WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.000 --> 00:00:07.120 If you'd ask me on my last days had librarian 2 00:00:07.160 --> 00:00:09.119 what I miss most already, I wouldn't have said at 3 00:00:09.119 --> 00:00:12.279 the books. That sounds heretical, I suppose, But what I 4 00:00:12.320 --> 00:00:14.240 truly miss was the feeling you get working in an 5 00:00:14.240 --> 00:00:16.399 old library, the sense of being stitched into a fabric 6 00:00:16.480 --> 00:00:20.039 larger and older than yourself, a kind of slow architectural conversation. 7 00:00:20.719 --> 00:00:22.519 Some of my colleagues called it living with a gust 8 00:00:22.559 --> 00:00:26.280 of catalogers. Past Alice, who took my place, always alterized 9 00:00:26.280 --> 00:00:28.719 at that, But there was something about running your hand 10 00:00:28.760 --> 00:00:31.879 along old oak banisters, or deciphering century old shelf labels, 11 00:00:31.960 --> 00:00:35.240 entire strata of memory belt into the place I'd agreed 12 00:00:35.240 --> 00:00:37.200 to stay on a few hours each week, sorting what 13 00:00:37.280 --> 00:00:40.880 we called the backward collections, city planner's ledges, yellowing directories, 14 00:00:40.880 --> 00:00:43.240 the kind of thing that modern researchers can sult may 15 00:00:43.240 --> 00:00:46.399 be once a generation. That's how I found it, or 16 00:00:46.439 --> 00:00:49.679 maybe it almost found me. The original Stacks basement, where 17 00:00:49.719 --> 00:00:52.560 damp brickplts heeled to brighter seventies cinder block, was partly 18 00:00:52.600 --> 00:00:55.119 cleared for usbasis Fermival. The winter I retired, I was 19 00:00:55.159 --> 00:00:57.479 shifting a row of heavy directories, one shelf at a time, 20 00:00:57.560 --> 00:00:59.520 always careful not to catch my wrist on a loose 21 00:00:59.600 --> 00:01:01.719 nail when the sunlight caught something odd through the glass 22 00:01:01.719 --> 00:01:04.879 blocks overhead, between two narrow supporting pillows, a place most 23 00:01:05.000 --> 00:01:07.159 library stuff called the spine alley, there was a thin 24 00:01:07.239 --> 00:01:09.680 vertical strip flushed with the brick, just wide enough to 25 00:01:09.719 --> 00:01:12.760 distinguish itself from the painted mortar. It was unmisticably a 26 00:01:12.760 --> 00:01:15.640 book spine, pale marbled calf skin, a delicate gold stipple 27 00:01:15.680 --> 00:01:18.079 running its edge, a thin pattern of tusting leaves pressed 28 00:01:18.079 --> 00:01:20.359 into the leather. At first I took it for an 29 00:01:20.439 --> 00:01:23.840 ornamental molding, something odder nineteen twenties architect might have installed 30 00:01:23.840 --> 00:01:26.760 for whimsy. Yet it caught the light precisely the way 31 00:01:26.760 --> 00:01:29.200 a new hard cover does. The gilt uniform, the colors 32 00:01:29.239 --> 00:01:32.439 quietly alive under a dust. I tried to lift it 33 00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:34.719 gently so as not to tear older materials. But a 34 00:01:34.719 --> 00:01:38.519 wooden't budge, not a fraction. It was anchored between floor 35 00:01:38.560 --> 00:01:41.560 and lintle, flawlessly vertical, with absolutely no giver of the join. 36 00:01:42.120 --> 00:01:44.439 The surface had a subtle warmth, smooth as an egg, 37 00:01:44.480 --> 00:01:47.040 and where I pressed my thumb at flex not rigid 38 00:01:47.120 --> 00:01:49.920 like a board, but not yielding either. I could almost 39 00:01:49.920 --> 00:01:52.439 believe the spine itself was breathing, a living seam, holding 40 00:01:52.519 --> 00:01:55.640 architecture and story together. When I eased my hand across 41 00:01:55.640 --> 00:01:57.840 its marble paper at the crown, I felt a faint current, 42 00:01:57.879 --> 00:01:59.680 a thread of movement or draft, briffling through and seen 43 00:01:59.680 --> 00:02:03.560 in paper within. I laughed, mostly at myself. The label 44 00:02:03.640 --> 00:02:06.799 was blank. Nothing in our shelf maps or transfer records, 45 00:02:06.799 --> 00:02:09.280 no tag, no copy number, no sign that it was 46 00:02:09.319 --> 00:02:12.000 meant to be here. For a long moment, I stood there, 47 00:02:12.039 --> 00:02:14.719 staring up at the impossible pillar book. I thought of 48 00:02:14.759 --> 00:02:17.560 Ellis's favorite phrase, there is always one more secret under 49 00:02:17.599 --> 00:02:20.639 the dust, maybe a bit of forgotten collegiate art, or 50 00:02:20.680 --> 00:02:22.599 one of the unlikely jokes that had gotten out of 51 00:02:22.599 --> 00:02:25.439 hand and ossified into tradition. Yet it looked lived in, 52 00:02:25.680 --> 