I will admit it: The libraries are starting to run together. Truth be told, I am blogging these experiences just as much to solidify my memories as to accomplish anything else. The most stinging part of any journey, vacation, or even quick jaunt off the beaten path is the inability to recall every detail. You remember a lot (and sometimes almost nothing at all) but oftentimes the experience is so compact and packed full of activities, sights, sounds, conversations, feelings, fights...how could you remember anything but the highlight reel? Even when you have pictures, there is only that 2D feeling of flatness. The Grand Canyon is the earth's most awe inspiring feature--there, I've said it, it's Decided--but my pictures of our visit 25 years ago tell me nothing of the day, what we talked about, or how I even felt. I have a sort of muscle memory from the experience--a forever keening to get back there and stand at the edge of it again--but I can't remember details of that part of our trip. Just snippets. Little scraps.
The Windsor Park Branch will stick in my memory because of something I witnessed there. But before I get into that, the library:
According to its website, the library was opened in 2000, and it certainly evokes that era of mall and movie theater embellishment, with not just diagonal roofs and overhangs to and fro, but those bright spots of color on exterior moldings that take me back to late 90s suburbia with all those tiny trees and big, glittery parking lots. But Windsor Park has an interesting twist in store because in the midst of all that late-century, spackled mallage, there sits a lion, lazily contemplating your doom.
Look at this sucker. He will murder your village and chew up your face bones. Look how his leg drops off the side of his perch; he's so relaxed in his casual, malevolent nobility. He's just waiting for you to get a little...bit...closer.
I bet half the kids have nightmares about him and half are delighted to the point of implosion just at the sight of him. He's Good Scary...and if your adrenaline wasn't already pumping at the promise of books, he surely does the trick. The sculpture is called "Reading between the Lions" (natch) and you can read more about the work and his creator, Paul Bond, here. I never even noticed the cub...if anything, it makes him even more frightening.
The interior of the library is more Barnes & Noble than Borders this time around, with dark, walnut stacks and an older, traditional library feel. The chairs were aluminum but comfortable enough, though I was not able to find a place to set up "permanent" digs (outlet). This set me near the center of the library behind the banks of computers.
One detail I absolutely loved because it was so uncalled for was the swooping ceiling feature, best depicted here:
This is like some next level track lighting and I have to admit it was the first truly "weird" thing I've seen in Austin.
As I sat there typing about the previous night's adventures in Existential Crises in Rest Area Bathrooms While Soaking Wet at 2:30 a.m., the conversation of two ladies sitting near me started to disrupt my train of thought. They weren't being rude at all--it was more the tone of the conversation that turned my ear than volume or frequency. Their backs were to me and they were both hunched over a book I could not see. One was reading from the book to the other. They were both learning something from this book, but it wasn't clear until the Reader said, "This is the kind of cancer you have."
The Reader was a white woman in her 30s, the Listener was a black woman in her 50s. They clearly knew each other but I couldn't guess in what capacity. They had a gentle, friendly rapport, pinpointed with laughter and leaning closer together when something struck them as funny. It was clear that the Listener had just been diagnosed and they had come to the library to understand what was happening to her. Breast cancer, and it had spread to her lymph nodes.
The Reader would get lost in the learning, exclaiming at some new thing she'd never known, then would catch herself and say, "I'm sorry." It was a conversation punctuated with "I'm sorry" again and again. While I continued to write--years of writing through math class, history class, noisy "study" halls makes this possible--I was floored by the gravity of what was going on just feet from me. I did my damnedest to mind my business, but even after I left, my mind would circle back and circle back again.
When you are a smoker and a drinker--especially an abuser--you become familiar with the I Probably Have Cancer game. I've played this game since my early 20s, especially because of the smoking, and have only in the past couple of years finally left it behind. When it is real for someone? Even someone you do not know? It's piercing, and cuts through all the garbage (I was feeling whiny about Austin traffic and locked that shit up right then and there). But I was also stricken by the Reader. I've never been very good at empathy. I can feel it, sometimes too hard, but when it tries to come out of my face it's like watching a giraffe fall down a flight of stairs. It's tragic, and ugly-funny, and you just wish it had never happened so you don't have to think about it. I have actually studied how to behave when someone's loved one has died. What exactly do I say? How should I hold my face? Should I stand in the corner or just go put myself in the dumpster now since it is where I should live full time anyway?
It was overwhelming to see these women take this information, something that would leave most crying in a corner, go to the library, and seek to understand it better together. Extraordinary. Let's all send our prayers and good wishes to the Listener and hope that she gets the treatment she needs.
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