WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.360 --> 00:00:08.560 The day began the way most do at Rosborough Municipal Library, 2 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:11.839 with the slow stirrings of old buildings and older habits, 3 00:00:12.160 --> 00:00:15.000 the echo of my steps on marble turning corners that 4 00:00:15.039 --> 00:00:18.120 have heard a century's worth of readers, and the particular 5 00:00:18.160 --> 00:00:21.280 silence that hovers over stone mornings close to the water. 6 00:00:22.280 --> 00:00:26.359 I'd arrived early, as usual, waving to Tamars as he 7 00:00:26.399 --> 00:00:29.879 finished mopping the lobby, his headphones hanging around his neck, 8 00:00:30.120 --> 00:00:33.439 with a perennial optimism the rest of him didn't quite reflect. 9 00:00:34.560 --> 00:00:38.200 In the archives. I pushed my usual cart, sticky wheeled 10 00:00:38.320 --> 00:00:41.920 and loaded with donated hard covers, past the wing's half 11 00:00:41.960 --> 00:00:45.719 shuttered reference desk, its momentary home to lost gloves and 12 00:00:45.840 --> 00:00:49.560 yesterday's coffee. I was sorting through a stack of out 13 00:00:49.640 --> 00:00:52.520 of print gardening guides when my hand fell upon a 14 00:00:52.600 --> 00:00:56.439 volume heavier and vastly older than anything else on the cart. 15 00:00:57.039 --> 00:01:00.280 It looked every inch the artifact a Victorian nun novel, 16 00:01:00.479 --> 00:01:03.759 full leather spine, embossed in gold leaf, the kind of 17 00:01:03.799 --> 00:01:08.879 binding most English teachers only see in catalog illustrations. Whispers 18 00:01:08.920 --> 00:01:13.879 of Tide Marsh Asterisk by Abigail m Holt, published eighteen 19 00:01:13.959 --> 00:01:17.359 ninety two, issued in London, and according to the faded 20 00:01:17.400 --> 00:01:22.000 marbled end paper at Rossborough Press, Marshside Lane, I paused, 21 00:01:22.159 --> 00:01:25.159 gripped in a way I can only call proprietary. If 22 00:01:25.159 --> 00:01:28.400 this was rare, it was also home grown. The marbled 23 00:01:28.439 --> 00:01:32.359 boards shimmered with knots of color, burnt ochre, fog blue. 24 00:01:32.640 --> 00:01:35.439 The palette of our city's older houses turned coral in 25 00:01:35.519 --> 00:01:39.040 the sun. Opening it, I was stuck by the density 26 00:01:39.079 --> 00:01:43.079 of its academic scaffolding. Almost every page hosted footnotes in 27 00:01:43.200 --> 00:01:46.599 minuscule copperplate, some running half the length of the text. 28 00:01:47.200 --> 00:01:51.599 She'd cross referenced local districts, annotated the dialect of Riverside 29 00:01:51.599 --> 00:01:54.959 mill workers, even included fold out maps at the back, 30 00:01:55.359 --> 00:01:59.760 strange elaborate charts of old tide marsh Borough, a chunk 31 00:01:59.760 --> 00:02:03.519 of the city I'd never heard named. Some references were 32 00:02:03.519 --> 00:02:09.080 pure fantasy, I assumed at first bell barge regatta, second harbor, clocktower, 33 00:02:09.360 --> 00:02:12.879 processions of mud lampers. It read like an archive of 34 00:02:12.919 --> 00:02:17.199 forgotten events, nesting within a family saga, half historical, half 35 00:02:17.240 --> 00:02:21.240 folk tale. The temptation to leaf through every page was strong, 36 00:02:21.599 --> 00:02:24.479 but habit and some ingrained sense of duty kept me 37 00:02:24.520 --> 00:02:28.639 cataloging the book, first, I scanned its ISBN, which spat 38 00:02:28.719 --> 00:02:31.800 back error codes. I entered the author's name, the title, 39 00:02:31.960 --> 00:02:35.599 and the publisher into our terminal. No matches. I tried 40 00:02:35.599 --> 00:02:39.759 the City Wide Holdings Network, the Historical Society's online project, 41 00:02:40.080 --> 00:02:44.439 even the open digital libraries of obscure Victorian novels. Nothing. 42 00:02:44.919 --> 00:02:47.759 Whispers of Tide Marsh did not exist for the Internet. 43 00:02:48.840 --> 00:02:53.159 Neither did Abigail m Holt. No record in author encyclopedias, 44 00:02:53.479 --> 00:02:57.199 no reference in university pressed databases, not even a quirky 45 00:02:57.280 --> 00:03:02.120 blog post musing about the haunted corners of Vctorian fiction project. 