00:02:29.039 not whimsical, a genuine piece of craftsmanship. I stepped back, 53 00:02:29.120 --> 00:02:32.360 deciding to say nothing. Yet something kept me from calling 54 00:02:32.400 --> 00:02:35.800 Ellis or even snapping a picture. I couldn't quite explain why. 55 00:02:35.879 --> 00:02:38.159 Perhaps I wanted to possess a weirdness a moment longer, 56 00:02:38.159 --> 00:02:41.039 a private and unlabeled I tried to whistle as I 57 00:02:41.080 --> 00:02:43.719 stacked the directories. The tune came out eight too high. 58 00:02:44.159 --> 00:02:46.039 All I could picture as I left the stacks for 59 00:02:46.120 --> 00:02:49.120 my coffee was that impossible book, beautiful and silent, living 60 00:02:49.120 --> 00:02:52.319 between two worlds that had never been properly introduced by 61 00:02:52.360 --> 00:02:54.280 the time I made it upstairs, The sword of mid 62 00:02:54.319 --> 00:02:57.120 afternoon hush that only ancient libraries never had settled over 63 00:02:57.159 --> 00:03:00.439 the main reading room. Our building is not handsome exactly. 64 00:03:00.439 --> 00:03:03.639 It's two patched together for that half italianate stonework with 65 00:03:03.680 --> 00:03:06.599 salt bleached arches, half blocky glass and bricks. Several generations 66 00:03:06.599 --> 00:03:09.000 of architects bound every major addition to whatever could hold 67 00:03:09.039 --> 00:03:12.000 a roof. The lamps over the central stucky sloped vaguely 68 00:03:12.039 --> 00:03:14.400 maritime though ls, once written to replace them with ali 69 00:03:14.439 --> 00:03:16.719 d OBEs, so we stop attracting cryptic comments from the 70 00:03:16.759 --> 00:03:20.479 local nautical society. Children played chess under the yellow murals 71 00:03:20.479 --> 00:03:22.879 sailor's hal nets teen sprawled under a missake of the 72 00:03:22.879 --> 00:03:25.400 town's first tramine, now cropped at the edges, as if 73 00:03:25.439 --> 00:03:28.280 the picture forgot neither history nor its more recent partial demolition. 74 00:03:28.879 --> 00:03:30.560 I had been with the library most of my life, 75 00:03:30.560 --> 00:03:34.680 first as a shelv then cataloger, eventually chief retirement, which 76 00:03:34.680 --> 00:03:36.719 I negotiated with the city after the s best to 77 00:03:36.800 --> 00:03:39.759 scare came with the unspoken understanding that I wouldn't really leave. 78 00:03:40.400 --> 00:03:42.479 They let me keep my keys and the privilege of 79 00:03:42.479 --> 00:03:44.319 a dozen s he could teak up stat among old 80 00:03:44.319 --> 00:03:47.599 Greek grammars, and from traising minutes, I knew the schedules 81 00:03:47.599 --> 00:03:50.360 of every staff member and most of the regulars. No 82 00:03:50.479 --> 00:03:53.479 greater reward than recognizing who wanted silent solitude, Old mister 83 00:03:53.560 --> 00:03:56.639 Tomlinson with his railway almanacs, who welcomed the question about 84 00:03:56.719 --> 00:03:59.599 jigsa puzzles, Naudia with three in progress behind reference, and 85 00:03:59.639 --> 00:04:02.680 who came for gossip. Some of her quarks were legendary 86 00:04:03.280 --> 00:04:06.159 after hours, the real from raising happened during poker games 87 00:04:06.159 --> 00:04:08.840 in the coffee room, or a fiercely competitive picoff staged 88 00:04:08.919 --> 00:04:12.080 under the pretense of archival morral sil I had always 89 00:04:12.120 --> 00:04:14.120 thought of myself as a measure to observer, rather than 90 00:04:14.120 --> 00:04:17.480 a participant in whatever drama the building held. That morning, 91 00:04:17.639 --> 00:04:20.439 after my discovery, I lingered by Nadi's desk, flipping a 92 00:04:20.480 --> 00:04:24.160 directory absently. You have noticed, I said, how there's always 93 00:04:24.160 --> 00:04:26.120 a new rumor about what's in the third sub basement, 94 00:04:26.759 --> 00:04:29.839 she barely looked up. Not a room, its rats and 95 00:04:29.920 --> 00:04:32.519 leaking pipes. Anyone who tells you otherwise is angling for 96 00:04:32.560 --> 00:04:35.600 a story in their obituary. Nadia had been here before 97 00:04:35.639 --> 00:04:39.040 we even digitized the card catalog. No patience for what 98 00:04:39.120 --> 00:04:41.600 she called the library goes stories. Though everyone over the 99 00:04:41.680 --> 00:04:43.920 years had invented an explanation for the fake window in 100 00:04:43.959 --> 00:04:46.439 the former law reading room, ventilation for never built edition. 