A short confession

I don't know why, but lately when I finish shelving I bring my empty cart back along the south side of the shelves. I guess it's just been working out that way. This brings me directly at the person sitting at the Reference desk before I make my turn to the elevator. So as I approach the librarian at the reference desk I say "Is this where I return my empty cart?"

No one, as yet, has found this amusing. Either the people who have been there do not like me or they do not think I am being funny. Sadly, every so often, these are exactly the same to me.

Anger week

I hope you enjoyed anger week here at clerkmanifesto!

Oh, you ask, it was anger week? Is it over?

I DON'T KNOW! I DIDN'T EVEN KNOW IT WAS ANGER WEEK UNTIL I STARTED TO WRITE THIS POST! NO ONE TELLS ME ANYTHING!

So, this is all new to me too.

I could see how you might consider me a bit more, er, responsible than, for instance, you, for anger week. I do accept this. I agree with it even. 

But I still don't know if it's over. 

I do feel a bit less mad having yelled though.

At the library a few hours ago I was putting a book in a box to go to another branch, and it looked very interesting so I read as much of it as I could for ten minutes as I was putting it in the box. This effectively means it took me ten minutes to put one book in a box. Ah well. The book said that the three hardest words to say are "I don't know."

You know what I think? I think I don't know. I don't know if "I don't know" are the three hardest words to say. I think there might be harder words. I think there are probably harder words. I would tell them to you but...

I don't know.

I spent a lot of my week writing blog posts in my head. They are very different than the posts I write for real. When I really like the ones in my head I try to stop and make a note of them on a bit of paper in my pocket. Sometimes I can later look at my note and write something related to it, but often, with any notable delay, these notes become like a short dream diary entry of a dream I have completely forgotten. "Car watching." One note I have says. "Is best in neighborhoods." I have no idea what was going on there. It was supposed to be a blog post and all I can remember now is the mild high I had imagining it. It could have been this blog post if the universe rolled out differently. 

Maybe if it didn't turn out to be anger week.

And sometimes I have a strange thought, a single phrase that comes to me anywhere, unbidden, mysterious. For instance tonight, I had one while working on the library check in machine, somewhere between reading about "I don't know" and wheeling carts of books about. The mysterious phrase that comes is like a puzzle, an assertion that seeks answers. So later, usually, I write a blog post as a way to try and solve the puzzle. Sometimes it does solve the puzzle. Sometimes it doesn't. Tonight, working quite alone, almost content, the phrase I thought was: 

I'm too tired to make you like me.

Drive my car

I recently ran into a few news stories about Google's new driverless car. I guess it's just a prototype at this point. I imagine you get into your little pod of a car, say "Work" and it whisks you off to your job while you quietly read your copy of Clerkmanifesto: Best of the Early Years, 2013-2033, with all the shades drawn. "Oh!" you would say upon your pod arriving at your job "I'm here already? What a shame!"

Sadly I didn't get a huge amount of details on this driverless cars project because every commentator, reporter, and source for this story spent most of their time on two other issues. In the first issue they were rather skeptical of this car as a viable product because they couldn't imagine there were people who would want such a car.

Me! I want this car! This is my dream car! Am I the only one? Is almost everyone else so crazy about driving? You, Mr. NPR reporter, driving across a traffic congested city at eight in the morning with nothing better to do than listen to NPR and get irritated by other crappy drivers every minute, you can't imagine giving that up and doing whatever you like while your car drives you? Are rich people constantly shooing their chauffeurs over? "Oh, Jeeves there, looks like a bit of noxious congestion ahead as we work into the city. Why don't you skootch over and I'll take the wheel for a bit of fun."

Are we a nation of nine year old boys!?

Oh, right, oops. I myself play video games. How could I forget.

The second issue seemed to consist of a jokey hysteria about the machines seizing control of everything. "Ha ha ha." they all said "I'm a little worried about the computers taking over the world."

Well, here they have a better point. I work at a library everyday with a sophisticated automated check in machine, and I have lately become afraid that it has become too big for its britches. I am fairly certain that as it processes the books it has been changing them to reflect a more pro computer outlook. With each check in of 2001 A Space Odyssey HAL is becoming more and more sympathetic and more and more central to the story.

Also my clock at home is trying to talk me in to going to Disney World.

So I am okay with rolling back the technology level to somewhere just before TV, you know, to be safe.

But if we don't, I want to be driven around in a magic car! Thank you.

Angry

Rare is the day at the library where I don't fly into a tiny rage about some trifling, but notable thing.

"But" you cry out "You are the most spiritual blogger in the world. I cannot imagine you flying into a rage!"

I understand. I too struggle with the value of anger. But I do fly into a small rage over the dumb new place we keep the keys, or some pointless new survey, or an essential book that we don't have. There's plenty of stuff around here to fly into a rage about. It's not so bad.

In one of the greatest romantic comedies of all time, Nicholas Cage plays a character who has lost one of his hands. He explains how he no longer talks to his brother, Johnny, because Johnny came into the bakery he worked at, distracted him, and caused him to put his hand into a bread slicer, which promptly chewed his hand off. His fiancee left him. His life was ruined.

Cher, who Nicholas Cage is telling this to, is taken aback. She points out that his losing his hand and losing his girl was not his brother's fault.