46 00:03:02.199 --> 00:03:06.759 Gutenberg had never digitized her good Reads. That voracious archive 47 00:03:06.800 --> 00:03:11.000 of obscure sentimentalists had nothing. The City Records held, not 48 00:03:11.080 --> 00:03:14.879 a whisper. I slid the book into an archival sleeve, and, 49 00:03:14.960 --> 00:03:19.000 after a moment's hesitation, logged its arrival in my handwritten notebook, 50 00:03:19.280 --> 00:03:23.000 an old teacher's reflex for Anomalies, the same spiral bound 51 00:03:23.080 --> 00:03:27.199 ledger where for years I've jotted title oddities and margin stories. 52 00:03:27.560 --> 00:03:30.000 It's I hoped to track down for the local History club. 53 00:03:30.560 --> 00:03:33.439 There was no sticker inside the book, not from Rosburgh 54 00:03:33.520 --> 00:03:36.719 Public or any private collection. I knew there was no 55 00:03:36.840 --> 00:03:39.479 slip to indicate this had been on loan or display 56 00:03:39.599 --> 00:03:44.520 before I found myself staring at the Victorian address, marsh 57 00:03:44.520 --> 00:03:47.800 Side Lane, and feeling, for just a moment as if 58 00:03:47.800 --> 00:03:50.080 a hidden shelf of the city had peered out at 59 00:03:50.080 --> 00:03:53.840 me and then winked shut. It was not the absence 60 00:03:53.840 --> 00:03:57.680 of digital record that startled me most. What unsettled was 61 00:03:57.719 --> 00:04:01.479 the feeling, faint but insistent, that I, who have spent 62 00:04:01.520 --> 00:04:05.639 almost seventy years in Rossborough, taught English to three generations 63 00:04:05.639 --> 00:04:09.479 in its schools, walked its alleys and water front most afternoons. 64 00:04:10.039 --> 00:04:13.439 Even I, meticulous and partial to local myth, had never 65 00:04:13.479 --> 00:04:16.800 heard of this book or its author. Not once in 66 00:04:16.879 --> 00:04:21.079 faculty lounge conversations, not in the adulthood nostalgia of students 67 00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:24.639 writing essays about Rosborough's literary scene, not even in the 68 00:04:24.639 --> 00:04:28.319 footnotes of our more eccentric city guides. No one, to 69 00:04:28.439 --> 00:04:32.040 my memory, had ever mentioned Abigail m Holt, nor the 70 00:04:32.120 --> 00:04:35.600 tide marsh Borough, nor anything like a bell barge regatta. 71 00:04:36.639 --> 00:04:40.199 The early archives were colder than usual, smelling of mildew 72 00:04:40.240 --> 00:04:43.079 and old labels. For the rest of the morning, as 73 00:04:43.079 --> 00:04:47.439 I shelved the newer donations. I found myself distracted, composing 74 00:04:47.560 --> 00:04:50.839 questions I hoped might sound casual. Should any one pop in? 75 00:04:51.519 --> 00:04:54.600 Where did the book come from? Was this an elaborate hoax? 76 00:04:55.000 --> 00:04:57.759 Could a private collection have gone unsorted for so long? 77 00:04:58.120 --> 00:05:00.720 And why would a book of such quality, local depth 78 00:05:00.800 --> 00:05:05.240 slip every net More than that? Were the curious footnotes 79 00:05:05.319 --> 00:05:08.680 simple story telling or did they mask a hidden city 80 00:05:08.759 --> 00:05:12.199 history we had quietly misplaced? There was no drama in 81 00:05:12.240 --> 00:05:15.959 the moment, just a gentle, persistent feeling that something about 82 00:05:15.959 --> 00:05:20.639 the usual order of things, something unobjectionably modest, was deeply 83 00:05:20.680 --> 00:05:25.160 out of place. I had, I suppose, always enjoyed places 84 00:05:25.199 --> 00:05:28.600 and things that refused to be tidy. Even as a teacher, 85 00:05:28.879 --> 00:05:31.279 I championed the odd poem found on the back of 86 00:05:31.319 --> 00:05:34.439 a math worksheet, the errant memory of a parade from 87 00:05:34.439 --> 00:05:38.040 the fifties, or the library slip tucked in a forgotten spine, 88 00:05:38.560 --> 00:05:42.560 remnants of stories that had almost but not quite disappeared. 89 00:05:43.639 --> 00:05:47.560 Rosborough suited me, a city rich in history, often sublime 90 00:05:47.600 --> 00:05:50.360 in its confusion, so full of layers that even its 91 00:05:50.399 --> 00:05:52.920 citizens could not always agree on what had come before 92 00:05:53.399 --> 00:05:56.720 or what ought properly to remain. We wear our maritime 93 00:05:56.800 --> 00:05:59.959 legacy with a faint embarrassment, preferring to let the oldest 94 00:06:00.079 --> 00:06:04.319 warehouses molder behind municipal fencing, while our new glass buildings, 95 00:06:04.560 --> 00:06:08.759 all lines and transparency, fight a subtle, losing war against salt, 96 00:06:08.800 --> 00:06:13.439 fog and mossy stone. Rosborough Municipal Library perches above the 97 00:06:13.480 --> 00:06:17.319 waterfront