It’s threatening a thunderstorm, and I was feeling a general sense of disquiet at home as I kept trying to accomplish a task on which I couldn’t quite manage to focus. This is a recurrent pattern I’ve noticed in myself: meteorological unrest seems to result in my being a little unsettled and woefully unproductive.
Years of trial and error have taught me that what I need most when this is the case is a change of scenery, which is often enough to get me out of my head and back in the game. My default destination? The public library.
This likely won’t come as a huge surprise to you since, as I’ve revealed in several past posts, and as my real-life friends know, I’m a die-hard library enthusiast and devotee. A happy consequence of my full(er) independence is that I can easily zip from my building to my neighbourhood branch whenever the mood strikes. The mood strikes frequently: indeed, unless my day’s completely booked, I usually end up there for an hour or two. Along with the psychological benefits of a soothing, quietish space away from my ever-tempting distractions (I’m looking at you, sewing machine!), it’s at the library that I get the most writing done. It’s there, too, that I do my best people watching. I swear that my library sessions have supplied enough inspiration for a dozen short stories, a couple of novels, and a screenplay.
Of course, I also get pleasure from the un-novel-worthy things that my admittedly snoopy self observes while ostensibly working. There’s the woman drinking an impressively large, neon-orange slushie while reading a biography of Winston Churchill. There’s the middle-aged man diligently picking away at a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle set up on a card table by the window. There’s the occasional scream of a toddler who really, really doesn’t want to leave.
I hear you, kid. I hear you.
I appreciate the library for the many gifts—literary and otherwise—it bestows on me. I appreciate it all the more for what it provides and represents to its diversity of users. It’s fascinating to see this at work, amazing to witness how it’s transformed itself, over time, into a multifunctional space serving people with a variety of wants and needs. If you think about it, the library comes close to embodying accessibility in a pretty universal sense. The physical stuff is undoubtedly important. I personally benefit from the height-adjustable tables and luxuriously roomy wheelchair bathrooms. (It’s certainly nice not to have to avoid drinking for an hour before leaving home out of worry that I’ll get stuck with a full bladder and no toilet I can use within striking distance. Yeah, this is a thing.) But it’s the other stuff, too. The practical resources. The air-conditioned space in a scorching summer and a heated one in a brutally cold winter. Somewhere to study or read or do the crossword puzzle or bring your child for free distraction.
Accessible to most, refuge for some.
De Morbo Sacro: Life and/with Epilepsy 