March 08, 2003

Libraries

I grew up, in a way, in a library. We lived in a small duplex with two bedrooms for the five of us. I think that at that time our family owned maybe a full room of books, newspapers, and magazines. Both my parents are teachers, but of a different type so none of their books overlap - my mom has scores of children's books while my dad has shelves of political science and history books.

When I was a child we lived about five minutes from the local public library; it would have been about thirty seconds away if it hadn't been for the interstate that separated us. During the summer my parents would take us there almost everyday and we took part in the summer reading club, which was basically a clever way to get children to read by bribing them with coupons to Baskin Robbins and other treats such as putting their name on the wall of the library.

Well, it worked. When I was in high school I used to go to a local college library when I needed to study and I would just usually browse around before I sat down to study, which meant that I never actually did. There weren't a lot of students there and it was sort of like a tomb so some of my friends were freaked out by how lonely it was. But here's the thing - it wasn't lonely at all. I could walk up and down the aisles all day and never feel lonely because I was surrounded by the ideas, the work, the passion of thousands of people that I had never met. It was sort of like a really casual dinner party to me.

In college I worked at the main library there - a mammoth building with secret passages, freaky special collections, and a wide cast of characters. I must admit that some amazement at the simple order of libraries was lost when I was the one sorting the books, but I soon grew it back after I graduated.

There is something magical about libraries. They remind me of a story by Borges in which all the answers to every question are contained in an infinite library that is the world. If you stay and read enough in a library and just be quiet you might just doing something amazing - find yourself.

March 8, 2003 08:27 AM