101 00:04:46.600 --> 00:04:49.000 Some said a private lookout for the city's lost Maya. 102 00:04:49.040 --> 00:04:52.519 According to Marla, the grad student nummining our oral histories project, 103 00:04:53.240 --> 00:04:55.360 Marla was clever in all the ways I remembered being 104 00:04:55.360 --> 00:04:58.000 at twenty three, quick with an audio recorder, strong opinions 105 00:04:58.040 --> 00:05:01.000 about metadata. She'd come from family knew to the city, 106 00:05:01.040 --> 00:05:03.720 So every tradition in Quirk was arka of gold. We 107 00:05:03.759 --> 00:05:06.959 should be cataloging these oddities, Marlat told me, pouring over 108 00:05:06.959 --> 00:05:09.639 a map she drafted in colored pencil, not just for 109 00:05:09.720 --> 00:05:12.800 the tourists, but for well posterity. It's the sense of place, 110 00:05:12.879 --> 00:05:15.920 don't you think the way these walls hought to each other. Alice, 111 00:05:15.959 --> 00:05:19.360 the new chief, was less sentimental. She organized the recent 112 00:05:19.399 --> 00:05:22.519 renovations with surgical efficiency, and could spot an umbarcoded book 113 00:05:22.519 --> 00:05:24.920 from across the room, even with a full coffee in hand. 114 00:05:25.600 --> 00:05:28.040 If you find any architectural treasures in the south wing, 115 00:05:28.160 --> 00:05:30.240 she said, mark them, but try not to wake up 116 00:05:30.240 --> 00:05:33.560 any new building code violations. She meant it kindly in 117 00:05:33.639 --> 00:05:36.399 her own way. The library was as much a public 118 00:05:36.439 --> 00:05:40.040 square as anything our town maintained, grandmother's correcting their grand 119 00:05:40.079 --> 00:05:43.279 children's pronunciation in the children's acco, local historians hunting down 120 00:05:43.279 --> 00:05:45.639 ship manifests for a presentation. No one outside the Heritage 121 00:05:45.639 --> 00:05:48.519 Committee would attend chess clubs that rendezvous at seven each Friday, 122 00:05:48.680 --> 00:05:51.720 treating the stacks as they are extendable, always drafty clubhouse 123 00:05:52.439 --> 00:05:54.720 every year brought new debates about whether to restore the 124 00:05:54.759 --> 00:05:57.199 faded sea skip above the main stairs, or to repurpose 125 00:05:57.240 --> 00:06:00.000 the reference neooks for E s L classes. We all 126 00:06:00.040 --> 00:06:03.160 lived arm in arm with the building's eccentricities. That day, 127 00:06:03.199 --> 00:06:06.079 as wind rattled the old glass, I wandered through the routine, 128 00:06:06.240 --> 00:06:09.160 helping Marla cross check surnames and last year's property ledges, 129 00:06:09.279 --> 00:06:12.319 hunting from misfeldt set of photographic negatives, pausing for bis 130 00:06:12.360 --> 00:06:14.680 hits in the break room. Yet all the while my 131 00:06:14.759 --> 00:06:17.720 mind kept circling back to the spine. I could feel 132 00:06:17.720 --> 00:06:20.040 it almost underfoot, as if the story it belonged to 133 00:06:20.079 --> 00:06:22.600 wanted me to risk a little confession. The next day 134 00:06:22.600 --> 00:06:25.040 I returned to the stacks, my note bequerged under my arm, 135 00:06:25.079 --> 00:06:27.720 beside a thermis of coffee. Determined to investigate the ardity 136 00:06:27.720 --> 00:06:31.079 at leisure luncheou granted a blessed stillness. I descended through 137 00:06:31.079 --> 00:06:34.000 the familiar old smells, floor polish, a tan of meldew, 138 00:06:34.000 --> 00:06:37.040 the coal clarity of the stone underfoot. Standing before the 139 00:06:37.079 --> 00:06:39.839 pillar book alone, this time I experienced an uncanny sense 140 00:06:39.839 --> 00:06:43.040 of scale. Up close, it was even more improbable, too, 141 00:06:43.040 --> 00:06:45.399 perfect inches wide, the pale leather, some bleached away for 142 00:06:45.439 --> 00:06:48.480 glued impossibly between the brick columns, merging into the foundation, 143 00:06:48.560 --> 00:06:51.120 with no seam of foothold. You'd swear it was meant 144 00:06:51.160 --> 00:06:53.240 never to be removed. Yet the proportion to a purebook, 145 00:06:53.279 --> 00:06:55.959 obedient to the conventions of spine and signature in band 146 00:06:56.040 --> 00:06:58.360 and cap, though it stretched nearly from floor to ceiling. 147 00:06:58.920 --> 00:07:01.680 I tested the upper edge cloth. The cover, if that 148 00:07:01.800 --> 00:07:03.639 were to call it, had a faint lived in sand, 149 00:07:03.879 --> 00:07:06.279 neither dust nor paper, but a kind of romatic nostalgia. 150 00:07:06.839 --> 00:07:09.000 The mobbling of the leather was fine, but not quite 151 00:07:09.040 --> 00:07:11.959 like anything I'd cataloged. I traced a false joint with 152 00:07:12.000 --> 00:07:14.720 a thumb nail, then, feeling a twinge of foolishness, slipped 153 00:07:14.720 --> 00:07:17.759 three fingers beneath an edge and pried gently. It opened. 