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This is Library, an entry originally posted on January 23, 2003 in the blog nebulose.net. In chronological order, before this was I really have zero willpower. After this comes Ups and Downs. If you're lost, I recommend the about page.

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Library

I’m sitting in the library now, writing on some scrap paper. Where I am, there is only one other person visible, a girl I have never seen before. She’s sitting across from me (facing me, that is) at the next table. She is reading a book now, holding it up high (as opposed to resting it on the table), so that I can see the cover of the book instead of her face. The book is called “Marijuana Facts and Myths”; not a title I would have expected in a public school library. I glance up (discretely) between sentences, and wonder: is she reading that particular book out of real curiousity, or because she knows all about it already and thinks the book’s answers will be amusing? To me she seems amused, which would indicate the latter, but really, how can I even guess “amused” when I can barely even see her face? And maybe the book really just said something funny, who knows.

I have more general wonders, too. Sometimes I look at people I don’t know (like this girl I’ve never seen before; she just went and got a different book) and I wonder: does this person enjoy their life, on the whole? Lying in bed at home, 1:30a.m. and they can’t sleep, just think and think and think about the day they just had, is this person smiling fondly, or frowning regretfully? Random day, say, I don’t know, last Tuesday — was it a blessing or a trial for this person? Or did it just drift by, indifferently?

The girl across from me just sniffled a little, eyes downcast, little tired crescents underneath. She had an argument with her father on Tuesday, and it’s still rankling a little.

I just made that up of course, the father part, but now that I have, the evidence is there every time I look up. People are like that: you don’t just get the hints the author is revealing (like I’m doing now), you get the whole infinitely complex, fractal-like picture, millions of subtleties, and you pick out the ones you want to see and make your characters from. Like how she just rubbed her eyes after that last sentence; sad eyes, opened extra wide when she dabbed at them.

And everywhere I look, more characters. In the far corner, now, a frumpy flock of librarians, socializing while the place is empty. One of them just read a joke from her e-mail aloud to the others. An old joke, one I’ve heard before; about “what people want”; or maybe it was “what excites people” — I missed the beginning. Here’s what I caught, though:

At 5 it’s not wetting the bed.
At 16 it’s driving.
At 20 it’s having sex.
At 30 it’s money.
At 40 it’s money.
At 50 it’s money.
At 60 it’s having sex.
At 70 it’s driving.
At 80 it’s not wetting the bed.

They all laughed (including the joke-teller, she laughed at her own joke), more raucously than is usually characteristic of librarians; and I wonder again — was it honestly that funny, or was there, as Tyler Durden said, a kind of sick desperation in that laugh? With them I imagine it’s honest, that they all have their little joys each day and sound sleep each night, a happy and content life.

I’m rambling now, and the time is drawing near when the library will fill with people and I’ll have to stop writing, so I’ll end with one last pondering. Sometimes I look at people and I wonder when they last stayed up to watch the sun rise. Even with strangers, you can tell the ones who’ve never done it, or who have forgotten its magic. The girl across from me, her last time was at the end of the summer, sitting with a sadly smiling and beautiful boy, looking out and skipping stones on a pond. No, not a pond; the ocean. I can see it in her eyes now. •

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