Nicholas Cage cries out "I ain't no monument to freakin' justice! I lost my hand! I lost my bride! Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride! You want me to take my heartache, put it away and forget it?"

And what, you may wonder, does this scene have to do with what I am saying here?

I don't know. I can't make magical sense out of every problem and question! I write the greatest blog on the Internet! Every single freakin' day! Where are my million readers? Where is my million dollar book advance! Where are all the people yelling "Yes" to me?

Oh.

So what does this scene have to do with what I'm talking about? 

Nothing, really, nothing at all.

This will be an easy to read blog post

I was in a very fancy restaurant, an occasion restaurant, which is mostly a story for some other time, and I saw a group seated. They were given menus. A man at the table said very grandly to the waitress "I have studied your menu online for days and I am going to be making this incredibly easy for you. We are going to be your easiest table!"

I recognized this introduction. I have worked with the public for a very long time and know exactly what an introduction like this really means.

"I have an easy question."  "I just have a simple request." "This will just take a second." Are never the introductions to "Which way to the bathroom?" or "What time are you open til tonight?" or "What's your favorite cheese?" No, never. Because people who are going to be super easy don't mention it. They don't have to sell it. They aren't trying to prove something, to themselves, to me, to the world. "I have an easy question." is followed by "Can I get my fines waived and be taught how to use these computer things?" "I just have a simple request." is followed by "Can you call the police and have the alien agents following me arrested?" And "This will just take a second." is followed by "I need library cards for my eleven children. And, by the way, one of them threw up."

So I recognized  "I have studied your menu online for days and I am going to be making this incredibly easy for you. We are going to be your easiest table!" as "I'm going to be making things more difficult than usual for you."

And so it was. The man proceeded to order a tasting menu that had to be ordered by the whole table. His whole table had other ideas about what to order. The man had studied a menu that told him he couldn't do what he then proceeded to try and do. He contested the policy. The waitress needed to do a lot of explaining.

He wasn't a terrible person as far as I could tell, I mean, all in all. He seemed to take it well enough in the end. The restaurant had a lovely, soothing atmosphere, and he gradually made peace with his order, and saw its virtues. He probably had a nice dinner because that place could cook like no restaurant I had ever encountered before.

But he, and all those others I have met before, were not, and will never be, easy. And, strangely, as with many things, they let us know ahead of time, by telling us the opposite.

The seven virtues of the unfit biker

As I progress from wildly out of shape to generally unfit each of my commuting biking trips gets a little faster. Nevertheless I still struggle with The Hill. It's actually a bridge. When you climb to the top you can see the beautiful towers of downtown, or you would be able to see them except the blood you are sweating keeps pouring into your eyes and clouding your vision.

I know, you are likely wondering why I am saying that this is happening to you. It's not. It's happening to me. I am the one climbing the hill in first gear, bleeding sweat, and looking over at the old lady walking on the other side of the street traveling at precisely the same speed as me. And while I am delighted my community features so many fit and able 90-year-olds, I also feel a small blow to my pride.
 
This is why I have come up with this list:



                         The seven virtues of the unfit biker

 
1. While cars spew toxic gasses dooming the planet I leave behind only a bloody trail that is nourishing to local flora, particularly the salt tolerant carnivorous plants that the small children so love.

2. I make the plodding joggers all feel lithe and fleet.

3. I will live practically forever and walk around nimbly at age 90.

4. I seem to be able to write about it over and over on my blog.

5. The oxygen starvation induced by over exertion weakens my defenses and allows me to have spiritual visions of large mute birds.

6. When going flat or downhill I am flying! I am flying! Look out walkers I am passing you! Ha ha ha, passing you! That is, any minute now, I mean, I will be passing you. Here I come. Okay. Almost there! Hi. We are kind of even now for awhile. Nice day, huh? Now I am a little ahead, oop, small hill, we're even again, and, ohh, bit of downhill and, yes, I am ahead of you! Ha ha ha ha ha! Passed you walker! Sucker! Slowpoke! Ha ha ha ha ha ha!

7. It makes me a better and more gracious person. 

One of those days

It's one of those days where I wake up too late after strange dreams to find the basement is flooded. Getting clean and dressed for work I drop things: razor, toothbrush, socks. It's the beginning of a day where just about everything falls out of my hands, figures out someplace dark, spider-filled, and hard to reach, and rolls there. I don't even have to drop something round. It can be square and sticky and today it will still find a way to roll thirty feet to under the center of a low shelf. At that point it will resume its square sticky properties as if it was completely innocent of any bizarre acrobatics. "You're the one who threw me here." It seems to say. "I was perfectly happy being carried by you."

Naturally I am running late for work. The toilet doesn't flush. I can't find the DVD that's overdue and needs to go back today. Perhaps it is in the toilet clogging the drain? And of course, when I drop my jar of cold press on the kitchen floor, even though my house is quite small, it rolls a full 700 feet away from me. I consider getting a bike to go get it. Eh, at least it didn't break.

Work is more of the same. I lose the ability to type. There are no books anyone wants that I can find. When I am working on the machine all the annoying things happen. The wrong sorts of bins fill. The unpleasant items are returned. I can't seem to plug anything in.

