Poirot

I have been reading my way through the complete collection of Agatha Christie's Poirot short stories. I'm surprised by how stripped down the stories feel to me. Perhaps that's what makes them so readable. It's as if there's no prose to get in one's way. But they're magic too, and the more I read the more they seem to fill out.

I have, like millions before me, quite taken to the fussy, obsessive, conceited detective Hercule Poirot. I like how he has no compunction about speaking to his brilliance and greatness. Yes, it occasionally alienates and frequently antagonizes those closest to him, but over and over he justifies his claims. I try to take inspiration from this.

You see, much as Hercule Poirot is the greatest detective in the world, I am the greatest blogger on the Internet. I have occasionally dabbled in modesty on this score, but what's the point? I'm not trying to trick anyone into agreeing with me, and I'm not making an argument. Also, if my readers are antagonized by my freely blunt assertion, readily repeated, that I am the greatest blogger on the Internet, I'm not selling anything. They are free to flounder around in some other blog seeking the solutions to life's existential mysteries. But, as with those who eschew Poirot, if what they really want is the solution, they'll be back here.

Yes yes, I know this all makes a person, me, for instance, look faintly absurd. One of the repeated treats of the Poirot mysteries is where even we, the reader, get a little sucked into thinking Poirot's eccentricities have led him completely off the trail. Even though we know he will not fail, sometimes he becomes so absurd and inscrutable that some part of ourselves can't help but wonder.

But as with clerkmanifesto, in the end, the truth outs, and the mystery is solved.

Drunk

I don't know what happened. I was working earnestly enough at the library, getting ready to shelve some books, that's to put it formally, or looking for fun, to put it more casually, when suddenly I was struck drunk. Drunk. As in spontaneously smashed. It's a miracle. Maybe not a religious miracle, or even the kind of miracle anyone wants to go getting excited about, but it's some kind of miracle. From out of nowhere, after drinking nothing, I was well and truly drunk.

"I'm drunk!" I called out drunkenly, stumbling around the workroom, pushing my shelving cart about in an alarming manner.

"You're drunk?" A co-worker inquired, with surprise and confusion.

"I didn't drink anything" I called over my shoulder, "But I'm smashed!" Then I crashed my cart into the surprisingly closed elevator doors and was knocked senseless.

The elevator doors opened, and I'm pretty sure I got in. I don't remember the elevator ride at all, but, apparently, when the elevator doors opened upstairs I was lying flat on my back singing Mean Mr. Mustard. I do sort of remember insisting I was good. Who was up there? A librarian I think. I kept saying "I'm good. I'm good." I am rather blurry on the process by which I got myself and my cart to the genre fiction section. I'm pretty sure I left a trail of books behind me, like breadcrumbs, so I could find my way back.

At first I did not enjoy shelving at all because none of the books fit anywhere and things were spinning anytime you touched them. We have no rotating book displays at my library and so I was confused at how that was now all we seemed to have. But the good times came back to me when I realized that if I just put any book anywhere I wanted it was hilarious. Putting them backwards was hilarious, hiding them was hilarious. I planted books like little seeds in all sorts of unusual places and was unable to stop giggling.

Then, abruptly, in the same miraculous way in which I had got drunk, I sobered up. My head hurt. My mouth tasted bad. I yawned. My cart was empty and I could see several books on the shelves with their bindings facing in instead of out. I couldn't even imagine why I'd found that hilarious four minutes ago. So I set about straightening up. It took quite awhile as books were out of order and double stacked and a complete mess. But the straightening was weirdly familiar to me. I realized that this mess was almost exactly how it often was in fiction when I went up to shelve. My shelving drunk just made the fiction stacks look like they often looked. What if I wasn't the first person that this happened to. What if some of my colleagues were suddenly struck drunk as they went up to shelve too, but were too shy to say.

It would explain a lot.

Treasure hunt

Every once in awhile I like to trot out the proposal that our library abandon its whole tiresome, complicated, labor intensive system of shelving. Indeed, I propose that we dispense with the shelves altogether, and merely throw all our library materials into one massive, unsorted pile. If a patron wants a book or a movie, or whatever cultural detritus we're pushing, they can sift through our gargantuan, miscellaneous heap, like poor people combing over a trash dump, or disaster victims looking for precious mementos in the wake of some devastating tornado or flood.

Yes, it's pretty strong stuff. Strong enough that, though I have come up with hundreds of vigorous commentaries on my library in the course of this blog, it has never seemed quite right to bring this idea up. But I think this idea was merely biding its time, waiting for the fulcrum on which its revolutionary aspects could gain some proper leverage.

I could, of course, spend all day here listing reasons why my throw-all-the-books-into-a-pile idea is unsanitary, ridiculous, untenable, dangerous, unworkable, unpleasant, and generally awful. I will even readily admit that the only good reason for this system, besides how it could conceivably let we staff lounge about all day reading adventure novels and drinking espressos, is in how it would profoundly and joyously accentuate the exciting treasure hunting aspects of going to the library.

