2004-08-14 || 9:10 p.m.

|| i am on floor five. i am standing on a footstool somewhere in the 700's. ||

and. i have fallen in love with the library again.

if the fbi were ever to pull a list of the books i've checked out lately, they would find such zingers as fabrics and wallpapers: sources, design and inspiration (747.3 P541f), envisioning information (001.4226 T816e), household elegances: how to make and restore victorian art objects (747.204 W576hr), and the encyclopedia of victoriana (749.9 B764e). mmhmm.

they fixed the berkeley central library so it's back in a grand old large building complete with flowing staircases and marble and fixtures. walking down the stairs yesterday everything felt in slow motion and i was kind of sad it was all fixed up and so well-lit because there's no way the ghosts would feel comfortable. all ergonomic chairs. all cybernetic and retrofitted.

michael bland was a passionate library enthusiast and used to check out books on tools and deep-sea animals and french movies. he used to rent videos (owen does now in redwood city, he always has three on hand in his bag just about due to go back) and we would watch them in the lime green room with the black curtain.

when i was little my dad used to take us to the huntington beach central library, which was very big and imposing and had a scary elevator without proper walls so that you could see the floors as you went down to the basement. (around that time my dad also used to take us to some indoor pool in huntington beach, somewhere by the edwards hill, that i remember as being the most spectacular place. green tiles and an encient locker room that kelly and i were afraid of because dad couldn't go in with us. i remember being eight and seeing real live naked ladies for the first time and having a stranger help us with tying out hair up and washing our feet in the old old shower stall. i remember goggles and seeing my dad's feet underwater and learning to float and looking up at the ceiling, which looked very much like the ceiling of a ballroom. oh. do you live in huntington beach? you should try to find it. it was marvelous and i hope now haunted by our little girl ghosts.)

but the library. still an enchanting place. and i still feel like, when checking the numbers and titles on the spines in the aisles, that i am in some very slow-paced technicolor movie, and i do things like whisper "excuse me" to strangers in an inaudible voice and cocking my head to one side and squinting when deciphering the dewey decimal system. and i like walking home with five books in a stack at my side. it's nice.

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