The Spiral and Circle  submitted by Danielle McManus

Let me ask you a question: Which is more important, the character in a story or
the plot?  Who you are or what happens to you?  I've often wondered.  And in all
my life's wonderings, the answer stays just beyond, running with the receding
shadows.
I once asked a professor of theology who told me that I had missed the point,
which really told me that he didn't know either.  I then asked if having always
to be right was a sign of intellectual insecurity, and, plainly seeing the barb,
he chased me away, all the while muttering about pretentious idiots who thought
disrespect made them powerful.  I assumed he was reprimanding himself and left
with only a barely contained smile before bursting into giggles and gasps
outside his smartly shut door.  I began to feel a twinge of triumph and wondered
what it meant about my own character.
I saw the professor again several weeks later, though he acted as though he didn't
know me.  I marveled at his ability to outwardly make a show of snubbing
unpleasant experiences, the people who brought them, and the emotions that lined
them.  I marveled at this mainly because I now realized all the times I'd done
it myself.  I marveled because he and I were not to separated, and suddenly all
the faces around me looked out of eyes that had seen my soul in their own.
Or perhaps the professor truly didn't know me.  Perhaps my moment's vision of
human unity had come from nothing but my own sense of importance.  I've often
wondered.
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