GETTING LOST IN A LIBRARY

Getting lost in a library requires more consideration than one would typically think. For example, from whom do you wish to be lost: from others or from yourself? Do you mean “lost” as in “not knowing where you are” or “lost” as in “others not being able to find you?” The difference between these two could definitely influence your ability to succeed. Let us consider, for the moment, that your goal is to be lost from the presence of others. First, you should avoid sitting anywhere on the first floor. If your library has only a first floor, then you should know that, technically (as well as spiritually), your library doesn’t deserve the name. It is little more than a meeting place that, fortunately, happens to have books. Sitting on the first floor, obviously, puts you in the presence of those people who’ve come only to sit and flip through current magazines (Vogue, Glamour, People, etc.) or to gossip with others sitting nearby. Unfortunately, these are the same people who will eventually be asking you questions like, “Would you like fries with that?” Let them annoy you then, in another setting. Here in the library, though, avoid them by heading to another floor. Once on, say, the fourth floor, find an alcove behind a stack of books that, upon inspection, appears to have never been opened. Park yourself here, for apparently even the janitor hasn’t ventured this far back in the stacks in quite a while. If this place doesn’t suit your need for solitude and quiet, then you can always lose yourself in a book of your choice. Thick books are best, their size sometimes as large as the labyrinths old castles boast. Some poems, it is said, are as large as grief or joy, some as large as memory, and others larger than the dull lives from which we are forever trying to escape. Be assured: no one will find you in Sappho’s refrains, Coleridge’s Xanadu, or Steven’s ordinary evenings. You can wander around for hours, immersed in red weather. You can hear an aeolian wind whose message might be whispered for you.