154 00:07:18.439 --> 00:07:21.120 I say open, but that's not quite right. The cover 155 00:07:21.160 --> 00:07:23.480 flexed outward, revealing not a stack of leaves, but a 156 00:07:23.519 --> 00:07:27.040 window of brilliant living paper, a wide shaped column entirely 157 00:07:27.079 --> 00:07:29.920 at odds with the surrounding brick. The interior shone with 158 00:07:29.959 --> 00:07:32.480 a small hidden light, as if illuminated from somewhere inside 159 00:07:32.519 --> 00:07:35.720 the wall. Rows of crisp white pages, densely written and 160 00:07:35.720 --> 00:07:38.959 script both alien and familiar, poured away and down. It 161 00:07:38.959 --> 00:07:42.199 was an optical trick, perhaps, or some marvelously engineered roll. 162 00:07:42.279 --> 00:07:45.519 Yet it didn't look mechanical. I reached turr in a page, 163 00:07:45.600 --> 00:07:48.040 and the content shimmered under my fingers, sliding upward in 164 00:07:48.079 --> 00:07:51.240 a perfectly smoothed ribbon. No brakes, no obvious seam, no 165 00:07:51.319 --> 00:07:54.160 sense of were. Page ended, and another began as new 166 00:07:54.240 --> 00:07:56.600 lines cooled up beneath my hand. A brace for trickery, 167 00:07:56.680 --> 00:08:00.519 perhaps projected text, smart glass, anything in our current technological arsenal, 168 00:08:01.079 --> 00:08:04.800 but nothing repeated. Every passage was new. I passed a 169 00:08:04.800 --> 00:08:07.240 record of municipal water main repairs, two lines of what 170 00:08:07.279 --> 00:08:09.480 looked like manderin a page of city council minutes with 171 00:08:09.560 --> 00:08:11.800 a date from the nineteen thirties. Then a section in 172 00:08:11.879 --> 00:08:15.160 leaping backward written hand. The text shifted from legible to 173 00:08:15.199 --> 00:08:17.279 mysterious and back again, as if the book drew on 174 00:08:17.360 --> 00:08:21.040 every language. Some I recognized, some not. There were paragraphs 175 00:08:21.040 --> 00:08:24.000 of indentitype tiny illustrations of buildings not quite like Henny 176 00:08:24.040 --> 00:08:27.240 in the archives. On impulse, I ran my fingers upward 177 00:08:27.240 --> 00:08:29.560 a page's humble pass, but I couldn't reach a beginning, 178 00:08:29.839 --> 00:08:32.440 nor did a sense an end. The text simply kept driving. 179 00:08:33.080 --> 00:08:36.320 The narrow column was somehow endless, a logical impossibility packed 180 00:08:36.360 --> 00:08:39.039 into two inches of air. Experiment gave way to a 181 00:08:39.080 --> 00:08:42.080 sword of awe. The material didn't fold or tier. Despite 182 00:08:42.080 --> 00:08:45.720 my careful prodding. The book remained firmly fixed. The spine 183 00:08:45.720 --> 00:08:48.559 never shifted, yet fux with warmth. Where my hands gripped it. 184 00:08:49.039 --> 00:08:51.120 I could hear a fainter sigh when I closed the cover, 185 00:08:51.200 --> 00:08:54.440 and margin of breath barely there. For several minutes, I 186 00:08:54.440 --> 00:08:58.159 simply stood, flipping passages, copying brief segments into my field notebook. 187 00:08:58.840 --> 00:09:00.399 When my wrist cramped, I had made be a page 188 00:09:00.440 --> 00:09:03.639 of scattered notations, dates, entries what looked like a forecast 189 00:09:03.639 --> 00:09:06.000 for renan Porte, a council vote on a traffic scheme 190 00:09:06.039 --> 00:09:09.320 that was never implemented. Humor in nervousness would in me. 191 00:09:09.480 --> 00:09:11.919 I half wanted to shout for ours o'mala, half wanted 192 00:09:11.960 --> 00:09:15.080 to pocket the secret for another day's private delight. Whatever 193 00:09:15.120 --> 00:09:18.799 it was, it was no simple trick, no leverers, no hinges, 194 00:09:19.000 --> 00:09:22.080 no sign of a projection or device. The book existed 195 00:09:22.080 --> 00:09:23.759 in a gap between what was and what ought to 196 00:09:23.799 --> 00:09:27.720 be a small, impossible thing, neither threatening nor comforting, just 197 00:09:27.759 --> 00:09:32.840 quietly miraculous. I resolved not to speak of it, not yet. Instead, 198 00:09:32.919 --> 00:09:34.840 I would keep coming back to test what it was, 199 00:09:34.879 --> 00:09:37.679 to see if new patterns emerged. I left the stacks 200 00:09:37.679 --> 00:09:40.320 feeling not threatened, patentalized, the way one is by crossword 201 00:09:40.360 --> 00:09:42.399 with clusing the wrong language of challenge meant for someone 202 00:09:42.440 --> 00:09:45.000 willing to return day after day until the answer came 203 00:09:45.039 --> 00:09:48.799 into focus. That night, I lay awake, turning over possibilities, 204 00:09:49.039 --> 00:09:51.399 letting them ese and drift apart in the shifting corridors 205 00:09:51.399 --> 00:09:55.440 of memory art installation, are prank generations in the making 206 00:09:56.159 --> 00:09:58.639 or something more in old libraries, well kept secret, waiting 207 00:09:58.639 --> 00:10:00.480 for the right blend of indifference in it attention to 208 00:10:00.480 --> 00:10:03.200 spring to life. On my desk at home, I began 209 00:10:03.279 --> 00:10:06.120 a new notebook pillar Book South Basement, between columns twenty 210 00:10:06.159 --> 00:10:10.240 one and twenty two, impossible dimensions, Responses, spying non repeating contents, 211 00:10:10.279 --> 00:10:13.799 Further investigation require. The following week became a series of 212 00:10:13.879 --> 00:10:17.679 quiet experiments. Most mornings I'd arrived while Marla was still 213 00:10:17.679 --> 00:10:20.960 taking attendance for the Oral History of Volunteers. Down in 214 00:10:21.000 --> 00:10:23.120 the basements, the world had be faded out. The only 215 00:10:23.159 --> 00:10:25.120 sound was my own breathing and the faint, ever present 216 00:10:25.200 --> 00:10:28.679 hum of the heating pipes. I decided to document every interaction, 217 00:10:28.879 --> 00:10:31.399 sketching the book shape, making quick scands for my phone, 218 00:10:31.440 --> 00:10:33.879 which whole of them came out smudge blank, or in 219 00:10:33.919 --> 00:10:37.519 a few cases warped into abstract's whirls. I copied every 220 00:10:37.559 --> 00:10:41.080 visible phrase by hand, jotting down Addidi's English yes, but 221 00:10:41.120 --> 00:10:44.519 also passages in Latin, French cyrillic. Even what might have 222 00:10:44.559 --> 00:10:48.759 been copied each day's semple looked nothing like the last. Occasionally, 223 00:10:48.799 --> 00:10:51.679 the text included references to local events of andreising committee 224 00:10:51.679 --> 00:10:54.240 for the boardwalk, the maya's wording, even a passing mention 225 00:10:54.320 --> 00:10:57.240 of last week's dramatic chess tournament, which Marla had gossiped about. 226 00:10:57.240 --> 00:11:01.879 With delight, I compared entries with library. There were overlaps 227 00:11:01.879 --> 00:11:04.919 snippets of boiler plate from old city reports, names matching 228 00:11:04.960 --> 00:11:08.840 local notables, but also anomalies. Some forecasts arrived days before 229 00:11:08.879 --> 00:11:11.759 actual events of predicted afternoons called that materialized, though the 230 00:11:11.759 --> 00:11:15.720 regional office hadn't mentioned it. Some entry's reference decisions never 231 00:11:15.799 --> 00:11:18.480 actually made. A city park whose naming was changed mid vote, 232 00:11:18.519 --> 00:11:22.480 a dedication plaque never install. There were entire festivals chronicled 233 00:11:22.480 --> 00:11:25.919 in affectionate detail, with surnames matching prominent families, yet no 234 00:11:26.039 --> 00:11:28.600 record of photograph in any other ledger or scrap book. 235 00:11:29.159 --> 00:11:32.559 I couldn't resist involving Marl After three days. I framed 236 00:11:32.559 --> 00:11:34.879 it as an archaeval oddity, showing her only the non 237 00:11:34.879 --> 00:11:38.600 functioning phone images and a handful of translated fragments. Her 238 00:11:38.639 --> 00:11:41.840 first reaction was to grumble about my handwriting. Only half amused, 239 00:11:42.519 --> 00:11:45.399 this is some kind of prank write or digital vandalism. 240 00:11:45.399 --> 00:11:47.799 Maybe there's an NFC tag and you've finally gotten into 241 00:11:47.840 --> 00:11:51.879 agmented reality. We went together to the basement. She watched 242 00:11:51.919 --> 00:11:54.279 as I turned the spy and her eyebrozocchi intos belief 243 00:11:54.320 --> 00:11:56.679 as text and French wore seamlessly into a MicroAge line 244 00:11:56.759 --> 00:11:59.240 drawing of the old city square. When she tried to 245 00:11:59.279 --> 00:12:01.399 scan it with her foot, the device wind and froze. 246 00:12:01.399 --> 00:12:04.080 The resulting image was a gray field with rough, darker bands, 247 00:12:04.080 --> 00:12:06.120 as if the pillow book had simply refused to announce 248 00:12:06.159 --> 00:12:09.799 itself to the digital world. Bouquet, she said, wiping dust 249 00:12:09.799 --> 00:12:13.000 from her genes. Suppose it's a prank, the best I've seen, 250 00:12:13.120 --> 00:12:16.039 But the languages these are real. I let her transcribe 251 00:12:16.039 --> 00:12:18.679 a few lines for her own translation. She picked up 252 00:12:18.679 --> 00:12:21.080 a festival entry, something about the Night of eleven Lights. 