Sometimes I fantasize about being a librarian. How lovely would it be to find yourself in the company of thousands of books on a daily basis? I imagine navigating the structured rows, running my finger across spines neatly nestled in their proper spot on the shelves. Occasionally plucking out a tome and opening the cover just to sniff the archaic musk of its leaves. Then wedge it back in between its close-knit neighbors.
I wonder if librarians measure the passage of time by the arrival of new additions and the retirement of outdated material. Do they tally the days by their accumulation of newsprint? Does a stack of periodicals symbolize a time frame or does it merely look like a mess to be chronologically filed away?
Can they profile a person by books they read? Could they give an accurate checkout history of someone they pass on the street? At a glance, do they assess one’s personality in terms of authors? I can her inner monologue, “Oh yes, he’s a heaping portion of Hemingway doused in Palahniuk with a pinch of Whitman. She is Huxley intermingled with Thoreau seasoned with Salinger and Seuss. Goodness me, here comes Hitchcock polka-dotted with Poe!” Are these the thoughts that cloud the space behind her horn-rimmed glasses?
I ponder about the irks and perks of working with books. Does the hushed environment make the outside world sound violently deafening? Do the stifled voices and fluttering pages fade into the silence? Or are they amplified noise pollution echoing though out the library? What bothers her more disordered dewy decimal or belated book returns? Damaged books or damned librarian stereotypes?
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