The Joys of Free Books
Part of my semi-idyllic childhood (as I see it now) was spent in the library, not necessarily for my own knowledge, but because the books didn't make loud noises or kick me in the shins (among other tender bits). My father used to come with me to the library, and let me check out as many books as I was old, so that I could keep track of how many I had out at a time. Thus for me, birthdays soon became exciting not because I was getting cake or ice cream or something wonderful and useless (LEGO "Bricks and Toys" -- the preferred appelation -- were a particular favorite) but because I could check out an extra book that year. As you might know, each of my hands has about six thumbs and the glasses I wear are not there to improve my depth perception; all of the interesting scars I own have simple explanations (oh, that? I ran into a porta-potty, even though it looks like I was in a knife-fight). Early/current clumsiness doesn't always mean forgetfulness, but I was remarkably careless when taking care of books.
I remember standing open-mouthed in awe at the technical wizardry that was the movie TRON. There on the television Jeff Daniels and his derring-do, neon whiz-bang suits and frisbees, computer-generated zippy motorbikes; there in real life, my hand stuck in a glass of milk, which presently overflowed onto and all over the books we had to return tomorrow. By the way, dried milk makes an excellent glue for paper, if ever you're in need. My parents were understandably dismayed that just by going to the library and attempting to return books (yeah, they were damaged, but at least we wouldn't have late fines of fifty cents apiece!) would cost them thirty dollars.
The original library in my hometown was sandwiched between a bar and a jewelry/saddle store (as I said, I grew up in a rural area) in an open-air mall. The browseable dimensions were maybe twenty feet by fifty feet (there was a curtained-off area in the back where I watched librarians disappear for hours at a time), with a fullish line of children's and adult books (which is not to say the nudie-type books, but rather the sort of fiction that grown-ups tend to read, some of which is simpler than the best children's literature).
The one thing that you need to remember is that the librarian always says "Thank You" after checking through your books. If you don't get a "Thanks", you're probably not dealing with a librarian. Demand a refund.
Whenever I'm not at work, you can almost be sure to find me in a library of some sort. The MIT libraries have impressive architecture (Rotch), age of holdings (Hayden), and beauty (Denny); the Berkeley Main library is a gorgeous and huge underground structure; Davis's Shields is a soaring, modern and convenient place to store books, but my favorite library must be the the one at the university in my small hometown, JFK Library. It is probably one of the largest libraries for hundreds of miles around, open to the public, and only a few blocks from my parent's home. It's my original web: when I wanted to learn about the BMW M1, I only had to scan through a few years of the Reader's Guide; I learned about the US battleships built under the Washington Treaty and immediately afterwards (North Carolina, South Dakota, Iowa, and aborted Montana classes, as well as a small blurb about the large cruiser Alaska class) with relatively little pain. Most of the joy, though, is not in the catharsis of finally knowing what you sought out to find, but the journey in getting there: searching down obscure references, deciphering semi-legible abbreviations, and scrolling through rolls of microfilm are so terribly exciting.
I don't think that it's just the thrill of smelling acid-yellowed pages, or clambering all over the squeaky rolling stools; maybe I like the isolation of delving deep within some forgotten corner (for those of you who went into the old main stacks at Berkeley, with the frosted glass floors, dim lighting, cramped, non-folding stacks, and spiral staircases -- this is what fulfilled all my fantasies of the final chase scene in "In the Name of the Rose"). When you finally find yourself a nice, quiet corner, you can finally relax and decompress: no one is going to come to track you down, you set your own limits and goals, and you are free to pursue your bliss. I know that there are plenty of self-motivated people in this world, and I know that I'm not one of them. Throughout all I've done, I've always had someone else behind me urging me on and cheering the successes, downplaying the failures. I managed to learn early that I shouldn't push myself too hard to get through things, as someone else could take care of that chore for me. I'm not saying anything bad about my parents -- I think that they did a marvelous job in making sure that I can be as well-adjusted as possible. In the back of my mind, though, there's always the crippling fear of failure: it's difficult to make a move not completely assured, maybe because of the palapable sense of disappointment I'd feel, having not lived up to everyone else's expectations: not my parents', not my brother's, not my teachers', not my professors', not my advisors' but only in the end not my own. It's taken me years to realize that despite whatever else I might feel, no one beats me up as thoroughly as myself.
