My Various Random Ramblings

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The room is silent. All I have on my screen are these 14 words. Shelves and shelves, of everything. The journal of cellular plastics to the left, all 12 volumes. Eastman Kodak co, journals of photographic silence. A slight warbling of the air conditioner.

I would have never thought that popular photography would take up three whole shelves, each full of red books with non-uniform thickness and the occasional addendum sticking up out the top. A slight rustle of another turning of a page. A page of what? Photography, oceanography, scientology, the next Harry Potter? As I concentrate, there it is again. A slight warbling of the air conditioner.

Some journals are uniform and boring, all the same color, all the same height, all the same. Others vary, colorful and brightness, worn and faded, fresh and NEW,  and some just plain awkward. One book lies on its side at the end of the shelf. Discarded? No, more forgotten. A one volume series. The book that has no place. A quantum book, between two call numbers, on the barrier of the shelf, untouched and dusty. How long have some of these been here? None so long as that noise, it comes again. The slight warbling of the air conditioner.

To the right, outside the icy portal, the worn glass, is the worn ground. The worn ground. A walkway every ant must use, to sustain, to keep in touch, to gain new touch, to do anything. Passing west, coming east. The north and south are neglected, one sits as a useless concrete field of metal bushes, the other is a tall black barrier blocking the sights and sounds of machinery, diesel, dirt, and the working class.

A newcomer approaches the space. A man with a book, worn, old and beaten, pulls a chair up to the window and plops down. Now also in the busy silence, joining the concert of turning pages, light footsteps, the pattering of keys, THAT noise. That old, not-endearing warbling of the air conditioner. A new noise in the distance, the backup beeper, the notifier to stay clear of the demons behind the fence or face the wrath of an invisible driver in a black glass box, not seeing you, you not seeing him. The newcomer pulls a rolling footstool up, making that moving metal noise. Keys jangle and a door closes, the story unknown.

The wooden desk sits here, all day, every day of the year, the only communication given being the etched words on the side: Mr. Lac Boo. Q. Mr. Lac Booq sees no visitors, has no friends, only the traveling writer to put his laptop upon him and use as an arm rest. The only warmth is the heat from a laptop isolated in one small section, its user hunched over trying to not fall asleep.

Twenty people in silence. Invisible between the rows of books, hiding in desks and under desks. Silent busy worker bees working on nothing. Some just sit there staring at the ceiling for no apparent reason.

Out the window, in the far, far distance is a lump on the horizon. A grey mound peeking out over the top of a city, diametrically opposed to the machine made sky scrapers. A random wonder of nature randomly placed in the middle of a state, only fifteen miles away from one of the largest cities in the south, only 15 miles away from my frosted ancient window. So many man made towers much higher and flashier but no where near as impressive as nature’s tower.
Towers of books. Rows of them. Millions of them. More than one could read in a life time. Yet all completely perfectly sorted. Yet one person can still find one on their own without launching a search and rescue team via odd series of numbers spread across multiple buildings and floors. All the time spent, in organizing the books, in building the shelves, in moving the shelves into the building, in building the building, in writing the books, in editing the books, in publishing the books, in reviewing the books, in reading the books, millions of man hours put into just ink and paper, the tradition being continued here in this same building in this same chair, by hundreds of people.

A LOUDSPEAKER BREAKS IN, MR. JOHN DOE, PLEASE RETURN TO THE CIRCULATION DESK. And back to silence. Except that warbling of the air conditioner.

Mr. Lac Booq and newcomer are still here after two hours. Mr. Lac Booq will be here for two hours more and is available to meet anytime of day, every day of the week. Ding. A book cart slowly rolls out, the wheels bumping and jostling on the threshold. It wanders the shelves, stopping sporadically to unload someone’s last research project right next to someone else’s forgotten one. There is a whole shelf of them. Probably written once, read once, and forgotten twice.

It is raining, yet the ants continue to stream by but now with round black circles sliding and bumping, playing Plinko in the rain. The game will continue, in perpetuity, all day, ants eventually popping their antenna out from inside the circle. After watching long enough if I look away I feel like I am moving, like I am one of the ants following the scent trail, on to the next food source, not with any particular destination or purpose, like the book sitting sideways on the tip of the shelf.

Man has put so much time on paper. Yet here comes the internet and we start trashing it. Bound books each have their own story outside the story, each bump mark on the cover, each dog-eared page or underline has a creator, each cover carefully laid out in an attempt to grab a potential reader. The foreword and afterword, the table of contents, the index, the sidebar with the square picture of the author on it, all silently enhancing the story within. Unlike that warbling air conditioner.

Then there are the odd books. “The Whole Internet”, written 1995, 200 pages long. “Designing Web Audio and other things that don’t actually exist” “Internet Yellow Pages: Or, I got evicted and had to change my address again.” Does anyone clean a library? Is it a mortal sin to throw away a book? I guess they are all just a slice of life, temporal, history. Entertainment. Then there are those that are timeless. The novel. The newspaper. Reflections on the time, not just about the time. But there are also the time-less books. The books that no one will read past their publication date, the Goosebumps and Magic Tree House kids, the books that in one-hundred years will be novelties of nothing, collected stamps.

It’s dark outside, windows no longer frosty but opaque. Tis now the very witching time of night, students doing the bitter business that should have been done in day. The ants are gone, the machines stand still, the city vanished, yet the room is as quiet as before. The pitter patter of keys, the turning of pages, the chime of the elevator, and finally, at last, the room is cold enough, the air conditioner quits, and so should I.

Except, I am one of the ants. I must go on, finish in due course, follow the trail, do my work, put words on paper, finish the race. Or; I could just be the book on the tip of the shelf, non-enhancing, boring.

There are many types of spaces. Busy ones, empty ones, calm ones, tense ones; vast spaces, small spaces. But never boring spaces. Every space has a story. How it was built, what it is used for, the story of the people who use it, the future of the space, why it is; some stories are simple, those of nature, or of still life. Some have meaning, some superficial, unimportant, of the moment.

Sitting on a rock on top of a mountain, overlooking a valley; the sun beating down on you yet the air is cool and light; the fresh smell of pine needles, rock, clean air. A lone bird, circling, waiting, observing, hovering, barely moving, just like you. The height, the sheer awe from being higher than anything else, anyone else, yet realizing people have been higher, that this world came from something, someone for which this is an ordinary view. Reminicing of the tales of old, the city on the hill, the cabin in the mountains, dissolving one’s self into the wilderness. But that bird, it keeps circling, circling, circling, waiting, observing, knowing it must return to the ground to feed, to sustain, to survive. One cannot live always in the clouds.

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