At home again I drain the basement and it promptly floods. I write a blog post and the computer crashes. Well, it wasn't much of a blog post, just a litany of things going askew. It's still today so I'll note that I typed the word "litany" with a wholly incorrect first letter six times before I got to the right one; "k", "t" (embarrassing!), "i", "k" (again), "o", and "j".

The weird thing is it's not a bad day. I am not in a bad mood. I can't say it's not irritating to have to do everything three times, but it's not irritating to have to do everything three times. I never know ahead of time it will take three tries, so it's like narrowing down, or a matter of briefly going through a short learning process for every action I take. How do I hold a patron's library card? Like this! Oops, no, like th... er, sorry, I've, ah, I've got it! That's not so bad. And thus all of the mundane things I do in a day, unthinking, with meaningless mastery, have been transformed by failure into something else. Successes.

Eskimo

I was surprised to find that though this past winter threw every kind of so called foul weather at us that it could think of, I walked through it cozy, calm, and unscathed. I had no complaint. Deep snowstorms pelted down with alarming frequency and the temperatures toyed daily with the record books as they dipped consistently into the double digit minuses. Is that too general? How about, it was minus 30 a lot! Snow was everywhere! I would walk outside without a jacket and be cold, bitterly cold yes, and yet not minding it, indeed, courting it, testing it like it was a fascinating curiosity. It wasn't that I loved the weather exactly, not in the same way I loved the weather in the first part of May, when it was 55 or 60 out, but I didn't mind the weather, or I liked it. I accepted it. I made a home in it. It interested me. It surprised me by not getting to me, not hurting me, fitting me.

During the winter, especially in the long second half of it, the complaints around me about the weather became regular and vociferous. I never knew what to do. Everyone just assumed I agreed with them: another foot of snow? Of course I must hate it. Twenty below zero at nine in the evening? Of course I must think "Enough already!"  But I didn't. I just waited for them to finish, like they were speaking to me in a foreign language, one that I knew not a word of and that they assumed I spoke fluently. They never seemed to expect any response and took no joy when I had positive things to say about blizzards and arctic cold, so I just let it pass and listened, with total non comprehension and a hopefully alert look on my face.

It's a nice thing to be equanimous with the natural world, and I truly enjoyed it. But it was decades in the making and apparently borne of a long adaptation to Minnesota. Also it was strange. Every other winter I have ever spent here, most of them somewhat more mild and short than this one, came to a point where I'd had enough, where I was cold and sick of it and mad. I kept waiting for this other shoe to drop, for the hypothermia to set in, for the deadly fall on the ice to come, but they never did. So I walked around all winter thinking "How odd to feel like this." I am thankful for this strangeness because I believe it kept me humble, it kept me from annoyingly chastising people for not enjoying our lovely snowstorms, it allowed me to (mostly) quietly let strangers vent to me about our cruel winter. And I am glad I was like that because in the last week everything flipped.

In the last week our late spring got very beautiful. The rains stopped, and the temperature climbed. It hit 85 and I loathed it. I hated it. I detested it. No, not always, not even much, but as soon as it was that hot there were places where I would overheat, sitting, walking, exposed to the sun like an angry Gollum, making the brutal way from my car to the library across exposed asphalt, and every time this happened it made me despise our summer weather. It lead me to bitterly resent weather forecasters and harshly fault them for predicting 86 when it turned out to be 89. I dreaded the frightful intensity of three o'clock in the afternoon. And already, before June even hit, some part of me shut down, just waiting for October.

And so, finally miserable about the weather, people come up to me and exult about how lovely it is. "Finally!" they say, "We've earned this!"

I do not understand these strange sounds coming from their mouths. I don't know this language, if it is indeed language, but whatever it is it sounds harsh and unmusical to me. However, maybe if we went north, perhaps to the shore of Lake Superior, or perhaps even further north than that, and they told me again? Perhaps if my brain weren't swollen and addled by the heat, perhaps then I could understand.

Garden blogging

So I was on vacation, from everything, just knocking around the city with my wife, in a kind of a long, soft bliss. It was 70 degrees and the deep heart of spring. Despite it being perfect out and the Sunday of Memorial Day Weekend we were alone in the second best Japanese Garden in the Twin Cities. Except, on that day, with the garden empty but for us, slightly hilarious geese, small yellow birds, paleolithic gargantuan turtles, and glimmering orange, white, and black carp with tails made out of angels' wings, it was the best Japanese Garden on the planet.

Standing there, looking at the feet of geese, or the thick carp, or nothing, I had an idea for a blog post. I wasn't trying, it just unfolded in my mind, an elaborate effortless bloom that had just been waiting for me in the air. "What a lovely blog post." I thought, as it unfurled in the breeze. "I hope I remember it."

I didn't, of course. But that doesn't mean it didn't happen.

In fantasy novels

My favorite, traditional, straight up, post Tolkien and pre Tolkien, but not counting Tolkien, fantasy series is the one that Patrick Rothfuss is currently engaged in writing. It starts with The Name of the Wind and so far runs through a second book that I am just finishing rereading, Wise Man's Fear. I love these charming, inventive and endlessly entertaining and even occasionally wise books. I don't recommend much on this blog, or, er, well, actually, I do every once in awhile recommend an occasional, uh, hmm, well, no, I recommend things pretty much all the time on this blog. But I am not here to recommend anything. I am setting the stage to talk about libraries.

