the forty-five

If you look, you will find patterns in anything.  My patrons remind me of this regularly, doggedly researching worn pretzels of thought.  One places a tattered index card on the desk in front of me and begs me to find the words, the right order, the combination that will unlock the door with no handle. And the patterns are there, although not always the same ones to which we ascribe meaning.  They are there.  As an amateur archivist, I pay them special heed as signposts of metadata; as an amateur human, I pay them special heed as touchstones of belief. For over five years now, I have lived a small life largely out of satchels trudged to guest spots on weekends.  My possessions make brief, disorderly formations in others’ homes. ...

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Posted on 18 Mar 2008 | 9 comments

pennies

Pennies. That was it. He smells like pennies. After working with this regular patron for weeks, I finally figured it out today, with that strange exultation of now knowing the recently-unfamiliar. Though I do not know exactly how pennies smell like pennies. People smell like pennies and erasers and campfires, ask for the same photo over and over again, or lose a train of thought in the middle of a sentence and stand like a suddenly-reformatted robot before me. People call me stately honorifics or ask me to play poker with them or wonder earnestly if they can come over to my house on my day off “to make love”. Sometimes people ask for actual library materials. Sometimes, like last Friday in the first-floor men’s restroom, people die. I know...

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Posted on 12 Mar 2008 | 1 comment