One might think that the treasure hunting aspect of going to the library would be but a very small portion of the experience. I myself thought that very thing. But my eyes have been opened.

Today at my house was book cleaning day, a day to bring back all the great backlog of checked out library books we had been accumulating. I had two big cloth carrying bags and we started stuffing them with books. We stopped only when there was no more room in the bags. I could barely lift these two bags, and I still had to leave several books at home.

I lugged the bags to my car, drove to the library, and lugged the books inside. Then I decanted the books onto a shelving cart in preparation for check in. Once all the books were on the shelving cart they were very easy to look at and analyze. So I did that.

I was shocked to find that all my carefully accumulated books were utterly and completely random. They seemed to bear no relation to one another. They came from absolutely every section of the library, spanned every genre, and touched on a vast scattering of non fiction subjects flung across the dewey decimal system hundreds. I was shocked to find that my conception of myself as a discerning reader, one who needs to carefully track down very specific, badly needed materials is a sham. It's not that I would be happy reading anything, no indeed, it's merely that if one tosses together a hundred random books there is little question that my poking about in them will net me six or seven volumes that will be pretty much as rewarding to me as those acquired through any other more careful system of book gathering.

I know, the giant heap idea is absurd. And of course we won't dispense with our shelving system! No doubt I will soon forget all this clarity and go back to comfortably fooling myself that there are books I need to request, track down, and read right away, that there is a real depth to my system of ravenous omnivorousness. I have been saturated in library for decades, and I am a creature of our elaborate and diverse and useful filing system, a master of it, a junkie, an acolyte, a laborer in it. But, also, I have seen the light now. I know that secretly, it's just a heap.

Under the bridge

One can glamorize most things. We live in a glamorizing culture, which in itself is a glamorization of "We live in a culture of self aggrandizing lies."  I don't personally set out to glamorize clerking, but when it happens I try not to worry about it too much. On the one hand, clerking is pretty well under glamorized, and on the other hand, around my blog, not to mention in real life, clerking's comedown is always just around the corner.

I must have been doing some glamorizing lately because today I have a comedown for you.

Let's talk just a bit about shelving.

No, not about the alphabet, or technique, or speed. I don't want to talk about any of the amusing interactions with patrons that one runs into along the way. Nor do I intend to discuss all the books, all the fascinating, infuriating, eye-catching, intriguing books that a shelver is subsumed in as he shelves. No, I'd like to talk a bit about how I feel out there, shelving.

Working away in between the stacks cuts me off from any real, outside light. It removes me from the action of the library, its open spaces, its activity, but if I peer out through the space between the tops of the books and the bottom of the next shelf I get a weird, secret, hunter's blind sort of view of parts of the library, motion, people coming and going. They can't see me, half crouched as I am to look, peering out through my gap. I move through the stacks mucking with my stuff, bookends, books, abandoned things, shuffling about inscrutably, moving at my weird shelving pace with my emptying cart of books. I stop. I scrawl an inscrutable note onto a post-it pad, I straighten, I reorder, I read the very start of a book. I shelve. No one sees me in my quiet, private labor until maybe I am just there, where they thought they'd look for a book. I duck away from them and into invisibility again.

Today I read a short story by Neil Gaiman. I was drawn to it. Like most of what I read by Neil Gaiman I am still working out how I feel about it. Sherman Alexie is the same for me. I read something by either of them and think "I'm not sure how I feel about this. I need some time to see." But I never quite see, exactly. I don't know why I was drawn to the Neil Gaiman story, but it was up there in the stacks and I read it.

It was a troll story. A story about a person and a troll, a regular, under the bridge troll. It wasn't a happy story. It was only kind of horrible. I'm sure I'll figure out how I feel about it sometime. But I didn't then. I shelved. And I looked out of my cracks and gaps, and I shuffled about in my rooting private endeavors, and I went invisible. And I thought, hey, I am a troll. I am a troll, here with my books, under a bridge, hidden, peering out, mucking about, I am a troll. A fable, a game, a truth.

I am a troll under a bridge

It wasn't horrible, exactly. It was the strangest feeling, but, no, not necessarily horrible. Should it be? 
 
Actually, I'm still sort of working out how I feel about it. One day I may know.

But no, it wasn't glamorous.

Lots of hats

One of the best things about my job (which, in case you've only been lightly skimming my blog over the last 450 posts, is called "Library Clerk") is that it encompasses such a vast variety of roles. Most of these roles are entirely optional, if not even occasionally, technically frowned upon. There is a basic core set of clerking skill roles; shelver, machine operator, switchboard operator, customer service representative, that is basically required, but with a bit of craftiness, a sense of adventure, chutzpah, sheer commitment to the library, rebelliousness, risk management skills, and sheer foolishness, there is a vast array of wildly diverse roles that one can, every once in awhile, step into.