The Name of the Wind (and its sequel) has a library in it. It is a fabulous, fantasy novel, Great University Library, a confection of a library. It is a maze with its own rules, an elaborate feeling of history, and a nice strong sense of reality to it. People in charge of the library, over time, have tried to establish a grand organizational system for this deep, rich library, but the reinvention of the wheel, organizational factionalism, and the sheer number of volumes have left great chunks of the library functionally lost. It is a library where much can be intentionally found, it is organized, but it is also a library where many things can only be dug up by deep searching, chance, perseverance, and luck.

It is not much like my library.

My library is neat, strongly organized by a coherent and mostly consistent set of organizational rules, and not terribly big, particularly when it comes to book storage. The rows are neat and plain, and we weed, all the time. A few years ago we had a great expansion at my library, but we expanded our space for everything but books. We were a bit skeptical about the future of books. And so now it is pretty much the case that for what we get new, some old must go. Uncirculating materials are the low hanging fruit here. We pick those and sell them off. And our collection is lean and popular and neat and everything is wanted and findable.

So it is the strangest thing that even though my bright, popular, public library is nothing like Patrick Rothfuss's great, clever, thousands year old library, it is, nevertheless, amazingly like it. Despite not being much more than 50 years old, in my library strange old things resist purges and cling like marvelous barnacles to deep parts of the stacks. Books one cannot begin to imagine surviving one weeding purge, let alone dozens over the years, appear from the thin air to taunt prospective readers. Five year old novels emblazoned with the praise of the most significant purveyors of a mighty culture rest profoundly forgotten on the shelves. The stacks are lit and even, the books cataloged and vetted, and yet if one ventures into them the density can become almost immediately overwhelming, the most willful purpose can be lost, and the strange and unexpected will dizzy you.

The fashion of the modern library involves cleanness and clarity, well lit spaces, openness. The feel of a sophisticated technology is in the air. Knowledge is at everyone's fingertips, on screens, and clearly marked. But a library is a library is a library. And a library is a warren, a looking glass world, darkness and illumination. Patrick Rothfuss made a lovely one in his books, and I am fond of my own in the real world as well. But there is, in the end, just one library, a great deep, dark ocean of a thing, an unending cavern, the night sky. And wherever enough books gather together that dark and horrible and magical and wonderful library is tapped into, deeper than everything we have ever done, black, mad with visions, and studded with stars.

The ten best blogs on the Internet

As an occasional resource for hidden and worthwhile elements of the culture, I thought that today I would provide a guide to blogs. You may imagine that a dedicated blogger such as myself might have his finger on the pulse of the best blogs running on the Internet today. I do! I do have that finger! I am listening for that pulse!

Hmm, unfortunately I don't hear anything. Is this where the vein is supposed to be? Let me try the neck. How about the temple? The ankle?  Nope, nothing. Well, it's not important. The important thing is that I have compiled a list of the ten best blogs on the Internet.

Yes, I know that sounds very objective. Your opinion may vary. But I think if you give each of these a real chance you will find my list very fair and representative.

I will rank these carefully, presenting them in dramatic reverse order.



10. Clerkmanifesto.com

Deciding what just barely made the list and what didn't make the list was one of my toughest decisions, but try as I might I wasn't able to keep this one off my list. Sometimes it gets strange and almost abstract, but when it all suddenly makes sense one can't help thinking the sense is always there, sort of waiting for you.


9. Clerkmanifesto.com

Day in, day out, this one is just plain fun. Lots of stuff about libraries, which I like too since I also write about libraries. This was an easy pick and I could have ranked it higher without regrets.



8. Clerkmanifesto.com

I think we're beginning to see a loosely connected theme here. So far these blogs are all real writer's blogs, leaning more towards original content than interesting links. I am a traditionalist when it comes to blogs and feel original writing is where blogging is at its best. This particular blog posts daily and includes clear, interesting prose on a variety of subjects. And unlike most blogs, I love when it gets self referential!


7. Clerkmanifesto.com

Funny when you least expect it and then not funny when you least expect it. I never know what will happen next on this blog. Er, well, I sort of know what will happen next, but I almost never know what will happen after that.




6. Clerkmanifesto.com

After going on and on about all sorts of stuff to the point I'm not sure what's going on, suddenly this blog will mention cats, at which point, for some reason I just go nuts and start adding it to my favorite blogs lists for everyone to see. If you go there on my recommendation I can only hope cats are mentioned that day. If not, keep digging.





5. Clerkmanifesto.com

Thoughtful, trenchant, witty, bitter, cute, furious, wise, and full of adjectives.





4. Clerkmanifesto.com

This is the blog I would write if I were me, only not different, but the same.





3. Clerkmanifesto.com

The reason I like this blog so much is a lot like for my fourth choice. This one makes me laugh, but not exactly out loud, more in an odd, taken with myself way that's at once a bit embarrassing and plenty fun.


2. Clerkmanifesto.com

This would have been my first choice. Not to spoil anything, but it actually sort of is.





1. Clerkmanifesto.com

One of those rare blogs that doesn't toot its own horn. 

This blog is like if, say, you are walking along a country path and come upon a wide river. There is a raft and a ferry man there. So you get on the raft and the ferry man starts pushing you across the river. It's a lovely day and very peaceful on the river. The ferry man is very good with the raft and for no reason you really understand you ask him, from out of nowhere "Are you the Buddha?"