like a dignified dowager, her stone facades streaked with 98 00:06:17.399 --> 00:06:22.199 wind and moss, her windows dim behind grand arches. Step inside, 99 00:06:22.480 --> 00:06:26.759 and the effect intensifies. Three floors of darkwood stacks, reading 100 00:06:26.839 --> 00:06:30.480 rooms that smell of beeswax and rain, twisting basements that 101 00:06:30.519 --> 00:06:34.639 seem to generate new branches every decade. The ceilings soar 102 00:06:34.680 --> 00:06:37.680 in the old wings, the newer additions slump under the 103 00:06:37.680 --> 00:06:43.199 weight of their purpose. People get lost here, sometimes for hours, Sometimes, 104 00:06:43.319 --> 00:06:47.480 if rumor is believed, almost willingly, I am content in 105 00:06:47.560 --> 00:06:51.040 my minor ritual, signing in at the volunteer desk, reading 106 00:06:51.079 --> 00:06:55.519 new accession forms, partnering with Monika, chief archivist and keeper 107 00:06:55.519 --> 00:06:59.560 of library sanity, and offering unsolicited advice to Lisa, who 108 00:06:59.639 --> 00:07:03.439 manage is our digitization effort with dry wit and brisk efficiency. 109 00:07:04.160 --> 00:07:07.319 Monica is in her early sixties now her long gray 110 00:07:07.399 --> 00:07:10.519 braid and severity of glasses, giving her a stern air 111 00:07:10.560 --> 00:07:14.360 belied by a gossipy warmth, and hands perpetually ink smudged 112 00:07:14.399 --> 00:07:19.199 from catalog repairs. Lisa is younger, in her twenties, wire 113 00:07:19.279 --> 00:07:23.600 framed spectacles and a practical skepticism. She believes everything worth 114 00:07:23.639 --> 00:07:27.439 remembering is already digital, and regards my affection for catalog 115 00:07:27.519 --> 00:07:32.079 cards as harmless eccentricity. To Mars, the janitor has been 116 00:07:32.160 --> 00:07:34.959 here nearly as long as I have able to recall 117 00:07:35.040 --> 00:07:38.879 the year each wing gained or lost its favorite odd 118 00:07:38.920 --> 00:07:43.639 stain or creek. Among our patrons, a few elderly regulars 119 00:07:43.680 --> 00:07:49.360 appear every week, genealogists, amateur historians, old teachers, sometimes a 120 00:07:49.439 --> 00:07:53.639 high school student toiling at an ap paper, almost always 121 00:07:53.680 --> 00:07:58.079 recognizable from years past. The internal culture of the library 122 00:07:58.160 --> 00:08:02.040 is its own ecosystem, balanced precariously between the old guard 123 00:08:02.519 --> 00:08:06.480 fond of the physical, the idiosyncratic, the real stuff, and 124 00:08:06.560 --> 00:08:11.000 the younger, more technologically inclined staff, who quite rightly keep 125 00:08:11.079 --> 00:08:14.560 us from becoming a mausoleum. Monica tends to side with 126 00:08:14.639 --> 00:08:17.560 me on matters of tactile evidence, though even she will 127 00:08:17.560 --> 00:08:21.240 occasionally sigh over the digitization of rare pamphlets, as if 128 00:08:21.279 --> 00:08:26.279 it is an unfortunate but necessary surgery. Lisa, by contrast, 129 00:08:26.560 --> 00:08:31.240 calls catalog cards pointless ghosts, and maintains our main terminal's 130 00:08:31.279 --> 00:08:35.600 sleek display with something bordering on religious zeal. But we 131 00:08:35.639 --> 00:08:39.559 are a gentle community when it comes to accepting peculiarities. 132 00:08:39.879 --> 00:08:42.840 We usually agree to stew in our specialties and let 133 00:08:42.840 --> 00:08:47.639 the city's memory collect its own islands of oversight. The library, 134 00:08:47.720 --> 00:08:51.559 by unwritten tradition, is a living museum of vanishing details. 135 00:08:52.080 --> 00:08:56.000 Monica confides sometimes in the course of sorting donations, that 136 00:08:56.080 --> 00:08:59.799 she has noticed weird gaps growing in some of our collections, 137 00:09:00.159 --> 00:09:04.679 especially among local authors. Certain books whole decades even seem 138 00:09:04.720 --> 00:09:07.519 to fall through the cracks, never in the digital system, 139 00:09:07.559 --> 00:09:11.320 nor on any one's curated shelves. Lisa blames it on 140 00:09:11.440 --> 00:09:16.120 budget cuts and haphazard legacy catalogs to mars is less 141 00:09:16.159 --> 00:09:20.679 analytical books get missing, he shrugs. Missing books get ghosts, 142 00:09:20.960 --> 00:09:24.080 that's the way. And there are whispered tales of hidden 143 00:09:24.159 --> 00:09:28.000 rooms and archive corners no one has mapped a cartographer's 144 00:09:28.039 --> 00:09:31.000 headache have never quite managed to resolve with a florplan. 