Over enough time I have been janitor, groundskeeper, building manager, event planner, librarian, caregiver, spy, social worker, song and dance man, technician, computer analyst, negotiator, tax adviser, county attorney, teacher, concierge, travel agent, doctor, artist, traffic cop, prince-ling, athlete, chef, dogsbody, childcare provider, laborer, fairytale character, and library director.

Patrons sometimes mistake my job, most often, I suppose, as a librarian. But they almost automatically respond to me in any of these other roles. Of course, in all these roles, I am still, officially, a clerk, lost in the shuffle, autonomous, and in the end, a chameleon. 

Did someone say there's a chameleon in here? No, no, it's just us lizards, soaking up the sun.

Sunday schedule

On Sundays I work at the library sometimes. To be precise I work Sunday every other week. Today, for instance, I don't work, so next week I do. I also work every other Friday and Saturday. I always work the Friday and Saturday together, but those are always opposite the Sunday I work. So, to clarify, I am working for four days, off then for one day, on for two days, off one day, on three days, followed by three days off, and then I repeat it all in sequence. It's only confusing if you're really really wishing I'd move on to the interesting parts of this blog post, which, spoiler alert, never happens. On the other hand, if a person works a schedule such as this for a few decades it becomes like second nature and one hardly ever wakes up wondering "Wait, so do I work today?"

So, I have today off. Except, confusingly, I am writing this on a Tuesday, which is a day I always work, except when I am sick or on vacation. I am not sick or on vacation. I am only pretending today is Sunday in the guise of being a blogger. I don't pretend that any days are other than that which they are when I'm working. And I don't pretend that I am working when I am blogging. So even though I work every day on my blog, it's not work, just a very, very, very involving hobby, and even though I do it every day I can pretend any day is any day, so on, say, Tuesday, I can only work at my job for Tuesday and I pretty much have to, but I can blog in advance for the following Sunday, and Monday and Tuesday too for that matter. Of course, that would take a lot of work, except it should be noted that that is not work, it's a hobby. But then, if I did all that work, the work that's not work, on that following Sunday, which is also known as "today", even if it's Tuesday, I can then not work on my blog, and I can also not work at the library, even though my blog will still be being worked on in the sense that this appears out of the firmament only now, Sunday, with the brick laying of each word happening before your eyes here, though, remember, it is not work.

This explains how, though beads of sweat have formed on my forehead as I've endeavored desperately to explain this, I am actually lounging about right now.

Never boring

There was an incident in the teen room this evening. As far as I could get it a teenager living in a group home didn't want to leave the library with all her people when all her people were leaving the library. She yelled and threw things and resisted. I was pretty busy with the automated check in machine and was content merely to receive the reports as they filtered back to me. I refrained from gawking. For one thing it's not my favorite flavor for an incident; people yelling and having a fit, and for another it's pretty mundane. On average we get at least one large scale tantrum from a child not wanting to leave the library when they have to per day. This incident sounded a great deal like the same thing, only with a bit older and larger protagonist. 

Still, when there's great hubbub, and 911 is involved, one likes to keep loose tabs on whatever is going on. So I was happy for my colleague's briefing. And when he finished his briefing and said "It's never boring around here." I could have just performed my part in that call and response as I was supposed to. I could have said "No, it never is."

But that's not my way.

So I said "Actually, it is boring around here all the time." 

My colleague could only agree.

At my library there are crazy people, minor local celebrities, wildly adorable children, special one of a kind cultural events. The high watermarks of the human mind are ever at one's fingertips. There are diverse people of diverse backgrounds to talk to. There are new stories from patrons and co-workers and fascinating books everywhere you turn. Variable tasks, complicated problems, and unusual mysteries abound.

But, at heart, it's work. And it's boring.

Shelving, typing, requesting, searching, talking. Blah blah blah. Over and over.

So half of one's job is just making it interesting enough to bear, interesting enough to like, interesting enough to be interesting. Mostly one can do it. One can joke and chat with patrons and co-workers, one can apply oneself fiercely to their work, one can revel in being appraised of what's going on, one can read every chance they get, one can race over thoughts of everything happening around them for their blog, one can apply deep conviction to helping patrons, and one can disappear into dreams. There is a mighty lot one can do to make it all work.

But scintillating blog post stories, frightful tantrum throwing teen patrons, and challenging tasks though there may be, it's still pretty boring around here. And one should be a little careful about pretending too much, even if pretending a lot can be a pretty good idea.

Things not said

I cannot write a normal post today. The reason for this is that I came up with an extremely amusing joke. I am terribly sorry, but I cannot tell you this, frankly, hilarious joke. And yet, I can't think about anything else except my desire to tell you this joke. This makes it almost impossible to work out exciting new fresh things to tell you about. I keep trying, instead, to work out some way to tell you this joke. But no, it is not to be. So I am going to have to not tell you this splendid joke.

Instead, what I will do, is give you the five reasons I cannot tell you this very funny joke.