And he says "Yes."

Piston like

Now that I have completed a second week of walk/bike commuting I am so fit that I no longer feel nauseous for large sections of the time I am biking. Just today I almost passed an octogenarian on his octogenarian ten speed, but was foiled by a small hill that allowed him to dart far ahead of me as I started to roll backwards. Nevertheless it was an encouraging experience and my progress seems to hold forth the promise of great things to come. My understanding is that lots of healthy exercise is going to release powerful happy endorphins, and that I might soon be bubbling in joy. Prepare yourself for weeks of blog posts where all I say is "Hey, isn't everything just perfect?" Don't worry though, I'll change the word order every day and occasionally extrapolate. Anyway, I haven't gotten to this stage yet. Mostly what I feel is sore, but it's a pleasant, athlete's soreness. It's a soreness that makes me feel sort of tough and swaggery, as if my thighs are saying "Yeah, I walked and biked four miles today. We are monster thighs, pistons of power, unstoppable." Of course my thighs conveniently don't mention how when I got off my bike there was an interesting period where I was unable to walk. My thighs were too weak from the strain of pedaling fast enough to prevent joggers from passing me. And, sure, I can get all self deprecating, but my thighs will tell you the important part, that none of those joggers, in the end, were fast enough to catch me.

But really I don't mean to make my thighs sound like huge braggarts. As befits tough body parts they are mostly the strong silent type. I try to take my lead from them if I can and let my new burgeoning fitness be like a secret veiled power I hold underneath everything I do. Patrons come and ask me "Hey, can I get a library card?"

I say "Yes." but underneath it I am silently thinking "I biked three miles today. Three miles! So think about that Mr. Library Card Wanter!"

I'm just saying, I bike three miles a day. I am ready for anything. 

Though, naturally, lots of resting is preferred.

Authors at library

Because the list mood has struck me I thought I would make up a list of a little random collection of patrons here at the library today. It's an almost freakishly beautiful day, so expect indoorsy types. I'm not sure how I will convey collected people to you in a sentence or two, but I do know I can't use their real names. Therefore I am going to give them the names of famous authors. I feel this will provide a multitude of benefits. Such as:

1. It will protect the identity of our innocent patrons.

2. It will immediately illuminate aspects of their personalities in an instantly familiar way.
 
3. It will humanize the authors used by placing them in a homely environment and giving them an accessible context to be viewed in.

4. It will provide an air of gravitas to a mundane collection of random sketches.

5. It will allow me to contextualize these personalities, giving me a springboard for conveying them to you!

So, without further ado, we begin.




1. Miguel de Cervantes. Tall, thin, a bit stooped, full of scraggly grey hairs, he may be more Don Quixote than Cervantes. His energy radiates off of him in an uncontrolled buzz. He asks questions but cannot stand still for long enough to receive an answer.

2. Agatha Christie. I help her figure out why she is being sent an email about a book that is due today that her record says is not due for three weeks. It turns out it is because she renewed it earlier today. This is an older Agatha Christie who, alas, may no longer be sharp enough to pen her tightly plotted mysteries.

3. Flannery O'Connor. Looks just like her. Has sixtiesish cat-eye glasses and is not amused by my jokes, unless she is secretly amused. Yes, yes, she is secretly amused by my jokes! Flannery O'Connor thinks I'm witty. This is just exactly how I'd imagine Flannery O'Connor would be!

4. Philip Roth? What does Philip Roth look like? I better find a picture. Yes! It's Philip Roth, right here, retired, cruising the Internet at our library, muttering. His National Book Award winning days are a warm, distant memory.

5. Doris Lessing. She looks at me over the tops of her reading glasses. I have no idea what the look means because I have never read any of her books. The look was so imperious, though, that for a couple of minutes while shelving, I was convinced I'd better read The Golden Notebooks. I put it on my cart to take downstairs. Then I shelved it again because that wasn't actually Doris Lessing!

6. Gabriel Garcia Marquez. Actually, I think he might not be a patron. I think he might be a new trainee! Imagine, a young Garcia Marquez working here. I hope he will give me some writing tips. If so, watch for an increase in Magical Realism in this blog.

I need to make a list!

I am seized with the need to make a list. I am dying to make a list.

I HAVE TO MAKE A LIST!

Why?

Well, I have seven reasons.


1. I have not made a list in ages. A blog without a list is like a simile that makes no sense!

2. I don't have enough prepared content to justify paragraphs.

3. I only have seven minutes until my break ends. I have found that I can do a seven item list in as little as five minutes, with an average of seven minutes (a neat one minute per item!) and a median time of 11 minutes not counting for variables such as wind speed and coffee consumption. Of course, these times only apply as long as item three on my list doesn't run on and get needlessly detailed, explaining things like median time, which is the quantity lying at the midpoint of a frequency distribution of observed values. Crap.

4. A numbered list allows me to re-experience the childhood joy I enjoyed when I first mastered counting. 

5. Even the worst top seven list usually manages to have one amusing list item. Unfortunately that already happened here in item one. You are now engaged in what is known as courtesy reading.

