Contentment is my favorite feeling. There is a
calmness and satisfaction and peace in it that I crave. One of the few places in my world that is
sure to spark that feeling is my local public library.
My library certainly isn’t the biggest, there is a
much grander one downtown, but to me my neighborhood library has always been
the best, due solely to the fact that it is mine. I have been going there for
so long that it is no longer a public place.
In public I stress and worry about both the improbable and the
impossible. I want to leave a good impression of myself in strangers’ minds,
but at the same time want to go completely unnoticed. But at the library, in
between familiar stacks of books, that feeling just fades away.
Public libraries aren’t like those majestic works of
art you see in films. The ones where all the books are old and leather-bound,
and the shelves take up entire walls from floor to ceiling. Where some books
are shelved so high that large ladders on rails are needed to access them and
everything has that warm orange tint.
No, public libraries – at least the good ones – are
places that can be used. The books
are all different heights and don’t look good on the shelves, their plastic
covers cause them to glare at you from across the room, their identification
stickers cover up information like the publishing company or the last syllable
of the author’s name. The tables in the libraries are scratched up, accented
with fluorescent notecards and stubby pencils for note-taking. People aren’t
working out of old leather, hand-written tomes, but on computers that already
look outdated after only five years.
That’s another thing, there are actually people, and
not just the occasional student or stern and matronly librarian. There are
children begging to be read to and bicyclists borrowing Disney films and small
gray-haired women in purple jackets reading three-day-old newspapers. It isn’t
silent save for the rare birdsong fluttering in through the open window either.
There is laughter and discussion with the librarians, the crinkle of newspaper
and the beep of technology. I suppose one could see it all as poetic, but it
isn’t an old-growth forest so much as a city plaza.
The library is unique to me in that I leave my
worries at the door, and only spend attention on what I am doing. Generally, my
mind is always thinking about my next assignment, even before I’ve begun my
first one. But the library just lets me be. Stress is something that comes much
too easily to me. But the library just lulls it away. It’s a magical quality
that I can’t quite explain. Maybe it’s the seafoam-green walls or the soft
lighting, but the walls haven’t always been that color and I have a suspicion
that even if the windows were boarded up, the feeling would remain. It’s almost
as if the library’s sole purpose is to comfort me, to tell me that everything
will be okay.
Even though my library is average in size, there are
more books there than I think I could read in a lifetime. If it were a collection
of any other media, I might find those prospects daunting. But with books I
find the idea incredibly comforting and safe. I’m surrounded by others’
thoughts and ideas. All a book is is an idea. All a library is is a house for
these ideas. I’m reminded that there is no idea I am truly alone in possessing.
Humans have done a lot of thinking, and we often store these thoughts in books.
Everything I have ever thought can find a friend in some book or another.
My library is my safe space. I may not enter it for
six months, and when I come back find that my favorite section has moved to
another room, but I never love it any less. I have been in libraries with
larger collections, libraries with finer architecture, some with more work
space and some with more character. But nowhere else do I get that feeling of
timelessness that I get curled up with a new book on the floor in some corner
of my library. This simple brick building is my safest, most serene space.
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