Dové La Biblioteca?


Unemployed, single, and with a room filled with dusty things, why not head to the library?  At least I would see people, get
out, and breathe the nice city air that was just cleaned and purged from a rainfall the previous night.  I had high hopes.  I
wanted the library to enlighten me the minute I walked in.  I wanted to open the door and have the books flying off the
shelves.  The librarians would wink at me and give me secret handshakes.  The tables would be nice and clean, with no one
around them.  The librarians would let me get on top and lay down on one to read a book.

As I walked down the street to the branch that was closest to me, I realized this was how dull my life had become.  I
wanted the library to save me.  The library. That quiet place tucked in between thrift stores where the young are put so
they can bother someone else before school starts and the elderly wait for something to do before they die, the one trusty
public restroom for those who have no floor or ceiling to call their own, dirty or not.  This was where I was going because
there was nowhere else I could stand anymore, nowhere free at least.

Things were quiet inside.  The children and babies were all well behaved.  None of the elderly people were fighting.  The
librarians were too busy tagging videos to give me a scowl.  The scene was not amazing, but it was adequate.  The books
were all there, lined up and ready to explore.  The glossy covers were begging me the hardest to be touched.  I picked up a
book of poems and a book about the writing of a famous poem.  I thought if I could hold them up together, back to back,
then I might see why I was getting so many rejection letters. Nobody was giving any feedback, just form after form politely
saying no.  The books held the answers of how to write from start to finish in verse.

Well, that's what I was trying to figure out.  I read, and a stream of people came in and passed around my table.  They
struggled to pass by the narrow opening between my chair and the shelf behind me which was full of test books for people
studying all those exams known by capital letters.  Babies in strollers hit me with their rattles as they went by, and old
people would absent mindedly brush against my back with their bony fingers gripping canes and walkers.

But I was able to continue reading and I was making good progress through the books I had in front of me.  A woman sat
at my table and for a moment I felt threatened, she had black hair and it hung on her head like a little Chanel dress. She
read the financial news while I read poems.  She had her imaginary world, and I had mine.  Hers was a castle of numbers
and mine was one of words.  She kept giving me the eagle eye from atop her journal as if she was about to reach out with
talons and snatch me.  At least she acknowledged I was there.

I finished the book with all the complete poems in it and turned my full attention to the one which discussed the evolution
of one.  I thought it was odd how so much could be devoted to a poem, but it was long with many pages and it apparently
changed America.  There were also pictures, so I spent some time looking at those.  It felt good to see so many
apartments cluttered and small, like mine, with the knowledge that successful people had survived them.

A young man slid by me.  He was moving quickly, and so immediately I only saw a blur that looked like a feather.  I turned
and saw him heading out the door. He was the only one who looked like he could be my age, or close enough to me, with all
the same cares and concerns.  I wished I had seen him earlier.  If we were in the same section of the library, we could have
struck up a nice conversation, just to let each other know we were alright for not being at work. But now he was leaving
and there was nothing I could do but watch him as he departed.

The authoritative voice of an older woman spoke behind me, she told the young man to have a nice day.  He said the same
thing to her in an automatic sort of way, but then he stopped.  It was as if a robot had come to life, somehow developing a
conscious mind in the midst of bolts and bits.  He turned around and faced the source of the feminine voice.  There was
something shattering in his movement.  I could not help but feel some sort of protocol had been violated. The rules,
wherever they were written, said he was supposed to say his little response and walk to the door to leave.

No, he spun instead.  Turned and left the path he was given to trace with his beaten sneakers.  His mouth opened and his
tongue flew out like a little pink torpedo between his lips.  He seemed to make eye contact with everyone else in the room
but me.  I wonder if he was speaking to me and assumed he already had my attention.

"Actually just have a day. That's it, a day."

The woman across from me raised up her paper.  Her eagle eye disappeared.  I was no longer a prey in her sight.

He continued to move a few steps and then stopped again.  He could not leave. The street seemed like a retreat for him,
unless he got one final thing off his chest.  One last utterance before disappearing for good and possibly changing libraries
to go cross-town rather than endure whatever humiliation it was they were piling on him there.

"And get another color for your hair."

The young man left and I spun in my chair as if I was sitting on an invisible screw.  I saw the woman sitting behind a desk,
the object of his scorn.  And there was a vein of gold stuck in the mass of her dark bourbon colored hair.  It was a
misplaced highlight.  It looked like a lost northern light and it made the rest of her seem very cold to me.  For a moment I
just sat with my books, wondering what she had done, what she could have possibly said to him, to make him feel that he
had to fight back in some little way.

I decided I had to get out of there.  A library that makes people cause brief scenes of subtle rebellion is not worth reading
in.

Ben Nardolilli