I remember getting a C on a test and hiding the result in the trash, not realizing that since my father was the one who threw it out, I hadn't concealed it at all. I didn't want him to see it because I had visions of being disowned and exiled to some boarding school far-off to shape up my flabby mind, make rock from underused muscles, learn to dazzle with sound as deftly as my best friend, break a few age-group records for something, maybe get mentioned in the Big Book of Records. I really caught it, too, but I think now that it was because I'd more subtly hurt him: by saying that he was unapproacheable, as I'd once clambered into his arms when younger, that he was now a stranger to hide secrets from, that I'd even doubted his love for me. Yes, I'd get tired of being compared to my friend down the road, why I couldn't shape the lush notes and press the keys as sensitively, or why I couldn't, like my brother, miss one point out of a thousand over a single year-sequence of math. He was just trying to get me going the only way he, I knew how: fire up the contest, and watch the flaring eyes and electric nostrils alight.
Once my brother and I completely demolished the competition in a library contest. We were given sheets on which to write down the titles of the books we'd read over the summer; each sheet held twenty lines, cleverly shaped like logs (it was, after all, a log of books read ...). We liked books, but this was serious: our picture would be taken and sent out to the other five thousand people in town via the Free Press, and damned if we weren't going to be it. Didn't matter that I read books like Why Mosquitoes Buzz in People's Ears and Arrow to the Sun or that my brother feasted on the Encyclopedia Brown and Great Brain series; we ended up each filling at least two of those log-sheets, and cruised to an easy win. When it came time to have the picture taken, we were joined by the runners-up, two girls much more photogenic than us: typical bowl/Moe 'cuts, crooked teeth, skinny and somewhat anemic-looking. But we were inseparable; when he first learned to ride a bicycle, I'd run to keep him in sight; when he went to summer camp, I moped around enough to have my parents suspect mental disturbance. We'd go on rides, later, around the local campus, and he'd let me take the lead, bring us out to new and exciting pastures, and suck my wheel all the while. He was all the friend I needed, and indeed had for many years.
One of my favorite pictures is of my mom, me, and my brother sitting on the couch my parents had gotten secondhand (for free; a more comfortable sofa I've never found); we sit, small attentive satellites, rapt attention on the book she's holding and reading to us: Greatest Children's Stories. I'm probably six and have my socks off, trying to cram my hand into my mouth (still can't do it) and looking slyly at the dad-cam, a Canon FTb. My mother, who still has an accent and asks me, "How's going?" at the end of every week, whose grasp of English grammar is still not exact and kept a store running for ten consecutive years without serious incident, I've seen her cry only twice all these years. The only instance I remember why was because of me; on our way to church and the back seat was filled with my plaintive bleats: it's boring, nothing happens, I don't like anyone, and I hate singing. And my mom sat there quietly, dabbing her eyes and asking me what a small thing this was she was asking of me and shocking me to silence as I shrank back to about ten feet small, my ugliness magnified and hanging there between us in the sudden pause.
So quietly does love overwhelm us, even when sitting quietly among books and talking of the relative merits of Ray Bradbury and Roger Zelazny. I have spent the past few years assembling a fairly respectable collection of classical science fiction works, fairly heavily slanted towards the 60's and early 70's, and the first person that I showed it to without scoffing is now engaged to me. When you find the one you'd rather spend half the night talking than wrestling with, there's more than compatible plumbing at work. I had begun to despair through a string of what amounted to little more than admiring from afar and suspecting that no one realized what it was like to grow up the way I did, that no one carried my missing pieces. You talk about finding your better half, brave words I'm sure, but it amounts to more than discovering which bits fit where: you grow more willing to open secrets and share the dreams holding your imagination captive, dare to cross the proton streams to see what might happen. It's all sappy-crappy, I'm sure, and I don't care, for I've finally discovered that I'm not alone, that aloft is where I ought to have been all along. At last, someone asked the right question, and asked to be let into the personal repository in the hopes of establishing another account, in a system that's been closed since birth. I said yes and never looked back.
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