1. It is about a very specific library patron, who, no matter the crime committed, and the time served, is entitled to a certain amount of institutional anonymity at her local library. I will tell this joke personally, but not publicly. I know this doesn't seem so public because it's very quiet around here, but every few weeks someone gets horribly lost on the Internet and ends up here. "Where am I?" They say. "A public place" I say, but not one easy to find.

2. I can't tell. Has she suffered enough already? Yes, I know, not knowing who or what I'm talking about you can't answer that question. Sorry.

3. I, knowing that I wouldn't be telling you this joke, told you that it is extremely amusing, very funny, frankly hilarious and splendid. This is like putting a curse on a joke, and makes it very hard for anyone thus informed, with their expectations so wildly raised, to find it funny. So, at this point, if I tell you the joke, it will not be an extremely amusing, very funny, frankly hilarious, or splendid joke, even if it really is all those things, because it is only all those things provided I don't tell the joke to you.

4. While this person is sort of famous, it is more of a local fame, and giving you the proper background required undercuts the glamorous and dazzling precision of the joke as I came up with it, in situ.

5. Data privacy practices are meaningless if one isn't willing to feel the burn every once in awhile and actually protect people's private data. We will have to both feel the burn here.


If this is unbearable to you, not hearing the joke, I understand. Since I will tell this joke personally, you could email clerkmanifesto@gmail.com and I would tell you the joke, but you would need to understand the following three things:


1. I'll still have to be slightly more general about the joke than is ideal.

2. This is just between us.

3. The joke is actually not very funny at all.

Painting Starry Night again

Joni Mitchell said something once in a concert that has always stuck with me. She was performing her music in front of an enthusiastic crowd for an emblematic live album. People were calling out songs they'd like to hear, and she said:

nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint us Starry Night again, man!' You know?
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/m/mitchell_joni.html#H3U1jGl2W1FHRIWL.99

nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint us Starry Night again, man!' You know?
Read more at http://www.notable-quotes.com/m/mitchell_joni.html#H3U1jGl2W1FHRIWL.9

"Nobody ever said to Van Gogh, 'Paint us Starry Night again, man!' You know?"

In the full, expanded quote she said "You know" three times though.

Perhaps my original strong reaction to this statement was because it was so pungent. There's one of the greatest singer songwriters ever complaining about her job to her enthusiastic fans. But once the quote was seared into my consciousness it became a kind of marker of my perspective. How I felt about her quote seemed to change with me through time, like my response to Catcher in the Rye or to being a library clerk. My response quickly started to say more about me, than her.

Ain't that just the way?

What have some of my reactions been? I have been sympathetic (she's practically a god, just let her do what she wants!). I have been correcting (well, really, Van Gogh paintings go for a hundred million dollars. Of course people would like him to paint Starry Night again!). I have been appalled (they just love some of her songs. Is that some sort of a crime?).

But just recently I found myself with a new response to Joni Mitchell's quote. I thought of poor Vincent Van Gogh, painting some of the greatest works of art in the history of mankind, and no one wants them. He had to be pretty sure they were good, almost positive, you know, but all these people going up to his latest for the ages masterpiece, looking at it for about a second and a half, and saying "No, I like it. My cousin does a bit of painting too on the side, mostly fruit, you know. I think you'd like it. It's a bit like your stuff, maybe a bit tidier. I should show you the drawing he sent me some time.", well, it had to make him feel a bit unsteady. So I'm thinking Van Gogh might have appreciated a little real interest in his painting.

"Hey, Van Gogh, paint us Starry Night again, man! That starry night shit was awesome!"

"Thank you for your interest." Van Gogh says "But that's not really how I work. I paint something new each time."

"That's cool. But still, I love me that Starry Night shit. Starry Night rocks!"

"Well, I mean. If you like it so much you can have it, if you want. I have a lot of paintings."

"Dude, are you serious? I can have Starry Night? I am going to freaking explode. Seriously, I can have this?"

"Sure, yeah, um, why not?"

"Oh         My         Fucking          God! Oh my fucking god. You, sir Van Gogh, you fucking rock! YOU FUCKING ROCK!!!!  Starry Night! STARRY NIGHT!  WOOOOOOO!"




"Oh wow, did you just, like, give that guy, like, Starry Night?"

"Yes, I think he really liked it."

"I absolutely love Starry Night. I adore Starry Night. I would marry Starry Night and have its babies!"

"You would?"

"Oh, wow. That was awesome that you gave it to him, but, Mr. Van Gogh, you have got to paint Starry Night again. You have got to! Please?"

"Right. Yes, see, as I was just explaining, I don't really do that. I paint a new picture every time."

"You do?"

"Yes, see all these paintings? There are flowers, and people. This is a peach tree. This one is a farmhouse. Here is a drawing of a garden I did, with a little cat and a bucket. The cat looks a bit funny but I'm really pleased with the bucket."

"But I LOVE Starry Night. I loooooovvvve  L-O-V-E love Starry Night!"

"Well, that's very nice..."