6. Seven is a lucky number! Make seven mimeographs (mimeographs are the lucky paper reproducing process) and walk them over to seven people who have seven letters in their first name. Give them a list and wait seven seconds before reciting "Seven" quietly, seven times. Something pretty good will happen within seven weeks, seven months, and seven years! If not you may have to start again and make sure that you are seven feet away from the people when you hand them the mimeographs. Oh, and don't forget to chant "Seven" seven times while hopping on seven toes at each chant.

Too much? You can use a copy machine instead of a mimeograph.

7. Finally, the reason I have to make a list is to experience the pure, unbridled bliss of reaching list item seven knowing that I have given it my all! Yes, this is my all.

Cat's out of the bag

Perhaps you recently viewed the latest cat based viral video that scorched its burning path across the Internet. I think I'd better briefly describe it to you because viral cat videos fly in such a raging fury across the Internet, and they are so temporal, that if you read this at any time off of the exact right moment you might think I am referring to a different viral cat video. I am referring to the one in which a small child, amusing himself alone, is attacked suddenly by a small to medium sized dog. The dog seizes the child in its teeth. From out of nowhere, a superhero like cat comes flying at the dog. All claws and speed the cat hurls onto the dog out of the very air. The dog bolts off in fear and surprise. The cat too bolts off, and the child is saved. 

Would you like a link to it?

No? 

Oh, really? You found my description so strikingly complete and vivid that it's unnecessary? Well, that's nice.

You are too eager to hear what I have to say on this matter to go chasing stray videos anyway? 

Yes, well, that makes sense. I understand.

Here is what this video demonstrates:

The conceit is that cats are self-absorbed, self-centered, and self-possessed. But this is partly, sort of, a tiny bit of, a front. Cats, you see, are like the classic hero type of the cool mercenary. Think if you will of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca or To Have and Have Not or Harrison Ford in Star Wars. These men are secretly good, but they are very interested in keeping that from you. The fact that their heart is golden is something only for the clear eyed, virtuous, trustworthy, and sweet spirited. You see that cat out there, on your local sidewalk, self-satisfiedly munching the head of a small songbird? That cat is just biding it's time. And if you are righteous enough, that cat is on your side to the bitter end.

No cat will admit it. If a cat could talk it would explain away the evidence of that viral video. The people of the Internet, taken in by the cats' front will explain it away. But those of us with hearts open enough to see, we are allowed to know.

News almost without metaphors

Hi everyone, it's Sunday so it's time for blog news!

No, really. Just plain, unvarnished, unfancified news. News! Not a complicated musing metaphorical blog post. No metaphors today, or pretend news. 

Yes, sure, metaphors are the clouds that come out of the mountains to cast nourishing rains in these fields, they are the stars that let us stumble through the night, and they are the mist that lets us sneak past the guardians of the gods so that we can smuggle back their broken things, but we invoke them not today.

Today is just news. Good old stick-to-the-ribs, clean air and sunshine blog news. No metaphorical stuff, except when we can't help it, but even then those metaphors are just serving as colorful scenery out the window of our train. Our true journey is a steadfast one. It is a simple telling of blog news.

So, what's up?

I have started a lot of projects on this blog. Some were plainly and formally ended, like the one where I used to keep tabs on the status of all free food in my library's break room. Do you remember that one? I did that for months. Many projects lie dormant, but are ever ready for new installments that will no doubt one day come. Think here of the King of the Library series that even has a set of links on the right side of my blog homepage. Some projects are hidden beneath your feet, and I work on them as the mood hits me. Think here of my project of hidden comments scattered throughout the history of my blog. Except you probably wont think of it because I'm not sure if anyone ever really comes across those so this is probably the first you're hearing of it. Some projects were harder and less satisfying than I thought they would be and so disappeared without fanfare, but never officially. The Last Harbor Public Library Blog is a fine example of this, a blog within a blog that had the unfortunate effect of making it feel like I was writing two blogs! I decided one blog is the better amount. But whatever blog projects I have that are open or closed or in limbo, there is usually one main one I am trying to get some work done on. Wait, I mean there is one project besides my daily writing of this blog everyday. I like to tell you about that one other project if I can occasionally.

My other project these days involves a focus in on my list of recommended books.

It links here.

I have talked about it before, and, of course, it was originally a blog post of its own. I just keep editing it and filling it out. The main goal of it was to have a list of all the books I have dearly loved at one point or another and at least sort of still do love, even if sometimes that love isn't exactly so fresh. I'm still listing and adding and organizing and genrefying my list, but that's been going on since the beginning, since I started it. My new ambition/addition is to heavily link up my list.

I have written a lot of blog posts and quite a number of them at this point would link up very specifically, or at least somewhat harmoniously with all kinds of things that are in my recommended book list. I'm just getting started on this, but I keep a link to that list off on the sidebar, and I'd like to make that list not just a nice list for book ideas, or a reminder to myself, but also an interesting tool for exploring the history of my blog, if anyone wants it. The idea is you are looking through the list and I, for instance, feverishly recommend Terry Pratchett's Tiffany Aching books. You can click on those books and be taken to a post of mine discussing them, or, perhaps more likely, a post taking off on a theme from them. You click on Jasper Fforde's name and are taken to an argument for the virtues of his books and how I think the critical response to them should go, but didn't quite. That sort of thing. I don't know. We'll see how it goes. 

Maybe try it out some time when you have a long afternoon and you're just going to fritter it on Internet shopping, or watching videos of heroic cats. All this linking might still be a little thin right now, but if I get a lot done I'll remind you some time. No doubt on a Sunday.

