Quiet Knowledge
The library sat on the side of the parking lot, quiet and stable and secure; it was an old but wizened dog lying on a gray concrete carpet of a street. It was known as the Petaluma Library only to those who felt the most tempted to be professional, and considering that the library was such a casual place, it was never called by its true name. It didn’t mind.
The library was built like a collection of meticulous square Lego® blocks. It was founded by prim, straight-minded people with large amounts of prim, equally straight-edged books with their perfect square pages; the book jackets were square-shaped, the receipts in the books were squares, and the shelves the books were on were squares, and those shelves were lined up in a straight line, and the assemblies of shelves all formed together in a remarkable geometric pattern of squares, and straightness, and perfection.
That’s not to say that curves were not welcome. No indeed, they certainly did survive in the library, in the forms of the circular CDs on the music racks, and the roundness of the picture of the Earth that lay plastered onto a wall in the Children’s Section, and in the spherical pupils of the eyes of searching visitors, who looked up and down the library in their search for books on presidents, or dinosaurs, or eating healthy. But it was obvious that the library was overall a rectangle-centric society, and one that demanded properness and order. The library was prim, neat, systematic .
It’s almost painfully obvious that the library was also caught out of its time frame, like a Civil War hero in the middle of World War Two (If you want more info on those periods, by the way, the books on warfare are in the southeast corner, next to the “Sociology” section). While the rest of Petaluma sprang to new technologies – gobbling up their internet and their iPods and their Amazon Kindles – the library moved at a sluggish but steady pace. It was never wavered by the outside world, save for of course the new book arrivals.
The library’s age shows in the fact that it does not receive as many visitors as it once had. The city’s attempts were lethargic at preventing the library from losing life and joining paperboys and Ma and Pa shops up in heaven. With new technologies that made information easier to access, the old, square library was taken for granted. Unfortunately, humans of this ultra-information era thought that the library was only for looking up facts, and served no true purpose.
Those people were wrong.
The library was not merely a source of facts; it was a database. It was not merely a public area; it was a community. It was not merely an ancient relic; it was a living network. Reading, writing, relaxing – all of these events took place between the library’s light brownish walls.
It was a being that struggled and fought to stay alive in the phenomenally fast-moving Darwinism of the Internet generation. Or rather, it was a connection of living beings, split into the two broad kingdoms of Fact and Fiction, which split up into phyla and classes and orders and families and genera until finally a searcher can find the exact book – the exact species of book – they were looking for within the library’s walls. To the general observer the library was a faded space-taking shape; to the learned visitor it was a haven for all the gathered knowledge of the many years of human history. The wealth of topics – computer programming and rainforest frogs, photography and car repair, early presidents and get-help advise – were enclosed within the endless library’s shelves.
In the Children’s Section was the timeless Dr. Seuss books, which were signaled by a large and plush Cat in the Hat. The Cat in the Hat was always there, always welcome, and always smiling, and it is without a doubt that even if the most devastating and destructive of apocalypses had occurred just outside the library’s windows, the optimistic feline would continue to smile and guard the books that gave him life.
Positioned at practically the opposite end of the library, then, were the reference books. Whether it was a purposeful symbol of the far ends of reading, one cannot tell. But the dictionaries certainly were luminous in their gargantuan reservoirs of unguarded knowledge, as they allowed captivated visiting civilians to masticate the quality portions of informative material engulfed in the metaphorically colorful pages within the colossal tome. In short, one could learn a lot of words from such a book.
The library also had an upstairs section that greatly resembles the dark attic of a grandparent’s house. With the flick of a surprisingly working switch, one would see generations of news articles, magazines, tax reports and more; all of the aged pages breathed in the light and exhaled dust. A copy of the King James Bible from 1668 lay on a pedestal, with a thick glass cover on it to serve as life support. The ancient tome had lived for years and years, and had seen the quickly-changing world shift around it.
And although the squat and reddish Petaluma Regional Library was known as an odd, quiet oasis in a sea of chaotic and cannibalistic high-tech media, it too was guilty of giving into the internet. Unfortunately, the most popular aspect of the library among modern visitors was the fact that it had a number of computers with internet (All the computers, of course, were arranged in neat, straight rows). It is unusual that one would use the internet to look up information in a place where the information was already there, but it occurred often.
And while occasionally the book rows were quietly empty, the computers were always full of indiscreet people, who played music or watched videos or browsed Facebook or otherwise stereotyped the short attention span of today’s generation. The internet was not evil, of course, but occasionally it was seen as too much of a messiah while the rest of the library’s wealth of antiquities was overlooked. All of its knowledge was forgotten.
Yes, its knowledge. Its quiet knowledge. The library’s walls carried a voice, the collective voice of every single one of the thousands of books. Books about religion and science and history and love and hate and death and laughter and everything else anyone could ever think of. It was all there. It was the Petaluma Regional Library, and it was well aware that despite every other advancement, its blocky, Lego-like figure was still full of life.