"Pleeeaasse paint Starry Night again. Pleeease? Pullllleeeeeeeeeaaaaase. Pleez pleez pleez pleez pleez? Please paint Starry Night???"

"Look. Here's this one called Cafe Terrace. It has stars. Look at the stars."

"Oh, this is a nice one."

"And see this one? This is called Starry Night Over the Rhone."

"Wow, these are good. Did you know that you are a really good painter?"

"Um."

"I bet you could sell some of these. These are really good."

"Thank you."

"No, really, I'm serious, you could be a professional painter."

"That's very kind of you to say."




"Hey, are you the guy who's giving out free Starry Nights?"

"What?"

"I heard there's some guy giving out free Starry Nights over here, and I thought 'Cool, I dig Starry Night. I could totally go for a Starry Night.' So here I am. Can I have my free Starry Night?"

"There are not multiple Starry Nights. I gave Starry Night to someone, but there's just the one. It's a painting you know. One of a kind."

"Oh, well that's cool, but could you paint Starry Night again so I could have one?"

"No! I cannot paint Starry Night again!"

"Well, I mean, respectfully, why not? Obviously you painted it before, so you know how. What's the big deal?"

"It's just, it's not how it works. Ugh! I wish I could just paint something once and everyone could share in having it. I bet no one ever said, like, you know, 'Hey, Joni Mitchell, write us Both Sides Now again, man.'"

"Okay, dude, chill. I get it. Hey, can I have this Sunflower picture?"





Hmm, that didn't go where I was planning. I'm pretty sure there's a point in here somewhere. I hope you'll feel welcome to work out whichever one you want. 


But don't make me do all this again.

Time is not sequential

A man comes up to me at the front desk. He has three items out. He wants to know when they're due. He needs more time with them. I renew them. I print out a receipt with a list of his items and their new due dates. I hand him the receipt. I tell him the new due date. Perhaps there is a short exchange concerning the lovely weather we are having.

"Can you print me out a receipt with the new due dates?" He inquires politely.

"Yes." I say. "I will need to go back in time and give it to you in the past."

He looks into his hand and finds the receipt there already. He laughs. He thanks me.

I am the master of all time.

Flow and sugar

As time passes I find that I am more and more drawn to things that are a little more difficult. Don't get me wrong, I am not so evolved that I'm going to sit around half the day reading James Joyce and Virginia Woolf before heading off to do laps across the Mississippi. It's just that I have increasingly noticed that some things go down too easy, so easy that they don't register and end up seeming meaningless.

Look at this blog for instance. I could just write a blog. It would be very easy for me, but it would feel like nothing, weightless. What is that, writing a blog? So I made it a daily blog. That gets us almost there, but still feels a bit light. So I write the greatest blog on the Internet. That has heft and an aching heart. It is just the right sort of challenge. I can feel it as I do it, but it's still easier than writing a novel or learning Dutch.

Maybe, like so many things, this is best expressed in coffee. Every rare once in awhile I make a cold press with a lot of maple syrup, or a chocolatey mocha, or maybe I buy some latte somewhere full of caramels and vanillas and white chocolates. I cannot say any of these aren't delicious. I take one sip, and, if it's a well enough made drink, my mouth fills with a sweet pleasure. Yes, certainly, I like it. So I go to take a second sip only to find that I have already consumed the whole beverage.

What happened?

Let's call it the amnesia of easy pleasure. Yes it was good, but without effort. Without at least a small demand of engagement on my part my mind wandered off from the whole experience. Something like my usual cappuccino though is different. Warm, bitter, creamy, complicated, I have to listen for it. I have to be with it to drink it. I have to consider each sip. Is it ecstasy? Yes, of course, but an ecstasy of presence, attention, motivation, feel, and time. Taste is just a part of it. Cappuccino causes me to be there.

Recently I heard someone defining "flow" for musicians as playing at the outer edge of one's ability, but still in command. So it is for me with coffee, or blogging too, really. Any further out than their inherent challenges, and it is too bitter, a struggle, and part of the effort becomes just working back to a basic enjoyment. Closer in than their inherent challenges, sweetened, and my mind wanders and drifts away at the touch of any wind, ephemeral. I am blown over the surface of life. But with flow, in the modest consciousness demands of my chosen endeavors, time blossoms out beneath me, and I can no longer hold onto anything else. So I fall. I fall into one thing that is all I can hold, no more, no less. 

And nothingness disappears.

Music at large

I don't ask for much. I merely wish the the radio was as good as the random music playing in my city.

In a dedicated fit of anachronism I listen to the radio when I drive alone in my car. It is transmitted by radio waves and received by my car radio. My car radio includes no CD player, no Internet radio, no 8-track tape player, and no 78 rpm wind up record player with a giant brass speaker. I am left at the whim of the air waves. I see no point in addressing the talk radio portion of the equation. It's as expected, a long, bitter hunt for transcendence that comes just tauntingly often enough, usually via Public Radio, to keep one going on its drip feed. But music, music, what could be easier than music?