253 00:12:21.720 --> 00:12:24.720 It was detailed children's names, a menu of candied orange peel, 254 00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:27.080 a description of processions through streets that were renamed in 255 00:12:27.080 --> 00:12:29.720 the nineteen fifties. Yet none of our all nine O 256 00:12:29.799 --> 00:12:33.519 Prince sources listed such a celebration. The archive directories matched 257 00:12:33.519 --> 00:12:35.879 some of the families, but the festival itself was absent. 258 00:12:35.919 --> 00:12:39.200 From city records or even family memoirs, not just up 259 00:12:39.240 --> 00:12:42.320 by his Mala shared her findings. Hearing us debate, she 260 00:12:42.360 --> 00:12:45.759 looked unimpressed. My grandmother used to joke that old library 261 00:12:45.840 --> 00:12:49.039 ledges new things before people did forecasts, birth announcements. Never 262 00:12:49.080 --> 00:12:51.200 write twice in a row. She could say anything under 263 00:12:51.240 --> 00:12:54.080 these bricks than blame it on the record. Still she 264 00:12:54.200 --> 00:12:57.200 leaned in for a look, curious against her own better judgment. 265 00:12:57.879 --> 00:13:01.000 You'll find a logical explanation that she told me, or 266 00:13:01.120 --> 00:13:03.360 be proven the last companion to a long running joke. 267 00:13:03.480 --> 00:13:05.919 Be careful. Sometimes stories become real because we tell them 268 00:13:05.919 --> 00:13:10.039 too well. Days past the next morning I found something new. 269 00:13:10.080 --> 00:13:12.279 The pillow book had shifted left by at least two feet, 270 00:13:12.320 --> 00:13:14.960 settling now between columns. I would have sworn more label differently. 271 00:13:15.000 --> 00:13:18.279 The day before, I checked all blueprints and special collections. There, 272 00:13:18.360 --> 00:13:20.679 the columns were label with numbers in the opposite order. 273 00:13:20.720 --> 00:13:22.720 The pillow books alcove blank, as if the builder had 274 00:13:22.720 --> 00:13:25.360 intended to force the column's proximity or simply make the 275 00:13:25.399 --> 00:13:28.440 records unhelpful. As I examined the books and side cover 276 00:13:28.600 --> 00:13:31.559 I saw that in paper's bore faint annetitions distinctive catalog, 277 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:35.519 a handwriting from different decades, library Leiger numerals, city milestones, 278 00:13:35.639 --> 00:13:38.440 even curious warnings leave three pages between entries d b 279 00:13:38.720 --> 00:13:42.679 nineteen seventy three. Another signature in Elaborate's crypt was dated 280 00:13:42.679 --> 00:13:45.600 in nineteen fifty five. Treat gently, but never trust the index. 281 00:13:46.360 --> 00:13:50.240 The contradictions multiplied each time I visited. The book's location 282 00:13:50.320 --> 00:13:54.240 had subtly adjusted. Sometimes the floor settled a millimeter, Yet 283 00:13:54.240 --> 00:13:56.360 the pillow book always found itself bracketed by the same 284 00:13:56.399 --> 00:13:59.720 two columns, which themselves appeared to drift in the architectural records. 285 00:14:00.320 --> 00:14:03.039 I pose new questions in my note book. How had 286 00:14:03.039 --> 00:14:05.679 no one mentioned this in years of orientation? Was it 287 00:14:05.720 --> 00:14:10.360 an elaborate, multi generational participatory art installation, some lost technology, 288 00:14:10.360 --> 00:14:13.440 a prototype of which only this place remembers, or something 289 00:14:13.480 --> 00:14:18.000 genuinely impossible, a phenomenon unique or particular eccentric archives. Marla 290 00:14:18.080 --> 00:14:20.960 grew upsort, sketching diagrams and suggesting we consult a semi 291 00:14:21.039 --> 00:14:23.960 retired linguist at the university for the most en translatable scripts. 292 00:14:24.679 --> 00:14:27.960 Nadia predictably called it the city's best sound books for storytellers, 293 00:14:27.960 --> 00:14:30.960 but grumbled about catalogers who forget where their own stories begin. 294 00:14:31.519 --> 00:14:34.960 The more we cataloged, the less fixed reality became obsess 295 00:14:35.200 --> 00:14:38.120 I became a creature torn between delight and disquiet. My 296 00:14:38.200 --> 00:14:41.879 field notebo grew thick with clippings, translations, and architectural riddles. 