The library was built like a collection of meticulous square Lego® blocks. It was founded by prim, straight-minded people with large amounts of prim, equally straight-edged books with their perfect square pages; the book jackets were square-shaped, the receipts in the books were squares, and the shelves the books were on were squares, and those shelves were lined up in a straight line, and the assemblies of shelves all formed together in a remarkable geometric pattern of squares, and straightness, and perfection.
That’s not to say that curves were not welcome. No indeed, they certainly did survive in the library, in the forms of the circular CDs on the music racks, and the roundness of the picture of the Earth that lay plastered onto a wall in the Children’s Section, and in the spherical pupils of the eyes of searching visitors, who looked up and down the library in their search for books on presidents, or dinosaurs, or eating healthy. But it was obvious that the library was overall a rectangle-centric society, and one that demanded properness and order. The library was prim, neat, systematic .
It’s almost painfully obvious that the library was also caught out of its time frame, like a Civil War hero in the middle of World War Two (If you want more info on those periods, by the way, the books on warfare are in the southeast corner, next to the “Sociology” section). While the rest of Petaluma sprang to new technologies – gobbling up their internet and their iPods and their Amazon Kindles – the library moved at a sluggish but steady pace. It was never wavered by the outside world, save for of course the new book arrivals.
The library’s age shows in the fact that it does not receive as many visitors as it once had. The city’s attempts were lethargic at preventing the library from losing life and joining paperboys and Ma and Pa shops up in heaven. With new technologies that made information easier to access, the old, square library was taken for granted. Unfortunately, humans of this ultra-information era thought that the library was only for looking up facts, and served no true purpose.
Those people were wrong.
The library was not merely a source of facts; it was a database. It was not merely a public area; it was a community. It was not merely an ancient relic; it was a living network. Reading, writing, relaxing – all of these events took place between the library’s light brownish walls.
It was a being that struggled and fought to stay alive in the phenomenally fast-moving Darwinism of the Internet generation. Or rather, it was a connection of living beings, split into the two broad kingdoms of Fact and Fiction, which split up into phyla and classes and orders and families and genera until finally a searcher can find the exact book – the exact species of book – they were looking for within the library’s walls. To the general observer the library was a faded space-taking shape; to the learned visitor it was a haven for all the gathered knowledge of the many years of human history. The wealth of topics – computer programming and rainforest frogs, photography and car repair, early presidents and get-help advise – were enclosed within the endless library’s shelves.
In the Children’s Section was the timeless Dr. Seuss books, which were signaled by a large and plush Cat in the Hat. The Cat in the Hat was always there, always welcome, and always smiling, and it is without a doubt that even if the most devastating and destructive of apocalypses had occurred just outside the library’s windows, the optimistic feline would continue to smile and guard the books that gave him life.
Positioned at practically the opposite end of the library, then, were the reference books. Whether it was a purposeful symbol of the far ends of reading, one cannot tell. But the dictionaries certainly were luminous in their gargantuan reservoirs of unguarded knowledge, as they allowed captivated visiting civilians to masticate the quality portions of informative material engulfed in the metaphorically colorful pages within the colossal tome. In short, one could learn a lot of words from such a book.
The library also had an upstairs section that greatly resembles the dark attic of a grandparent’s house. With the flick of a surprisingly working switch, one would see generations of news articles, magazines, tax reports and more; all of the aged pages breathed in the light and exhaled dust. A copy of the King James Bible from 1668 lay on a pedestal, with a thick glass cover on it to serve as life support. The ancient tome had lived for years and years, and had seen the quickly-changing world shift around it.
And although the squat and reddish Petaluma Regional Library was known as an odd, quiet oasis in a sea of chaotic and cannibalistic high-tech media, it too was guilty of giving into the internet. Unfortunately, the most popular aspect of the library among modern visitors was the fact that it had a number of computers with internet (All the computers, of course, were arranged in neat, straight rows). It is unusual that one would use the internet to look up information in a place where the information was already there, but it occurred often.
And while occasionally the book rows were quietly empty, the computers were always full of indiscreet people, who played music or watched videos or browsed Facebook or otherwise stereotyped the short attention span of today’s generation. The internet was not evil, of course, but occasionally it was seen as too much of a messiah while the rest of the library’s wealth of antiquities was overlooked. All of its knowledge was forgotten.
Yes, its knowledge. Its quiet knowledge. The library’s walls carried a voice, the collective voice of every single one of the thousands of books. Books about religion and science and history and love and hate and death and laughter and everything else anyone could ever think of. It was all there. It was the Petaluma Regional Library, and it was well aware that despite every other advancement, its blocky, Lego-like figure was still full of life.
--Alex F.
Alex-
ReplyDeleteI think your inclusion of biology themes was very witty. I also think you hit an interesting note with the alternate society sort-of theme. I also think your Civil War/WWII reference was very creative as well. All-in-all, analysis of your location was far from lacking in this wonderful and clever essay
-Austin A.-