You know what? I can’t write today. I mean, I’m writing now insomuch as now has a particular measure in time and for the moment space and I notice even years after I gave up the ghost on studying physics beyond the occasional wine fueled discussion during Nova, that I don’t really distinguish between time and space.
I can’t even describe my schedule anymore. Thirty-five hours blend together, become one endless day that terminates in bed, the first real piece of furniture I’ve bought for myself. My roommate’s dog will burrow under the covers and I’ll wake up to his head on the pillow next to mine. Sometimes he dreams. I don’t know what he dreams about: perhaps making friends with the Flatland Italian greyhound in the neighborhood, an endless dog park, his owner landing a job that isn’t second shift. Once in a while the dog will bark himself awake, look around confused at nothing happening. My cat will sit by the window, pissed that I still haven’t taken the AC unit out of the pane but tolerating the draft because she misses me.
I should be doing something else. Shelving or explaining how the library works to the third grader who asked me if the staff had brought all the books from home, if they were ones our kids got tired of or we didn’t like anymore. Sometimes these questions make my soul hurt but I answer them. I explain public space and democracy and free thought even as I shelve Glenn Beck’s bestselling tripe. The kid said he didn’t like reading. Computers were better because they would tell him a story and he could see it. Later he came to the desk asking for help because his computer wouldn’t work and I remember warnings about failure of imagination. His little sister slouches in a chair, dejected with books dangling. She doesn’t respond to me. Her brother won’t read to her, and they have an argument about whether or not she can read at all. Their mother is somewhere else, plugged in and unaware, and because they don’t want me to read either, I can do nothing for them.
We had a pumpkin decorating contest between library staff. Patrons were able to vote and one of the supervisors did a sketch of Edgar Allen Poe surrounded by ravens. He received votes for Einstein, Charlie Chaplin, and ‘pimped out Hitler’ respectively. There is now a display up with a number of Poe’s works. At most I will educate someone. This is tearing down the Berlin Wall with a broken Spork.
//
I’m surprised the items I placed on the Poe display are moving. A few teens picked up the biography and some collections.
The library isn’t immune to the pacing of holidays, so I am restocking The Christmas Sweater alongside Debbie Macomber and Charles Schultz, who would fantasize about Snoopy becoming part of a car and ending the strip. I want to enjoy the fall, to sit on the back porch with a hot drink and watch the cat chase swirling leaves and invisible trolls.
//
"Can you help with this homework assignment?"
I walk to the computer. A little boy sits in front of the screen.
"He has to do font," he mother says.
"I’m sorry?"
I often hear things incorrectly or the words do not register somehow. Guests at the hotel will get impatient with this and I wonder if it’s a permanent thing. The happens when I write as well. I mix up my letters or type entirely different words than I intend to. I ask the assistant manager how to turn off music in the lobby because it echos and I think the phone is rining, or I hear what sounds like voices. At the library this problem expands, stuffs my ears with furious buzzing inscects.
"He needs to do font," she says again. There’s something about how her lips move as she speaks, the same way I speak French, which I misspronounced always growing up. I remember skipping over words in books I’d never heard before. The new word would be incorporated using its context but exist as an empty space, shapeless air in my mouth.
She doesn’t quite understand font. I explain how it works to both of them, the boy picking up fast and his mother putting the concept together.
I wonder how many more there are, and thinking this overwhelms me. This happens one second at a time, the questions a butterfly flapping in Peking and I have to fight tears.
But this was last second. There are so many more.