145 00:09:32.000 --> 00:09:34.279 The city itself is a fit for such a library. 146 00:09:34.559 --> 00:09:37.200 Once a humming port than a hub for glass works 147 00:09:37.200 --> 00:09:42.360 and rail, now proud but shrinking downtown, every new boutique 148 00:09:42.360 --> 00:09:46.080 and restaurant seems layered on the bones of three vanished businesses. 149 00:09:46.600 --> 00:09:50.639 The local pride of generational families contends with the unclaimed, 150 00:09:50.960 --> 00:09:54.200 the half forgotten, the stories in which the line between 151 00:09:54.240 --> 00:09:58.080 myth and history blurs. As for me, I've always kept 152 00:09:58.120 --> 00:10:02.039 a note book odd lines for teachers, errant city memories, 153 00:10:02.320 --> 00:10:05.399 rumors of a lost fountain, or a missing manuscript that 154 00:10:05.480 --> 00:10:09.720 a retired principal swore existed in the nineteen sixties. I 155 00:10:09.799 --> 00:10:13.399 save a spaces where nothing quite lines up, the places where, 156 00:10:13.639 --> 00:10:17.559 for lack of attention, a slice of history sloughs off, unnoticed, 157 00:10:17.799 --> 00:10:21.240 and the world leaks a little. So when Monica glanced 158 00:10:21.240 --> 00:10:24.919 at the old donation log that morning and remarked, funny thing, 159 00:10:25.240 --> 00:10:28.639 it's rare to see new arrivals here, especially in that section, 160 00:10:29.039 --> 00:10:32.440 I felt a mild current of anticipation. She frowned as 161 00:10:32.440 --> 00:10:35.200 she slid the cart back to my side. You ever 162 00:10:35.279 --> 00:10:38.320 notice some shelves seem to collect dust but never fill up. 163 00:10:38.639 --> 00:10:42.240 I'll find clean gaps, like something s moved but whenever 164 00:10:42.279 --> 00:10:46.480 I go searching, can't recall what ought to be there. Lisa, 165 00:10:46.559 --> 00:10:49.399 looking up from her tablet, added with a smirk, you 166 00:10:49.480 --> 00:10:53.039 too are seeing patterns in ghosts. The card catalogs are 167 00:10:53.080 --> 00:10:56.320 full of outdated nonsense. Once you log it in digital, 168 00:10:56.440 --> 00:11:00.919 it matters. Until then, it's just dead paper. I smiled, 169 00:11:01.000 --> 00:11:04.960 feigning offense, but kept my questions for later. As I 170 00:11:05.039 --> 00:11:08.440 finished reviewing the main donations, and under current of gentle 171 00:11:08.440 --> 00:11:13.320 anticipation bubbled inside me. New books were rare, unknown books 172 00:11:13.320 --> 00:11:17.879 of this caliber impossible. My mind played quietly with possibilities 173 00:11:18.240 --> 00:11:22.679 a private collector perhaps, or someone's elaborate bookish prank. Why 174 00:11:22.679 --> 00:11:26.360 would an author, this scholarly, this rigorously local, leave no 175 00:11:26.480 --> 00:11:29.159 ripple across any of the ponds I fished daily for 176 00:11:29.240 --> 00:11:32.360 literary gossip. I made my way at lunch to the 177 00:11:32.360 --> 00:11:36.120 public terminals, what Lisa calls the mothership of our records, 178 00:11:36.360 --> 00:11:40.159 for all its tendency to crash when overloaded by genealogy buffs, 179 00:11:40.480 --> 00:11:44.639 and began with the obvious Abigail m Holt. Nothing, No 180 00:11:44.840 --> 00:11:49.320 censous references in city, state or national archives, no literary 181 00:11:49.360 --> 00:11:53.519 society mentions. I tried whispers of tide marsh asterisk, then 182 00:11:53.720 --> 00:11:57.720 just Tide Marsh. The only hits were for actual Marshes, 183 00:11:58.039 --> 00:12:02.120 including a naturalist's blog on sa Dury restoration. But no book, 184 00:12:02.360 --> 00:12:05.360 no author biography, not even a nod from the fussiest 185 00:12:05.440 --> 00:12:10.639 Victorian completists. The Local Historical Society's digital holdings came up blank, 186 00:12:10.919 --> 00:12:15.320 as did their website. S obscure local author's project, no 187 00:12:15.480 --> 00:12:19.200 city festival records, no parish news letters, not even among 188 00:12:19.240 --> 00:12:23.639 the crowd sourced histories of every park, street or industrial accident. 189 00:12:24.720 --> 00:12:28.120 I turned to the battered, green velvet corded catalog draws 190 00:12:28.120 --> 00:12:32.080 that Monika had not yet let Lisa rationalize. Flicking through 191 00:12:32.080 --> 00:12:35.799 the h drawer revealed thousands of title cards, most as 192 00:12:35.879 --> 00:12:38.960 yellowed as old newsprint, some with the edges scolloped by 193 00:12:39.000 --> 00:12:43.200 mice or age. No abigil holt, no unfamiliar names with 194 00:12:43.279 --> 00:12:48.360 even vague echoes of Tide Marsh, no shelf marks suggesting reorganization. 