Summer in library

How can you tell it's Summer in the library?

By the smell.

In the warm weather all the human fats, pressed millimeter by millimeter into the plastic covers of the books, loosen up, and an old, slightly stale, musty, uneasily human smell drifts out around the building.

But we don't talk about that. If we did who would want to take the books home?

I guess I still would, but I'm not happy about it. I'm American too. I like new, shiny, untouched things full of promise.

But I like literature too. It's so confusing.

But then, Summer is confusing here too. The sea of patrons becomes volatile, pouring in in great surges when it's raining, or night, or when it's beautiful out, and then leaving us practically vacant when it's hot out, or when it's windy, or just because it's a Friday at lunch time. It's hard to see any rhyme or reason for why they come or don't come. Science can detect no pattern. Groups of people apparently don't think. And individuals are all mysteriously bespoke. We can ask them questions, but if we remain open to their full answers they're all mad answers. We have to ignore what they said for them to make sense. And only when we systematically gather their collective data together, carefully process it, interpret it, and subject it to a ruthless, exhaustive analysis can we see that... it's Summer, and things just happen.

And here is where we make up the fake explanations.