I can walk into any coffee shop in this city and there is an astonishingly high chance, let's put it into the 90 percentile, that there will be something truly interesting playing quietly into the space. My god, I was in a Walgreen's a few days ago that played half lost pop semi classics of the early to mid sixties (Cathy's Clown!) that was entirely fascinating. This afternoon I write from an ice cream parlor/Cafe and in the time I've been here, through 10 or 15 songs (off the beaten path Sinatra and Louis Armstrong) there has not been a one that hasn't been worth a close listen. But, importantly, neither has there been one song that I've heard too often.

On the contrary, any time of the day or night it is within the realm of possibility that I could rotate through the entirety of my radio dial and find... nothing. Nothing!

What's going on?

I don't want to go into it. It's all too bitter, and I don't want to disabuse you of your love for the world today. Go ahead, love the world.

But I will say this: there are very few jobs easier than disc jockey, and when you have a very easy job, like librarian, or President of the United States, or disc jockey, it is incumbent upon you to step it up, take chances, defy management, and risk everything. Without that you're just stealing. Yes, you are stealing all the joy, the life of the music that is the birthright of us all, but perhaps more importantly, you are stealing the very dream at the heart of your job, just so you can keep the image of it.

Illumination

On Sunday we talk. Do I always have to remind you of that? I don't know. For the time being I seem to be more comfortable with that reminder. It sets the space. And I get a little worried that a third of the way through my Sunday post you'll get all "Wait, when is he going to start illuminating the universe?!"

I only illuminate the universe Monday through Saturday.

I know you know all this, but I am also aware that in the hurly burly of life six days is a long time, long enough to be lulled into a deep rhythm.

Universe is illuminated
Universe is illuminated
Universe is illuminated
Universe is illuminated
Universe is illuminated
Universe is illuminated
Wait, wait! Why isn't the universe being illuminated?
Is my computer broken?
Am I missing something???!!!
How do I contact the blog author in an emergency?!!!!
Is the world ending?

No emergency. It's just Sunday.

So I say it. I don't want to cause anyone distress.

Living in the fiction stacks

I was shelving out there in the mystery section, except I might have been reading over the cover of a mystery set in ancient Rome, thinking about taking it home to read, or making just an ever so quick note about an upcoming blog post. But, whatever. Cumulatively I was shelving. My two hour stint was moving along nicely when a patron came around the corner into my aisle. I moved myself and my cart as far to one side as possible for her to pass, but she wanted me to pass.

"Which way are you going?" She asked. "Are you coming through, or going back?"

"Oh, no." I explained. "I live here."

The bad good Samaritan

A patron approaches one of my colleagues.

"Can you page someone?"

To my mind this is a bad start. There is something faintly suspicious about people who start by discussing solutions and then work backwards to the problem. There's something controlling about it. "Can you waive fines?", "Do you know CPR?", "Are you authorized to call 911 in the event of a shooter in the library?". The natural starting point seems to be elsewhere in all these discussions.

"Yes, I can page over the intercom system." My colleague says politely. "Is there a problem?"

"Here." Says the patron, handing over a slip of paper. "This is the make and model of a car in the parking lot." We continue backwards. We have not yet reached any pertinent information. We merely circle.

"Is there some kind of issue with this car?" My eminently patient co-worker inquires.

"The driver's side door is open." The Samaritan says. Even now, as we get to the crux of the matter it is reluctant, incomplete, and forces my co-worker to ask for more.

"Wide open?" She asks. "Broken into? Torn off?"

The patron clicks her tongue. "The door did not close properly."

"So, like there's a seat belt in the way, and it's not flush?"

"Yes. It's closed, but not fully closed."

I take this to be a case of the bad good Samaritan. These are people who so love the feeling of being good and doing good that they make opportunities for themselves to be helpful where none really exist. They do good deeds that help no one and only serve to inconvenience others.

"Hello." A patron says to me.

I look inquiringly, with my most helpful expression.

"Do you have a lost and found?"

"Yes we do." I say brightly. Easy question.

"I found this on the floor." The patron says earnestly. "I think someone might be missing it. I don't know if you can track the person down from this, but perhaps you can put it in your lost and found." The patron hands me a small slip of paper and walks off, the Lone Ranger, good deed done.

I look at the paper. It is a Target receipt, two months old, for toothpaste and cotton balls. Cash paid.

Aaarrgh! If only that patron hadn't handled it so much we might be able to get a decent set of fingerprints off of it and track the owner down! They must be worried sick.

Oh well, I guess they were trying to be helpful.

Did my colleague, I imagine you are wondering, announce over the intercom system about the car with the door slightly ajar? No, she went out to check on the car and leaned on the door to fully close it. That's why they pay her the big bucks. 

And me? With the receipt? Did I carefully file it in the lost and found?

No. I threw it away. That's why they pay me the big bucks too.