297 00:14:42.480 --> 00:14:44.840 I could no longer tell reviewing my notes if I 298 00:14:44.879 --> 00:14:46.799 was solving an old mystery or weaving a new one 299 00:14:46.840 --> 00:14:49.519 around myself. It was a chury Wednesday when the next 300 00:14:49.600 --> 00:14:51.720 contradiction emerged, one that forced me to see the book 301 00:14:51.720 --> 00:14:54.759 as something more than a static artifact. I'd spent the 302 00:14:54.759 --> 00:14:57.759 morning hunched over my croffician special collections, searching for city 303 00:14:57.879 --> 00:15:01.840 ordinances about construction peculiarities. In letters to the editor from 304 00:15:01.840 --> 00:15:04.879 the nineteen fifties and nineteen eighties, I began sporting strange 305 00:15:04.879 --> 00:15:07.399 references to the unusual pillar in the old library, always 306 00:15:07.399 --> 00:15:10.679 by maintenance staff or retirees, always dismissed in the official 307 00:15:10.720 --> 00:15:13.919 replies structural curiosity, oh, the remains of old electrical housing. 308 00:15:14.480 --> 00:15:17.320 Yet the latters kept appearing, complaints about odd new angles, 309 00:15:17.320 --> 00:15:20.039 old books, walking away from the back corridor, brief mentions 310 00:15:20.039 --> 00:15:21.840 a staff who lost hours in the shadow of the 311 00:15:21.840 --> 00:15:25.240 south pillar. My pulse picked up if this pillar. This 312 00:15:25.279 --> 00:15:27.399 pillar book had always been here in some fashion, it 313 00:15:27.440 --> 00:15:30.039 was invisible only to the unpracticed I, or perhaps had 314 00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:33.240 a talent for evading description. I phoned Vincent, a giant, 315 00:15:33.279 --> 00:15:35.679 a long retired but still infamously sharp, witted and partial 316 00:15:35.679 --> 00:15:39.120 to the library cinnamon rolls. You worked maintenance in the eighties, 317 00:15:39.200 --> 00:15:43.879 didn't you, I asked? He laughed. You mean when departments 318 00:15:43.919 --> 00:15:47.159 actually got new mops. I remember it all. Why ever 319 00:15:47.240 --> 00:15:49.720 hear anyone mention an odd pillar in their original stacks, 320 00:15:49.720 --> 00:15:52.120 something book like, or a column that didn't line up? 321 00:15:52.679 --> 00:15:54.960 There was a pause, he used to be some of 322 00:15:55.000 --> 00:15:57.799 the night shelvos would sit there on break. They'd scribble, giggle, 323 00:15:57.840 --> 00:16:00.240 copy things down. I always figured it was some society, 324 00:16:00.360 --> 00:16:02.120 like how you all heard the best shop bred recipes 325 00:16:02.159 --> 00:16:04.399 they called at the Living Ledger. I never paid it mind. 326 00:16:04.440 --> 00:16:08.320 Work was work one detail, Vincent, Did anyone notice it changed? 327 00:16:09.039 --> 00:16:12.720 I pressed? Seemed like it moved, or walls did. Probably 328 00:16:12.759 --> 00:16:14.480 just the smell of old glue getting to your head. 329 00:16:15.000 --> 00:16:17.600 I hung up, more convinced than ever. I digged back 330 00:16:17.639 --> 00:16:20.960 through my field notebook, comparing pillow book entries with real history. 331 00:16:21.480 --> 00:16:24.279 What emerged was strangers still the books text did not 332 00:16:24.320 --> 00:16:27.120 simply recoded past events, but variations upon them. A flood 333 00:16:27.159 --> 00:16:29.679 that almost came but was diverted by a last minute vote, 334 00:16:29.679 --> 00:16:31.919 a city park whose name changed in draft minutes, an 335 00:16:31.960 --> 00:16:33.759 unbuild up to vision tower that only appeared in the 336 00:16:33.759 --> 00:16:37.919 book's text, never in council plans, family disputes, marriages that 337 00:16:38.000 --> 00:16:40.799 nearly happened were tirement parties that didn't go forward, but 338 00:16:40.840 --> 00:16:43.879 were still described with all the attendant pageantry and witnesses. 339 00:16:44.360 --> 00:16:46.200 The Pillow Book had become a mirror, one that not 340 00:16:46.240 --> 00:16:49.360 only chronicled but also refracted the city's events. What was 341 00:16:49.440 --> 00:16:52.120 what might have been? Even stories that only narrowly miss 342 00:16:52.159 --> 00:16:55.639 cooming true. The realization arrived like a hush in the stacks. 343 00:16:56.320 --> 00:16:58.879 This wasn't a static thing, not a novelty left by 344 00:16:58.879 --> 00:17:01.600 the pass for me to solve. The pillar Book interacted 345 00:17:01.639 --> 00:17:04.559 with the city's memory. It recorded what could have happened 346 00:17:04.640 --> 00:17:07.240 as much as would did. It was maybe a living 347 00:17:07.279 --> 00:17:09.799 story shaped by the population and practices around it, or 348 00:17:09.839 --> 00:17:13.400 perhaps a silent participant in the act of remembering. Suddenly, 349 00:17:13.440 --> 00:17:16.119 the question was not whether the book was real note 350 00:17:16.119 --> 00:17:19.640 The question became what purpose did it serve? Why