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.