I'll take the rain

I have been watching, day after day, from the sealed up eighth floor of a large building, rain fall. Grey, drenching, sheeting, swirling, constant, raining, rain. And I have been watching it with absolute, unmitigated joy. I have watched my beloved Minnehaha Creek try vainly to flood under it. I have watched wet ducks and geese live unperturbed in it. I have watched it gloss the whole world. And all along I have rejoiced. I have loved every second of the rain.

Every half hour, though, some new person has come into my room and complained about the rain, complained like we are all naturally in on this suffering against the rain's assault.

We aren't.

Usually I defend the rain once. The complainer usually trots out farmers, danger, inconvenience, and floods. I then just wait for them to be finished so I can go back to watching the rain fall and fall and fall into the creek and the parking lots and the distant gray forever.
 
Today, for the first time in awhile, I had to leave my rain watching aerie and muck about in the wide world. The rain fell and blew onto me. As I drove, my car vainly strove to  wipe its eyes fast enough for me to see. On foot I ran across parking lots. I dashed between overhangs. I was splashed by gusting winds.

I could start to see where all these complaints were coming from. This was the rain they were talking about. I could, I suppose, if I had to, complain about this rain.

But I didn't have to. And I didn't want to. And I won't. This is my 8th floor rain, dear to my heart. I remembered. I looked into the dark sky.  I relaxed. I walked wide open, and I got wet. Very wet. And I let it rain.

Newspaper days

In some strange way I recognize that much of my relationship to the Internet is no different than how I related to the Newspapers of my youth. Newspapers were and are so comparatively limited, and the Internet is so vast, one might not think there would be so much commonality between them, but truly there is. What do I do on the Internet? I check the few things that are important to me, the sites that report on my hobbies for instance, whatever they are at the moment, I check headlines, weather, a cartoonist, a writer. It can all be done in 15 minutes and is a near mimic of my Newspaper habits of old.
 

How did I read the paper? A glance at headlines, a look at weather, when I was younger box scores were poured over, but always Peanuts, Doonesbury, then later, Bloom County for awhile, Calvin and Hobbes. If Miss Manners had a column that day it was a good day in the Newspaper. Maybe the opinion page, but mostly I only dug deeper if I had nothing else to do, wanted to draw out the morning, the time.

What difference is the Internet to me? Sure, it's wider, it folds in more resources; mail, reference library, TV, and it's everywhere, but it doesn't really seem to update any quicker than a Newspaper. In the end, if I really want to, I could be in and out of the Internet in the same way in those same 15 minutes.

I don't mean for this to be a big griping post about the Internet, though I have written my share and will no doubt write more, nor is this a great nostalgia for the Newspapers of my youth. Perhaps what it's really about is how things change slower than we think, or how things can look so very different on the outside, but you lift up the hood and the engine driving it all is astonishingly similar to all the ones before.

I would love for the Internet to be so packed with my favorite content that I could not hope to exhaust it before it is all new again. There would be 200 great daily comics. There would be people as clear and funny and fun as Miss Manners spilling out of the woodwork. The weather report would be inexhaustible, and columnists, my people, known on the Internet as bloggers, would be so interesting that I could not bear to miss a single day of them despite not having nearly the time for them all.

But it is curiously not so. I find no cartoonist the equivalent of Schultz or Breathed, though there are a few I like quite a bit, albeit many of them post only weekly. If I am flexible I can find one or two funny enough Miss Manners equivalents. The weather is the same thing I can find to this day on the Newspaper weather page, no deeper, just, uselessly I can find 20 versions of the same thing in different graphics. And bloggers, the daily columnists of the Internet, I am a little embarrassed to say that in a year of looking I have not found a one. Except me. Who I read every day. It doesn't take long.

Milk in coffee

In the great Nero Wolfe mysteries, by Rex Stout, our tough guy, competent, clown of a narrator, Archie, is a big milk drinker. It is one the many charming affectations and eccentricities that rhythmically, naturally, and charmingly punctuate the series. There is our tough, savvy, New York City private dick drinking the beverage of babies and small children. Milk. 

I haven't had a glass of plain milk in years. My one great drink obsession is coffee. And coffee is a quintessentially adult beverage. Classic, tough, savvy private eyes normally enough drink coffee like it's water, or scotch. But underpinning my coffee drinking, essential to it, expressing its variations and quality, is milk.

I love milk.

Setting aside the absolute coffee purist, the black coffee drinker, the espresso, straight up, thrown back drinker, and I am happy to set them aside because I am not them, I believe a great coffee drink rests on three legs: the bean, the brew, and the milk. And I am beginning to believe the greatest of these is milk, simple milk.

I have lately much been out of my native element, forced by the exigencies of life to seek dreadful coffee in waiting rooms and nefarious coffee kiosks. I have uniformly found that this poor coffee is made palatable or, alternately, undrinkable by the nature of the milk that can be added. With non dairy creamer it is utterly undrinkable and I will go without no matter what the cost. With a couple of those little hyper pasteurized plastic containers of half and half it is distinctly unsatisfactory, yet drinkable to the desperate, which of course I am. But find me a pint of whole milk somewhere, maybe rBGH free if I'm lucky, throw in a 50 percent portion to that lame cup of coffee and... it's pretty good.

