wren library at trinity college, cambridge, englandimage via diary of a dandelion diva
the other day someone who sometimes seems to know me better than myself suggested i look into working at the main branch of our public library. at first i balked at the idea. i imagined myself bored, stunted, and trapped— bloodlessly gathering up misplaced books, tediously putting call numbers on book spines. but then i really thought about it. i have always loved libraries, even the ones lacking grandeur and history, even the ones that are a depressing block of drab concrete from the outside. because on the inside there is always the surprise and triumph of discovery. even if it's a tiny discovery...just one line, from one book that i would have otherwise never come across, that maybe i won't even check out, that maybe i will never come across again in my lifetime, but that one line flaps on and on inside me like bird wings on a windowpane, desperate and relentless, forever remembered. i can spend hours walking the aisles, running my fingers across titles and names i don't know, until something flashes out at me and i stop and take a closer look. i don't get embarrassed to sit on the floor. i like the eerie quiet. i like the smell of paper and metal. i like the feeling that arises when someone else wanders into the aisle that i have been occupying for a long while without anyone else present— it's part irritation, part bewilderment, part relief. i like the stamped due dates, resolute, non-negotiable. i like the lighting, sometimes pale and morbid, sometimes warm and softly yellow. but mostly i guess it's about being surrounded, overwhelmed really, by the hard work of writers... a seemingly endless inventory of writers working out their ideas, obsessing on their characters, their landscapes, their imagined places... fiction, non-fiction, reference, anthologies... it doesn't matter...a writer and a story...everywhere you turn.
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