who who whose there

The library system, to me, is a great lake that spans across the world touching each continent, each country, and each miniscule villager that wishes to traverse its waters. Yet even in its over reaching arms it is not the ocean for it is calm in its soul and soothing in the stored melancholy words it provides to its users. But to often now when I go to the library in search of something appetizing, I glide across the gentle waters in a shroud of fog. I see the shelves. I can read the words. And yet the thrill of discovering the mysterious kingdoms laid before me has been plucked from my brain and dulled from my senses. Not that I don’t feel a burning desire to read the lyrical composition of artists not worthy of our time, but rather I feel diluted in my ability to find those composers amongst the riff raff of hacks and wannabes. I hear the names of authors that are mainstreamed into popularity, and when I see the excitement in the eyes of those who have cuddle their stories the possibility of satisfaction renews my desire to read; though my will breaks when I read the mainstream words and see what little the writing has to say. I then wonder if it was a mistake to believe that the fog will ever lift. I still wonder if it shall.


I was first led to the library as a child. It was my mother who took me through its cracked and splintered doors. There are two memories I have of that day. The first is of the bulling stank of B.O. and the roaming presents of ancient mildew, both strangely human in their scent, and yet different in there origins. The second memory is of the cabinet that contained the long streams of numbers that could have and should have connected me to imaginary worlds, this was and is the numbering system known as the Dewey Decimal System. For as long as manners would allow me, I fingered through the papers lined one after the other like plague corpses left for disposal. Sadly to say I revived none of them. At the beckoning of an older woman I pushed shut the drawer and left to manually search for the title that begged me to read more. As chance would have it, that is still my method.

a place

I once had a secret place that no one but me knew of. With all my heart I loved this place; loved it enough to name it with a name that I never once spoke out loud to another living soul. It wasn’t a place of refuge, or a place that meditation happened. It was merely a place that I dreamt of when it was cold out, and one that I searched for treasures in when the sun blazed with adored heat. But all that aside, it was only a place that I could go to that no one else knew of, and that was enough for me.

I often thought that if I were to every need to run from the law, hide from a villain, or even just needed a place to out live the radiation of a Taliban nuke I could go to my secret place and all would be well. For when someone has a secret place, the belief is that nothing on this earth can hurt it. Others may defile it with crude jokes and mocking words if they know its name and that it in fact exists, if anyone has ever had a secret friend they would know what I speak of, but to destroy it is impossible; or so the belief goes.
I thought today would be a good day to show my secret place to my sons. As we walked to it, I contemplated whether or not I should tell them of its secret nature. As a good keeper of a secret should do, I weighed the pros and cons in my mind, determining the risks, and figuring how much their young souls would comprehend of what would be said and seen. And then as I thought and as we walked a new fear touched upon me, due to the fact of not going to my secret place in such a long time, would I know it if I saw it? That question was answered though through my recognition of its sound, its distinct and beautiful sound, long before I could ever have seen it. And then as I turned the bend, joy swelling in my bosom for the moment that my life would rejoin with my secret, horror struck me as there was nothing left of my secret except a hole in the side of the earth. With my courage, I took my boys to the side of the cliff and showed them where peace once stood. I have lost my little part of the world and I do not know where it has gone.