In your big city, or the one nearest to you, you should these days be able to find at least one truly great cafe. Look behind the counter. A dollar will get you ten that their milk comes in glass, is organic, from grass fed cows.

My dream coffee? The best I've ever had has been in the city, but for my dream coffee I believe we'd have to go pastoral, out where the cows spend languid days grazing on a lush variety of grasses. There's still a dew on the flowers, a small chill in the morning air, birds. We pull my espresso, same coffee, same machines, but for the milk, ah for the milk. We walk over to the happy cow and milk right into the pitcher. We steam it up. Creamy. Not too warm. It goes gently into the crema, the espresso. Cappuccino. Heaven.

Conformity

Not so many years ago, that is, in the grand scheme of things, the people of my library community decided to throw twenty million dollars or so into building a new library to replace our old one. Technically speaking it was a remodel, but one so dramatic that it is fair to look at it as a new building.

I had something close to a front row seat at the design of our new library. Watching all the interesting ideas, the fancy ideas, and the Very Useful But Expensive ideas get cut away left me initially feeling that our new library, with a 50 percent increase or so in budget, could have really been something.

But it couldn't. It wouldn't. It wasn't.

First of all, money is always like that, it always says that the next level, the next add on, the next amount spent is what it takes to get that which is really desirable. And there is always another level.

Second of all, we were building a generic, of its time, cookie cutter, modern, medium-large library. That might make it sound worse than it is. And it is and it isn't worse than it is. When my new library was built it looked fresh and slick, modern and inventive. Indeed, it's still new enough that it still does look that way. It's white and minimal, clean and faintly techno. Its pallet is formed by accent colors that are bravely contemporary, that is, if corporate design and the color of Target store products can be said to be contemporary, which, sadly, I suppose they can. In five years it will look dated. Maybe in ten we can paint it over to chase past glories. It is also a library profoundly similar to every library of its type across the country. It's as if hundreds of architectural firms are pretending to diligently and inventively work on all these exciting new library projects, only to secretly send off the basic parameters to one wildly overworked and unhealthy architect working in a basement somewhere in Toledo, Ohio who draws up the same basic plan for every single one of these libraries.

And everyone is happy. Sort of.

The more I looked at libraries across North America the more I saw of this not entirely unpleasing slavish conformity, but it was an encounter with a beautiful coffee table book of great libraries of the world that really brought it all home to me.

I think the book is called The Library: A World History, and I saw it come through new when I was processing requested items. I immediately ceased all my work in order to familiarize myself with this new book, feeling, as I do, that it is very, very, very important that I know what's on every last page of every book in our library. Just, you know, in case it comes up with the patrons. The book is basically made of beautiful photo essays of some of the most glorious and grand libraries in the world, old (mostly) and new (an equally interesting few). So, anyway, I am paging through this book, enchanted, when suddenly, there, in a giant two-page spread, is a picture of my library!

My jaw dropped.

No, really, it did. I gaped. Of course, it took only a second or two to see that it wasn't really my library. The scale was wrong. The library in the picture was twice as big as my library. And, naturally then, it was full of minor differences; shelving, content, placement, thousands of details. Yes, actually it was very different, but the basic design, layout, and aesthetic were amazingly similar. My library, or rather its prototype, its platonic ideal, it turns out, is in Berlin, Germany! It was built in 1979, thirty five years ago! My super up to date contemporary library is practically plagiarized from a 35 year old building.

I am not in the place to floridly expand today's post into a vast essay on the nature of architecture, culture, genius, and provincial but not too provincial libraries. For my own happiness I strive to keep things here in appetizer sized portions, joke size, poetry size, rock song size, Mona Lisa size.

So I will cut to the chase.

You have heard the rhetoric about creativity, its celebration, its advocates, the grand tales of its history. We tell our collective story as a story of creativity. But that's just dreaming. Down here on the ground we are in love with conformity. It rules everything we see and touch and do. It is the roast and the potatoes, the mead and the vegetables, the bread and the cheese, everything laid out at the banquet.

Creativity is just a spice.

Full of falcons

The Sunday post. Draw up a chair. Well, no, I know they are too enormous to move. Everything is over-sized here in this room, I have even seen falcons come flying through, but the plush, eight foot tall golden chairs are comfortable just as they are, and the immensity of the stone walls and stone floors are made enchanting by the great roaring fire in the hearth, by the vast rugs that soften everything. Don't look too long though into those carpets. I think they are haunted, their beauty is endless, and you will be lost in them forever. You will start to see that the red is not red, and you will go deeper and deeper and not come back. This will not do because we are toasting fresh bread for you in the fireplace. We have butter. Listen to the sound of the rain falling. Yes, it is perfect here. Perfect.

Unfortunately there is nothing wrong with that.