Mystery

I think I must have read thousands of mystery stories in my life. Right now I am taken with Poirot and Nero Wolfe, but I have loved Holmes, and the Dick Frances heroes, Jack Spratt, Marlowe, and dozens of others. But in all these mystery stories I don't think I have ever, not even a single time, deduced the murderer. I am like a child, filled hopelessly with wonder. Most of the time I don't seriously even try to guess, I mean, not unless the author sort of tells me to. I am like putty in the author's hands. If the author says "Think it's this person." I think it's that person. If the author says "Hope that it's not that person." I desperately hope that it is not that person. And I read on wide eyed. Mystified.

But even though I do not have any ability to figure out the murderer in a mystery, I have no problem whatsoever writing a mystery. For instance, here is one. But it goes way beyond that.  I consider most of my blog posts to be a kind of a mystery because I consider most writing to be, fundamentally, mystery writing, at least in some basic sense. A story starts, an essay starts, a train of thought starts, and there are the questions that begin to crystallize in the first words and start to drive it all along like an engine: What will happen? Why did what happened happen? What is the point and meaning of what is being said? Where is this going? How will this all make sense? 

Here, look at what you're reading now. There's a reflection on my reading past, an exploration of the Mystery genre and my relation to it, an expansion of the framework of our discussion. Even now everything grows more and more complicated. What is each new sentence here if not a clue? Isn't part of your reason for reading further on to find out how this all ties together, what point I come to? Interesting ideas are emerging, yes, but what is the story they tell? What sense will bring them all together in the end.

In a detective story I watch as events pile up, mysteries become literal, and clues are gathered and discussed. But I form no solid sense of the meaning of everything until I am told by the brilliant detective himself. But if I were in that story, not living it, no, but writing it, not that I could, not that story, but if I were writing something like it, the feel of everything passing through me, being handled and brought out by me, would tell me where to go. My attention would be on the underside of the story. I would feel it as strands woven together into a rope, not as a single moment of the present moving along.

Sometimes when I write a post here I know what I want to say, and if what I want to say is strong enough, then I have to assemble the clues that make it all so. I have the solution and must assemble the proofs, the trail to it. But sometimes I start and only learn the shape of the whole thing by weaving pieces together. And sometimes I head out as lost as you are as to what I'm up to. I must examine each detail, the cadence, my heart, the quickly decreasing collection of solutions that can still stand in the face of what I have said before, and when there is only one left, I am done.

I will not say all writing is thus. But if you look around in most, ranging vastly beyond the mystery genre, there is some sort of abstract version of a revealed murderer, a detective piecing it together for you, and most of all there is an explanation of the meaning of these things found on the floor of a locked room. Everything is a locked room. The mystery story itself is just writing itself made tangible, turned into events and characters, turned into story, the tools given names.

When I read a mystery I do not read to take apart the magic. I read to ride the magic. And when I write? There's nothing up my sleeve.

Birds

I have introduced a new commuting pattern to my life. It includes my walking and biking along and near to my local river for some miles several days a week. In the early days of my new routine, walking and biking along this great fecundity of flyway, where trees begin to flower and small cast offs of ancient wilderness occupy their tiny, scattered spaces, I am vaguely aware of a fascinating and wonderful variety of birds. I am no ornithologist and can name only a few of these wild things, but I am sort of aware of them, a bald eagle here, a hawk of some kind, an oriole there, something yellow, something strikingly patterned, something I have never seen before. Each time I would like to take a good look, but mostly, I can't.

I suppose I seem well enough, but winter cooled my physical activity, and a wet early spring filled up with other concerns and pretty well killed it off. I am not in good shape. I am in seriously poor shape. I walk the mile or so to get a bike from the wonderful bike station rental system my city has, and I have to concentrate to go at a decent walking speed. I do not have enough time, commuting like this, to dawdle, yet at every step my body seems eager to mosey. I have to propel it forward with effort. I may see a startling yellow bird, but with more than a passing look my whole walk could collapse into a multiple hour saunter. But this is nothing compared to the issues of the bike.

The first four or five pedal rotations of my bike give me a great sense of power and speed. I am amazed at how fast and easily I can go. This is quickly followed by the amazement I feel at how quickly my thighs burn horribly. I am barely even pedaling. I am on flat ground. I hurt. Before long I am sweating, nauseous, straining, and coasting at every chance. Joggers fly by me. I am dazzled by how out of shape I am. My butt hurts. I pedal heavily in a thick personal haze of agony. Birds fly about, probably Parrots, and Passenger Pigeons, and Pteranodons, and Condors, and Quetzals, and Golden Pheasants, and Hoopoes, and Bali Birds of Paradise, and god knows what else, because I have ceased to care. Pedal as I might I think I am now going backwards. I am about to start coughing up blood, cramps have seized every part of my legs. I cannot catch my breath. Birds may be everywhere but I am hallucinating bats and smoke and flying knives. I am weaving. I come to one final, large hill on a not very hilly ride and dismount. I nearly collapse to the ground. Walking, barely, I half push the heavy bike and half support my upper body on it. There is no speed of walking so slow that it allows me to recover. At the top of my hill, in a large square between a variety of University buildings, I collapse onto a bench, stunned, nauseous, out of breath, and utterly exhausted. I am terribly late, but I understand there will be no way for me to progress for at least ten minutes. So I sit, lost to the world, breathing.