195 00:12:48.960 --> 00:12:51.960 Just a blank, as if that entire thread of archiving 196 00:12:52.000 --> 00:12:57.000 had never existed. Yet the book itself was undeniably real, weighty, 197 00:12:57.080 --> 00:13:00.360 and detailed in my hands, even its footnotes, with their 198 00:13:00.399 --> 00:13:04.799 perverse attention to dialect and ritual described supposedly local events. 199 00:13:05.279 --> 00:13:07.759 Yet every attempt to triangulate even a hint of the 200 00:13:07.840 --> 00:13:11.279 second Harbor clock to in city records met with silence. 201 00:13:11.799 --> 00:13:14.799 There was something odd, too, about the physical remnants where 202 00:13:14.799 --> 00:13:18.759 I'd found it. In that shelf slot, a faint, undisturbed 203 00:13:18.799 --> 00:13:22.159 rectangle existed, the rest of the wood gray with dust. 204 00:13:23.200 --> 00:13:26.559 The slot suggested a long presence, Yet the old check 205 00:13:26.600 --> 00:13:30.639 out cards for that section were either missing or strangely blank. 206 00:13:31.600 --> 00:13:34.759 When Monica passed by, I caught her arm. Is it 207 00:13:34.799 --> 00:13:38.600 possible any local author gifted enough to produce this? I 208 00:13:38.720 --> 00:13:42.039 waived the book careful with the brittle slip could be 209 00:13:42.120 --> 00:13:46.639 absent from our records, let alone the catalogs. She peered 210 00:13:46.639 --> 00:13:49.799 at the book, then laughed softly. No one's filled up 211 00:13:49.840 --> 00:13:52.960 that section in years. Sometimes when I shift the shelves, 212 00:13:53.080 --> 00:13:55.440 I'll find a clean patch and wonder if I've moved 213 00:13:55.440 --> 00:13:57.799 something in my sleep. But when I go to cross 214 00:13:57.799 --> 00:14:01.360 list old donations, the gaps multed. We joke, it's just 215 00:14:01.440 --> 00:14:05.480 the ghosts reorganizing themselves. She squinted at the checkout's slip. 216 00:14:05.879 --> 00:14:12.519 Look at that, no signature, no return date, just empty lines. Lisa, overhearing, 217 00:14:12.720 --> 00:14:15.399 rolled her eyes. If it's not in the digital it 218 00:14:15.440 --> 00:14:18.799 doesn't exist. Maybe a prank, a forger printing up an 219 00:14:18.799 --> 00:14:22.000 imaginary local author, hiding it for an old guard like 220 00:14:22.039 --> 00:14:26.120 you to find. She shrugged, returning to her barcoded scanner, 221 00:14:26.360 --> 00:14:29.480 as if I'd asked about chimeras or airships. Yet I 222 00:14:29.559 --> 00:14:32.720 knew Monica's sense of the library was as sharp as anyone's, 223 00:14:33.000 --> 00:14:36.480 her memory as reliable as the archive's slow pinging boiler. 224 00:14:37.519 --> 00:14:40.799 All this would have felt dismissible, almost comical, were it 225 00:14:40.840 --> 00:14:43.399 not for the way every clue seemed perfectly aligned to 226 00:14:43.440 --> 00:14:47.240 baffle regular skepticism. If someone had invented a fake book 227 00:14:47.279 --> 00:14:50.759 this meticulous, why vanish it so thoroughly? If it had 228 00:14:50.799 --> 00:14:53.480 lingered there for years, why did no one else recall 229 00:14:53.559 --> 00:14:56.120 seeing it? And if this was some act of neglect, 230 00:14:56.360 --> 00:15:00.639 how could the physical evidence chapter footnotes annotating high specific 231 00:15:00.679 --> 00:15:05.320 local customs, odd but precise maps evade every known record. 232 00:15:06.440 --> 00:15:09.480 Rather than discourage me, the puzzle worked like a grain 233 00:15:09.639 --> 00:15:13.399 under the skin. I decided to revisit the oldest corners 234 00:15:13.440 --> 00:15:16.679 of our stacks, the places I'd haunted as both student 235 00:15:16.879 --> 00:15:21.440 and teacher, searching for evidence of the library. Supposed gaps 236 00:15:22.039 --> 00:15:25.279 with Monica's blessing. I drew up a list of idiosyncratic 237 00:15:25.320 --> 00:15:30.200 books from memory, local poetry anthologies, battered pulp science fiction, 238 00:15:30.679 --> 00:15:34.879 one beloved civic history volume I'd recommended to students every 239 00:15:34.960 --> 00:15:39.399 third spring, and began what I grandly termed that afternoon, 240 00:15:39.639 --> 00:15:43.720 my minor audit of the ghost shelves. Among the regulars, 241 00:15:43.840 --> 00:15:49.080 missus Thurman, widow, retired math teacher, library patron for three decades, 242 00:15:49.480 --> 00:15:52.759 was the most reliable witness to memory. I found her 243 00:15:52.879 --> 00:15:56.200 ensconced in the east reading room, eyes flickering over a 244 00:15:56.279 --> 00:16:00.200 large type romance novel. Did you ever happen across that 245 00:16:00.320 --> 00:16:03.320 old folk tell collection that used to be shelved near 246 00:16:03.320 --> 00:16:07.279 the city's post war anthologies, I asked, sketching a blue 247 00:16:07.320 --> 00:16:11.720 spine and faded gold insects on an index card. She 248 00:16:11.840 --> 00:16:15.840 frowned in concentration. No, but this spot always feels wrong 249 00:16:15.879 --> 00:16:18.519 to me. I've never seen anything like that here. But 250 00:16:18.600 --> 00:16:21.519 I swear some days I walk by and think something 251 00:16:21.879 --> 00:16:25.799 s just moved, like coming home and knowing someonees adjusted 252 00:16:25.840 --> 00:16:29.440 your cushions. She chuckled, then closed her eyes as if 253 00:16:29.480 --> 00:16:32.080 to chase the memory. Are you sure you're not thinking 254 00:16:32.120 --> 00:16:36.159 about the regionals at the north branch. The shelves themselves 255 00:16:36.200 --> 00:16:40.200 showed their own small signatures, imprints in the dust, angled 256 00:16:40.200 --> 00:16:43.279 outlines where the sun had faded the wood only around 257 00:16:43.279 --> 00:16:46.480 the absent shape of a book I found on a 258 00:16:46.519 --> 00:16:49.679 shelf by the stair, the old yellow, dewy label for 259 00:16:49.720 --> 00:16:54.159 a poetry anthology previously shelved here, the catalog card filed 260 00:16:54.200 --> 00:16:58.840 next to a slot marked only withdrawn. The cards remaining 261 00:16:58.840 --> 00:17:02.519 in drawers were, more often than I'd admit aloud, stamped 262 00:17:02.559 --> 00:17:06.119 with just dates and shelf marks, the titles either erased 263 00:17:06.160 --> 00:17:10.279 by age, faded to a legibility, or sometimes simply missing. 264 00:17:11.319 --> 00:17:14.119 To Mars shrugged when I pointed out a skewed patch 265 00:17:14.160 --> 00:17:17.880 at floor level beneath the staff kitchen. Sometimes I get 266 00:17:17.920 --> 00:17:21.400 stray cards in the utility closet with only borrower names 267 00:17:21.519 --> 00:17:24.279 and no book title. You know how many times I've 268 00:17:24.279 --> 00:17:27.799 tried to return a slip that doesn't match anything in storage. 269 00:17:28.079 --> 00:17:32.559 Figured books get lost, Lost books make ghosts. Prodded by 270 00:17:32.559 --> 00:17:35.440 a sudden memory, I described to Monica the Battered Folk 271 00:17:35.480 --> 00:17:39.119 Tell volume from my childhood Blue and Gold Stories of 272 00:17:39.200 --> 00:17:42.079 River Lanterns and the Willow Queen, a book I would 273 00:17:42.079 --> 00:17:45.680 have sworn by. Never saw it she said, tracing a 274 00:17:45.759 --> 00:17:48.440 finger along the shelf. But I do get the feeling 275 00:17:48.519 --> 00:17:51.599 sometimes almost like a shelf aches for something that just 276 00:17:51.720 --> 00:17:56.279 left no use. I suppose I made the list methodically, 277 00:17:56.480 --> 00:17:58.720 working through every shelf I had loved, in the old 278 00:17:58.799 --> 00:18:03.079 children's stack, every side room where odd copies collected, the 279 00:18:03.119 --> 00:18:07.000 oddest pattern emerged. Books most likely to be missing were 280 00:18:07.039 --> 00:18:12.359 always local small press anthologies, family memoirs, city histories, books 281 00:18:12.359 --> 00:18:17.279 cited only in other footnotes, volumes never digitized. I began 282 00:18:17.319 --> 00:18:19.799 to keep track of which ones left a residue, the 283 00:18:19.880 --> 00:18:22.359 sun change on a shelf, the sticky mark of a 284 00:18:22.400 --> 00:18:25.720 faded label, or a catalog drawer with a stretched slot, 285 00:18:26.000 --> 00:18:28.720 and the faint indentation where a card was meant to sit. 286 00:18:29.480 --> 00:18:32.799 Once drawer to you contained only a single check out 287 00:18:32.839 --> 00:18:35.440 card for a title I could not read, marked with 288 00:18:35.519 --> 00:18:39.839 three names, including my own, dated nineteen seventy eight. I 289 00:18:39.839 --> 00:18:42.319 could not remember, for the life of me what book 290 00:18:42.359 --> 00:18:45.720 I might have borrowed that year. Nor was I alone 291 00:18:45.720 --> 00:18:50.000 