Library Daze

Every so often I find it necessary to fall into a stupor.

Without any warning, my mind goes out for a stroll, leaving me wandering around in public looking slack-jawed and dopey.

7:10 PM: I enter a grocery store naked--that is, without my usual list.
8:55 PM: Jostled by a careless cart-pusher, I wake from a reverie to discover that instead of moving briskly through the aisles as I usually do, efficiently collecting items on my list--green beans, salmon, toilet paper--I have apparently spent over an hour and half staring glassy-eyed at a shelf displaying 19 varieties of salsa.

Something similar happened just the other night when I was at the Highland Park Public Library.

My usual library visits are like my routine grocery errands: I go in with a list of what I'm looking for and I come out 20 minutes later, my recycled cloth bag filled with a week's worth of nourishment.

This time, dangerously, I had no list. I merely stopped in to return the books I had finished reading--Pompei [fiction, Robert Harris], Loving Frank [fiction, Nancy Horan], Jane Austen [biography, Claire Tomalin], and Thirst [poetry, Mary Oliver]. Since my bedroom nightstand, living room "library basket," and the backseat of our Subaru Forester were already loaded up with additional reading, I was determined not to be seduced into bringing home any additional texts. No harm in browsing, though. Or so I thought.

Over TWO AND A HALF hours later, I emerged from the library blinking like a groundhog, having wandered up and down the stacks fingering and skimming books on everything from WWII ciphers to piecrust recipes. What is it about tiny blacks marks on paper that is so mesmerizing? They are like miniature revolving doors that whoosh you unexpectedly onto the sidewalk of a topic you did not expect to explore.

It's not that it truly bothers me to misplace my mind for awhile. I think that disappearing into books is a form of meditation for me. The wild monkey chatter in my head seems to abate as my eyes slide along the surface of page after page of books I will never read from cover to cover.

When I am in this dopey state, I forget that books are not animate. I actually feel sorry for some of them--the ones have not been removed from the shelf, held, opened, and carried outside into the sunshine for many years. I worry briefly that they are lonely or sad or feel rejected. I mean, I literally catch myself thinking stuff like that. I feel guilty if I walk away from a book that didn't interest me enough to make me want to check it out. I slink away and don't look back, like a young girl who has flirted thoughtlessly and realizes too late that her attention meant more to the boy than it did to her. How weird is that?

The library is partly treasure cave of wonders, partly a graveyard of forgotten ideas and bad sentences.

Spelunking and grave-robbing. I guess it's worth a couple of lost hours to have such adventures.