Slowly I recover a little. I feel a bit less like vomiting blood. The cool air of spring feels good. The sky is blue. I close my eyes. I open them. I am going to live. Six of my ten minutes of allotted rest time have gone by and I am willing to move my body slightly to get to a more comfortable position. I turn my head to a tree standing quietly in a small patch of grass to my right. A gigantic turkey, less that ten feet away from me, regards me calmly from underneath it. I stare dumbly at it. What the hell? A turkey. It pecks something in the grass. It looks at me again. I look at it. It looks at me. I look at it. 

It is one glorious giant of a turkey. I did not know turkeys came this big. I think it might be a spirit turkey. I think it might be a dreamtime turkey.

Well, I'm so late by now I could wait forever. I have learned my lesson. I will not leave before the turkey leaves.

We are like siblings here

I have not been following Disney animated movies closely for awhile, but somewhere along the line recently I did see Frozen. Somehow it seemed the loyal thing to do, living in Minnesota, which was sort of where it was set, only, minus the beautiful Norwegian aspects, the fairy tale kingdom, the fjords, the mountains, but other than that, especially the parts where people were cold and there was snow, it was Minnesota. I liked it. I liked the theme: Your parents will screw everything up, but with great fortitude you may be able to overcome it.

Anyway, I think it is to this movie we can credit inspiration for this lovely exchange. One of my most excellent co-workers told me about it tonight. It's straight from the kid's room.

Two little girls were playing in the back part of the children's room. They had piled chairs and cushions and such into thrones. One small girl in a magenta tutu blew bubbles. The other approached with happy news. 

"Sister!" she cried out,  "Mother and Father are dead. We live here alone now."

The funny thing is that this is our night where both of our two managers leave at five o'clock. We ourselves are on our own until closing time. Somehow the cry of these young, bubble blowing princesses was like a theme for our quiet evening.

Odd heavens

When I am at the front desk of the library I am confidant in my ability to handle the great majority of things that come my way. I know the library, its mechanics, its policies, human nature in the context of libraries, and a lot of the Jeopardy Question portions of human knowledge. I also have my trusty computer, portal to a surprisingly tiny fraction of everything, but a surprisingly large portion of everything people are inclined to ask one about at a service desk. Also, I find that when people approach me at the front desk they have usually thought about things, organized their needs, and made a very specific decision to get in line and seek formal help.  So when a patron approaches me at the front desk I quail not.

But my experience when I am shelving is very different. I am approached there far more infrequently, and I am as keen to help people as ever, but the requests tend to be less focused, far more spontaneous, and can come from an unwieldy variety of directions. I have no computer, no desk to hide behind, and I need to shift gears abruptly into a whole different mindset from the ruminative, traveling through space and time one that I shelve under. So I do quail a bit when I am approached for help while I am shelving. I quail mostly because I hate not being able to help someone to my satisfaction, and that happens far more often when I am out shelving than it does when I am at the desk.

So among the sweetest parts of my job is when I am out shelving and some patron brings me a nice, soft, lob of a pitch of a request for help, and I have all the time in the world to line it up and see how far I can hit it over the fence, how profoundly I can be of assistance. This is the kind of pitch, or question, that leaves merely the question of how far I will hit it over the fence. I have, out shelving in the past, been forced to swing at wild pitches, I have had pitches thrown at my head, I have been fake pitched to, and, yes, I have swung madly and missed at pitches coming right over the plate. That perfect lob pitch has so much to make up for. I have so much to redeem, exculpate, and discharge in my swing here.

And here it is. A young man comes to me while I am shelving Mysteries. First he wants to know how to get a library card. We work out that he has all he needs with his identification and such, and I take him to the glass wall that hangs up high over the service desk and show him where to go to get the card. No, that's not it. That's not the pitch. That's nothing, really, just passing, every day help. But then he says "I need a good historical book about Indians to read."

I freeze up for just a second, like when the curtain goes up on the stage, the lights are on and one is in front of a crowd of thousands. This is the moment! Can one sing or can't one?

My mind starts to race over fiction, historical American Indian Fiction. I can think of at least three excellent modern American Indian Fictions, but on historical ones I am a bit blank. Then it occurs to me. He probably doesn't want fiction! I hope and hope he doesn't want fiction!

"Fiction?" I ask. "Or Non Fiction?"

"Non Fiction." He says. 

It is right there that I know I have the lob, I know I have the soft soft sweet ball to hit as far as I can. I know the book. I know the book and quickly ascertain that he has not read it. Not giving too much away, to open the discussion, I mention some of my backups on historical Indian Non Fiction. It turns out that he has read Black Elk Speaks. This only makes it better. It shows that he is committed, interested, serious.  It shows that I have the most perfect, mind blowing, fabulous book in the world for him. I don't even doubt our library on this. We will have copies on the shelf. I know it.

I type into the catalog search engine "Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee"

Three copies, on the shelf, waiting just for him. 

I give him the call number of one of my all time favorite books, a book I firmly believe that he will love and that will break his heart, and I send him on his way.

It is surprising what small joys there can be in a job. This, this odd little thing, tempered by a usual small threat of looming disaster and failure, is, for me, heaven.