in these paradoxes. Patrons, when I asked, remembered vanished volumes 292 00:18:50.039 --> 00:18:54.880 in fragmentary, sometimes conflicting detail. Missus Thurman swearing her favorite 293 00:18:54.960 --> 00:18:58.039 romance once had a red cover and a secret wedding 294 00:18:58.119 --> 00:19:01.079 seen on a cliff, while the universe city history student 295 00:19:01.319 --> 00:19:05.359 remembered a blue cover and a missing epilogue. Monica insisted 296 00:19:05.400 --> 00:19:08.279 on a missing city memoir with a green dust jacket, 297 00:19:08.599 --> 00:19:11.759 while Lisa claimed only to remember seeing odd shelf gaps, 298 00:19:12.119 --> 00:19:16.480 never the actual books, sometimes the book itself changed in 299 00:19:16.519 --> 00:19:21.799 their telling, titles, morphing stories, warping content, varying even within 300 00:19:21.839 --> 00:19:26.319 the same conversation. When I compared recollections, no two people 301 00:19:26.400 --> 00:19:30.519 remembered a single missing book, and yet almost everyone, when pressed, 302 00:19:30.759 --> 00:19:35.039 could recall the feeling of missing something. Certain traces were 303 00:19:35.119 --> 00:19:40.079 chronologically perplexing. Catalog records from the nineteen eighties, accessed via 304 00:19:40.160 --> 00:19:44.960 the card system, referred occasionally to untitled volume, never in stock, 305 00:19:45.519 --> 00:19:49.200 stamped with the names of people, some living, some long dead, 306 00:19:49.400 --> 00:19:52.279 who had apparently checked out a book otherwise vanished from 307 00:19:52.319 --> 00:19:57.079 all collective record. I grew bolder, expanding my audit to 308 00:19:57.079 --> 00:20:00.799 the most seldom trod corners. Checking the odd Poetry Memoir, 309 00:20:01.079 --> 00:20:06.480 the civic encyclopedia, the obscure city event guide patterns accumulated 310 00:20:06.880 --> 00:20:10.160 greater likelihood of missing books among works not only ancient 311 00:20:10.480 --> 00:20:14.400 but actively referenced by others, especially in footnotes, as if 312 00:20:14.480 --> 00:20:20.160 disappearance was viral, leaping from citation to citation. No digital 313 00:20:20.200 --> 00:20:24.119 system ever noted a book's absence. Only physical shelves and 314 00:20:24.200 --> 00:20:28.359 card slots. Only the smallest fragments and residues marked a 315 00:20:28.480 --> 00:20:33.640 vanished presence. By now, I found myself theorizing aloud. What 316 00:20:33.759 --> 00:20:36.759 if the library retains pieces of titles that have slipped 317 00:20:36.799 --> 00:20:40.720 out of circulation or even from collective memory, I mused 318 00:20:40.759 --> 00:20:45.079 to Monika, who blinked then smiled faintly. You mean, like 319 00:20:45.160 --> 00:20:49.400 a memory attic, just so fragments that remain if no 320 00:20:49.440 --> 00:20:52.599 one tells the story anymore, no one asks the question, 321 00:20:52.920 --> 00:20:57.000 but something in the library refuses to fully forget. Even Lisa, 322 00:20:57.279 --> 00:21:01.160 sneering at catalog mysticism, could not quite explain the recurring 323 00:21:01.200 --> 00:21:04.960 metadator in felicities like catalog cards with complete sets of 324 00:21:05.039 --> 00:21:08.640 dates but missing every other field, or digital entries that 325 00:21:08.759 --> 00:21:13.759 flickered book titles replaced by untitled item whenever the circulation 326 00:21:13.960 --> 00:21:19.160 record was referenced. I planned a purposefully unscientific experiment to 327 00:21:19.200 --> 00:21:23.319 seek methodically among the lowest, least visited levels, especially the 328 00:21:23.359 --> 00:21:27.759 so called hidden rooms, for further evidence. There was, after all, 329 00:21:27.839 --> 00:21:32.319 a rumor among staff that certain stacks quietly changed their inventory, 330 00:21:32.640 --> 00:21:36.119 either through neglect or a subtler agency. It was time 331 00:21:36.200 --> 00:21:40.799 to finally and earnestly test those rumors. The following week, 332 00:21:41.160 --> 00:21:44.200 Monica asked if I could cover a late shift helping 333 00:21:44.200 --> 00:21:47.000 her haul boxes out of the humidity prone low shelves 334 00:21:47.240 --> 00:21:50.359 after a burst pipe. In the record section, we busied 335 00:21:50.400 --> 00:21:54.799 ourselves stacking wet reference catalogs, scrubbing mildew off bindings where 336 00:21:54.839 --> 00:21:58.400 we could. In the last alcove, a bricked up cross 337 00:21:58.519 --> 00:22:01.799 roads behind the city directores, I found a drawer of 338 00:22:01.839 --> 00:22:06.319 catalog cards, unlike any other. Here, every card was missing 339 00:22:06.400 --> 00:22:09.359 its title, but each had columns of check out dates, 340 00:22:09.640 --> 00:22:13.880 sometimes scrawled much later in a different hand. Several repeated 341 00:22:13.920 --> 00:22:18.519 the same names, some of mine, some monikers dotted across decades. 