As a librarian for twenty years,* my primary task, aside from demonstrating the delete key for the digitally dense, was making people shut up. This, as I’ve often dreamily reminisced, is the most satisfying form of authority that can be bestowed on anyone. Better than making grunts at Fort Bragg crawl in the mud, better than waterboarding Banksy, better than towing a Tesla. Forcing yammering dimwits to stop Facetiming with Tanya or to curb the squealing of their sugar-stuffed children was a public service I would have happily provided for free.
Libraries need quiet. Not just for the better concentration of those researching Beanie Baby values, stalking an ex on Tinder, or browsing regional mugshots, but for our friend pictured above. Libraries aim to create spaces of quiet contemplation for society’s most troubled citizens to work it all out. It could be a vagabond can collector, who needs to commune with the ghost of Tom Bosley through his Pokemon. Maybe it’s a frazzled soup kitchen server, sifting through the CIA messages intercepted by her microchipped pedicure. Or perhaps it’s a traumatized veteran, musing on the right mantra to send him to the mothership. The library is their isolation tank, their orgone closet, their time-out corner.
It had been one flimsy day for our teen patron here. We’ve all had them. And Dog knows I spent many hours of my miserable teens in the school library, hiding myself from the hormonal underclassmen performing headlocks and suplexes on each other in the courtyard. I imagine our friend here had some outside assistance in making his day flimsy. I’m happy he’s found sanctuary from the Philistines. May he find peace among the stacks, find his strength, and may any tormenter flimsying his day be vanquished. With nunchucks, ideally.
- A.H.
*Those with capital-L degrees in Library Science do not like when we assistant library toilet scrubbers refer to ourselves as librarians, but since I no longer work under their tyrannical rule, those cataloging crypt keepers can go get saddle stitched.
(And let’s not forget Ashley’s website, jam-packed with portraits and other drawings, his highly-affordable prints and books currently available, his eagerness for your portrait commission, and his contact email, thrdgll@gmail.com, where he longs to hear from you.)