes, from a beach I’ve forgotten.  How lucky I am to visit them often enough for them to run together in my mind.

A string of yellow beads, yellow being my favorite color once.  A thoughtful gift that lasted longer than the obsession of youthfulness.

These all tell of a little girl, pieces from her life.  She was innocent, happy, pure.  But those days are gone, forever perhaps.  Someday someone might come and put that sweet spirit back where it was before.  Not all of these things can be erased, the ocean breeze, the thoughts that accompany yellow.   Pieces, small and insignificant, but they are the pieces of a whole.

Prompt #63

It isn’t the hum-drum hours of work that we crave.  Minutes in a routine job pass slowly  -  sometimes agonizingly so. 

It isn’t the pleasant but forgetful hours of sleep that we think back on, though they are everything to a tired man.

Nor is it the moments we are forced to wait, and to be alone, forced into boredom.

It’s the moments we spend with the people that mean something to us, these people cause an hour to take on the heaviness of eternity.  In the hours when words are said that we’ll never forget – it’s those hours that we long for and hope for.  It’s with an excess of these moments a soul grows fat and thankless.  It’s without these moments that some grow restless with longing, starving for affection and fulfillment.