Thursday 10 March 2016

Reveries of libraries, the eleventh : WORLDS WITHIN




Words: Philip Harvey
Image: Susan Southall

Some days the world reads the library.

There must be something more to existence than productivity.

Bicycle down and chain it to the signpost, a great string bag of reading due back sometime in March.

Again is the meaning of again again is the meaning of again again again.

The world wants everything covered between covers, streamed on screens.

The world borrows out distraction, pretending to truth.

Surely so many books have something one thing for this eye problem, this heart yearning, this unexplained chaos, this link line.

Make it new, says desire.

Whatever is there in there that I can groove to?

Turbulent collections of voices are the life of the capital city.

Nothing much to do but return to the thesis, first thing Friday, maddening chapter eight that depends, one supervisor says, on a non sequitur.

Worn down years visit those bluestone steps to the hundreds of books.

Their spines have that walked-through walled-up look.

Some days the library reads the world.

The library stares out at the half-explained world, which seems largely indifferent to the library’s existence.

People walk by with their dogs.

Someone is doing a Matt Damon with his mobile phone.

A boy clicks past on his ‘epic barrel’ skateboard.

Seems, while actually the library bides time with the readiness of an admiral, a concert pianist, a seer, a movie producer.

The resting volumes of phenomenology sigh with self-awareness.

The business ethics section nods in anticipation.

The mystics smile upon so much frantic self-interest.

Mess-up is the look in faces reading the notices, desire for something not on offer out there, though who knows if they’ll enter the portal.

There so many Australias, so many Melbournes, in here looking out at change.

Make it new, says desire.

The biography gets a regular turnover as new I’s replace former I’s and their repetitive I-problem.

Years will wear down websites, explanations unforthcoming.

Or, whatever,  just rest in one of their big chairs and enjoy the distant voices at Circulation.



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