remain hidden, 351 00:17:19.720 --> 00:17:22.440 nutable responding As the city changed, as our own beliefs 352 00:17:22.480 --> 00:17:25.240 and interpretation shifted. What did it mean for a book 353 00:17:25.279 --> 00:17:26.680 to be as much a part of the people as 354 00:17:26.680 --> 00:17:29.359 of the place. I no longer struggled to frame it 355 00:17:29.400 --> 00:17:31.960 as a trick or puzzle. I felt instead the growing, 356 00:17:32.119 --> 00:17:34.880 complicated gratitude of sense of humility before a phenomenon that 357 00:17:34.960 --> 00:17:36.960 chronicled not just who we were, but all that we 358 00:17:37.039 --> 00:17:39.559 might have been and might yet become. I left the 359 00:17:39.599 --> 00:17:42.200 library that evening, street lights glinting in puddles, prepared to 360 00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:44.200 stop thinking of the pillar as a thing to decode, 361 00:17:44.359 --> 00:17:46.079 and to begin treating it as a question for the 362 00:17:46.079 --> 00:17:49.480 city itself. Whose story did it tell? And why had 363 00:17:49.480 --> 00:17:54.400 it revealed itself? Now? The next day I began to ask, quietly, carefully. 364 00:17:54.440 --> 00:17:56.519 I inquired of older staff and the long time patrons 365 00:17:56.519 --> 00:17:59.079 if they remembered anything peculiar about the soft basement pillar. 366 00:17:59.680 --> 00:18:02.559 The answers, whispered across mugs of weak library ty or 367 00:18:02.599 --> 00:18:04.319 in the hush of the foot copy room, were as 368 00:18:04.319 --> 00:18:08.119 inconsistent as the phenomenon itself. Part of the wall always was, 369 00:18:08.240 --> 00:18:11.400 far as I know, shrugged wool who ran into library loans. 370 00:18:12.039 --> 00:18:14.839 I think I remember it shorter, maybe back in the nineties. 371 00:18:14.880 --> 00:18:18.640 Plaster not leather. That was Jeanne, who'd managed periodicals until 372 00:18:18.680 --> 00:18:21.200 two thousand and two. It had a crack down the middle, 373 00:18:21.240 --> 00:18:23.440 maybe a label on at once someone painted over it. 374 00:18:24.000 --> 00:18:26.400 This came from THEO, an elderly regular who claimed to 375 00:18:26.400 --> 00:18:29.319 have memorized the plumbing diagrams. But don't ask me to demonstrate. 376 00:18:29.920 --> 00:18:33.640 I asked each for specifics, but no detail matched another, height, dacre, 377 00:18:33.720 --> 00:18:38.279 even materials. Some described an obvious scene, some not. Fog 378 00:18:38.319 --> 00:18:40.720 of memory or something at work in the act of remembering. 379 00:18:41.319 --> 00:18:43.920 That afternoon, as Marla and I consulted together at the 380 00:18:43.920 --> 00:18:46.039 Pillar Book, a new turn of the story shifted a 381 00:18:46.039 --> 00:18:49.160 ground beneath my feet. She was reading through a translated page, 382 00:18:49.160 --> 00:18:51.759 a passage about a city scaped lit by twelve silver moons, 383 00:18:52.000 --> 00:18:55.000 when her hand brushed against something large between two scrolling pages. 384 00:18:55.640 --> 00:18:57.720 It was a set of folded in its cards, dry 385 00:18:57.720 --> 00:18:59.960 and yellow with age in the classic block is scripted over, 386 00:19:00.000 --> 00:19:04.119 recognized from dozens of accession records Rooreston, a cataloger who 387 00:19:04.160 --> 00:19:07.759 retired in the late nineteen seventies. The card was addressed simply, 388 00:19:07.839 --> 00:19:10.319 if you find this, you're not imagining it. I'll see 389 00:19:10.319 --> 00:19:12.160 it too. The book changes with us keep your own 390 00:19:12.160 --> 00:19:15.599 record at e. B nineteen seventy three. Four other notes, 391 00:19:15.839 --> 00:19:18.599 clearly written by different hands and different inks, were tucked 392 00:19:18.599 --> 00:19:22.440 beneath small genealogies, musings, lists of odd phenomena, and elongated 393 00:19:22.480 --> 00:19:25.279 warning don't skip the red script, and another more playful 394 00:19:25.319 --> 00:19:28.519 at the next generation, Our stories keep growing. I felt 395 00:19:28.519 --> 00:19:30.839 my fingers tremble, not with fright, but with the sudden 396 00:19:30.839 --> 00:19:34.839 expansion of context. We weren't the first. There had always 397 00:19:34.839 --> 00:19:38.200 been secret keepers, each tracing a fragment, each advising the 398 00:19:38.200 --> 00:19:40.640 next to pay attention, even as the book itself drifted 399 00:19:40.640 --> 00:19:43.920 in and out of recollection. There was more. That day, 400 00:19:43.960 --> 00:19:46.119 the pillar Book's visible window scrolled a record of the 401 00:19:46.200 --> 00:19:48.640