Library Fictions: Take three

 

In struggling to write up the notes for the first part of my upcoming photography show at the library, I decided I would to work on them here. This is my third take. It starts the same as yesterday, and the day before, but then it travels in a different direction than either of them.

 Library Fictions

The tiny stories that take place in these pictures never happened.

This might be obvious when one of them shows a character from a Dr. Seuss book haughtily wandering through this library, or a dinosaur crashing down our staircase. But it may be less obvious when it realistically looks like a lion wandered into our teen room for an afternoon nap.

But stories are a funny thing.

Here you are, right at this moment standing in a library. It is both true, and it is also a story I am writing down before you ever knew you would read this. And even setting aside the stories of these pictures, you are at this moment surrounded by countless thousands of stories. The books and movies and songs and games are full of them. But so is the person walking by you as you read this. You, dear library reader, are full of stories yourself! Some are true, some are partly true, some are trying to be true, and some are true somewhere.

Some are going to be true.

I have taken some pictures of this library. They are real pictures. Maybe crazy things happen in them that have never happened and never will.

But in this library Frodo has walked to the cracks of doom and Darcy confessed his love for Elizabeth. Ice cream was made from scratch, dogs were trained, diseases diagnosed, and Scout was saved by Boo Radley.

You dear reader have probably believed six impossible things before breakfast.

So these pictures ought to be no problem for you at all.