Friday, April 15, 2016

New people







More new people arrived at the library today. It is the first day of training for two pages destined for other branches. I'm pretty sure they have names, but don't ask me what they are. I have never been one to form fast alliances, but decades of working at this library has only increased the stateliness of my pacing. I have now met thousands of new people. I have a highly expanded sense of time here. If you are around long enough I will eventually get to know you, but in one day?  I'm afraid not.

I sympathize. If you are a new employee at my library, or perhaps training for a sub position or for a position at another branch, or too if you are a new volunteer, your first days will be enormous as an overall proportion of your career at the library. But for me that day, in the scope of the geology of my library life, is a grain of sand on a beach. Do you understand how small that day is? I have got to keep on my feet. I have got to keep my eye on the moment I see my wife again. So I hope you will understand. You are like a polaroid picture resolving in slow motion. Don't worry. I have my eye on you. But it may take weeks, months, or even years for you to appear out of the depths of time, out of the murkiness, out from the vast history of a thousand faces until you become distinctly visible.

At which point I will introduce myself. 

And if we're both lucky, we may even become friends.


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