Philip Harvey
Sitting down in the front
carriage, instead of drawing book from bag, I gaze at the start-up passing scene.
Words can wait. Scene is set. Train makes speed. Early morning commute reveals
anew, as sunlight turns shadow to colour, hillsides and valleys and flatlands
of libraries. It has never been so evident the entire metropolitan area is
covered with streets of libraries.
Miles of Melbourne come into
view covered with libraries. Everywhere I look, their soothing shelves, their
shady half-lives. Windows race by and through them glimpses of libraries.
Patios with a pile of coffee tables. Sheds replete with masses of novels.
Crannies for bargains no one throws away. Passageways of so-random bibliographical
order. Bedrooms of favourite reading. Closets where everything good is stored
until next time, fermenting. The view is rife with implications. Avenues of
publications rise to the blue hills and beyond.
Most every house is collections
of books and magazines, big and small, telling us more about the occupants than
their kitchen utensils or brand of television. Their car is less a sign of
personality than the scale and character of their personal library.
The stately plump buckram of
the hidebound antiquarian. The artful perfectionism of the Folio Society
subscriber. The tremendous delirium of the academic specialist. The ramshackle
rafters abrim for weekend etymologists. The hardback heaven of the seasoned
traditionalist. The obsessive right-stuff of the buff. Glimpse of their years
of passion pass the gaze of the peak-hour express.
The whole metropolitan area
is one vast arrangement of libraries. Buildings are being constructed this
morning, even as I absorb the panorama, that will in turn act as personal
libraries for their occupants. I think ahead to garages lined with phased-out magazines
and computer manuals. Sunrooms edged with gardening guides and quotes books. Kitchens
with their handful within arm’s reach of floury cookbooks. Children’s plastic
bath books kept in a tub.
A domestic arrangement
lacking books might scarcely be called domestic. How can one live without
something to pull from a shelf at the right moment? Hidey holes of precious
heirlooms. The crystal cabinet of gothic gloom. The habit-forming stretches of
Penguin parades. The only reality of the walled-in fiction aficionado. The
Australia-wide collection of dot-painting art books, best curtained from the
sun.
It is unlikely most people
think of themselves as librarians, though most everyone has unstated attitudes
about the libraries they build out of papery nothing. Their makeshift attempts
at homemade cataloguing are abandoned in favour of more reading. Neat stacks build
near the door for return to the local. There is something on a ledge I snatch
on the way out to read on the train.
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