Yesterday, I stepped into another dimension, a bastion of solitude where the silence was nearly tangible - TANGIBLE!!! I had stepped into the University Library.
You'd think that - given my predilection for books and bookstores and libraries and old-book smells and quiet places - I would have been there already, but I hadn't. Don't ask why. There really is no good answer.
Anyhoo -
As I took in the library's silent splendor (2nd and 3rd floors only; the 1st floor is way too noisy) and acclimated to the comforting presence of books, I found myself a lonely place at which to plant myself for several hours. It was at this desk that I encountered a perplexing problem: graffiti.
I was in a library, not an out-of-business gas station. Why is there grafiti in a library? Why are there graffiti-drawing delinquents at the library? Oh, well - better in the library than on the streets. Some of the graffiti was vulgar, some was slightly motivational (see picture above), and some was pitiable ("I love Liz" and "I like Vivianna." Wow, Vivianna, not only is your boyfriend a graffiti-drawer, he only "like"s you, not "love," "LIKE." Liz's boyfriend may be a graffiti-drawer, but he "LOVE"s her.)
Surrounding me are aisles after aisles of bookshelf after bookshelf with . . . books? Hmmm . . . some are books and some are compilations of journals ("New England Journal of Medicine"-lovers rejoice!!). A quick check of the library catalog reveals that I'm not likely to find Barnes and Noble fare here. A search on Jim Butcher yields the following results: "Ecoutourism, NGOs And Development: A Critical Analysis" and "The Moralisation Of Tourism: Sun, Sand--And Saving The World?" Unless Jim Butcher moonlights as an article-capitalizing, tourism-writer, I don't think I'm going to find any authors I know here. But wait! A search on "H.P. Lovecraft" yields something promising - "Necromicon: The Best Weird Tales of H.P. Lovecraft," which has a status of "Lost and Paid" (probably lost by a graffiti-drawer), and "Supernatural Horror in Literature." Both these books are on the fourth floor. This is a surprise to me. I had no idea there was a fourth floor. Maybe I'd have known this if I took the elevator instead of the stairs.
As my time in the library for the day draws to a close, I realize two things about the silence in the library.
(1) The silence, the absolute lack of noise sucked away like light into a black hole, makes you forget that there is a louder, more stressful world beyond its walls. You can easily sit at one graffiti-engraved desk for hours and only by chance become aware of the passage of time when you happen to look up and see that the skies are pitch black and it is now well after 8:00 pm. Don't do this. Walking back to the dorm in the dark with the typhus-carrying cats is not cool.
(2) The silence makes you forget that there are people around you; consequently, you don't notice the person in the desk next to you until you've already begun singing "Je Suis un Homme" under your breath and have gotten to "a la guerre," at which point you shut up rather quickly. Don't ask me how I know.
As my time in the library for the day draws to a close, I realize two things about the silence in the library.
(1) The silence, the absolute lack of noise sucked away like light into a black hole, makes you forget that there is a louder, more stressful world beyond its walls. You can easily sit at one graffiti-engraved desk for hours and only by chance become aware of the passage of time when you happen to look up and see that the skies are pitch black and it is now well after 8:00 pm. Don't do this. Walking back to the dorm in the dark with the typhus-carrying cats is not cool.
(2) The silence makes you forget that there are people around you; consequently, you don't notice the person in the desk next to you until you've already begun singing "Je Suis un Homme" under your breath and have gotten to "a la guerre," at which point you shut up rather quickly. Don't ask me how I know.
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