Thursday, June 7, 2012

Diving In...

The Rose Reading Room
For a quiet library room, it's effing noisy.

The big, fat wooden chairs with big, fat armrests scrape across the floor and when you have a room filled with hundreds of people hunched over books and computers and papers and ideas, running to the bathroom, shifting in frustration, giving up, going forward, while sneaking sips of water and stuffing illicit food so a few more hours of work can be accomplished, those chairs are constantly moving.

I used to come here when I was a girl and was running away from home.  This was before computers so all you could do was read a book at the tables that stretched as long as a subway car. 

Now, there's plugs all over the place and wireless and the place is brighter and cleaner than the days I had to run away to remember who I was.   And now I don't have to run away to remember who I am. I just have to find a chair, plug in my computer, hide my illicit water bottle and protein bar from the patrolling guards who insist the library be kept clean and respected....

And then, all I have to do is dive in.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

That is a very oppresive ceiling with its painted skylights. It must feel like it is bearing down on you.

c.o. moed said...

quite the opposite. I feel as if I'm in a huge cathedral filled with the sounds of Bach, that feeling of being lifted up. That room is one of the most beautiful rooms in the world. When you come to NY I will take you there.