342 00:22:19.000 --> 00:22:22.079 Some dates went back to the nineteen fifties. The authors 343 00:22:22.160 --> 00:22:25.519 unlisted the titles faded to the point of being spectral. 344 00:22:26.519 --> 00:22:30.119 Adjacent were sets of loose hand written notes, some in pencil, 345 00:22:30.359 --> 00:22:34.039 some ink, each apparently an effort by a different librarian 346 00:22:34.119 --> 00:22:38.119 or patron to reconstruct the details of vanished titles from memory. 347 00:22:38.799 --> 00:22:42.759 Some were wild with contradiction, one hand describing a novella 348 00:22:42.839 --> 00:22:46.440 about dual city bridges, another recalling it as a series 349 00:22:46.480 --> 00:22:50.279 of recipes, a third insisting it never existed but for 350 00:22:50.359 --> 00:22:55.200 a single family photo. The discrepancies thrilled me. Here was 351 00:22:55.240 --> 00:23:00.000 not only lost content, but the active plastic process of memory, 352 00:22:59.759 --> 00:23:03.799 ever re retelling every failed effort to recall a remolding 353 00:23:03.839 --> 00:23:07.720 of what had been. I found myself oddly moved. What 354 00:23:07.839 --> 00:23:10.200 if it was not merely that the information was lost, 355 00:23:10.599 --> 00:23:13.440 but that the record of asterisk having read asterisk was 356 00:23:13.480 --> 00:23:16.920 itself malleable. What if even the act of borrowing changed 357 00:23:16.960 --> 00:23:19.599 with each attempt at recollection. What if it was not 358 00:23:19.640 --> 00:23:22.839 only my mind at play, but Monica's to Mars's the 359 00:23:22.839 --> 00:23:27.400 city s. Monica, re entering with a mop armful of towels, 360 00:23:27.680 --> 00:23:31.839 caught me staring at the cards. Funny thing, she murmured. 361 00:23:32.200 --> 00:23:35.160 I've seen those slips, always meant to throw them, but 362 00:23:35.240 --> 00:23:38.799 never quite could. We're all rewriting this place, whether we 363 00:23:38.880 --> 00:23:43.039 mean to or not. Returning to the digital catalog, I 364 00:23:43.160 --> 00:23:47.200 noticed for the first time that ghost references proliferated blank 365 00:23:47.240 --> 00:23:51.400 lines where text once lived, records cross reference to untitled 366 00:23:51.400 --> 00:23:55.960 item catalog edits time stamped days or years apart, always 367 00:23:56.000 --> 00:23:59.799 followed by vanished metadata. The city, or at least the 368 00:23:59.839 --> 00:24:05.039 life library, was rewriting itself. Beneath our noses. Melancholy but 369 00:24:05.160 --> 00:24:08.960 wide eyed wonder began to supplant my initial confusion. We 370 00:24:08.960 --> 00:24:12.240 were not simply losing books, to neglect the very notion 371 00:24:12.359 --> 00:24:14.920 of memory. The record of what had been, of what 372 00:24:15.000 --> 00:24:18.519 had mattered, was changing, sometimes at the pace of error, 373 00:24:18.759 --> 00:24:22.319 sometimes as if by design. All the while, I felt 374 00:24:22.400 --> 00:24:25.640 less frightened than gently elevated to the realization that we 375 00:24:25.680 --> 00:24:29.359 were participants, not merely observers, in the rewieving of the 376 00:24:29.400 --> 00:24:33.559 city's memory. That night, with the building almost empty, I 377 00:24:33.640 --> 00:24:37.160 traced what scant clues I'd mustered, lined up in notebook 378 00:24:37.240 --> 00:24:41.119 and to do list. The oddities coalesced vanished titles, clustering 379 00:24:41.160 --> 00:24:44.079 at the fault lines between personal memory and the historical. 380 00:24:44.599 --> 00:24:50.119 Sometimes the gaps yoked to specific events, festivals no one remembered, attending, disasters, 381 00:24:50.119 --> 00:24:54.079 footnoted in city histories but never mentioned in newsprint. Even 382 00:24:54.160 --> 00:24:59.720 infrastructural elements bridges, schoolhouses, recalled by some and erased from 383 00:24:59.799 --> 00:25:04.240 urban and plans. I grew especially curious at records listing 384 00:25:04.279 --> 00:25:06.960 my own name as borrower of books I could not 385 00:25:07.079 --> 00:25:11.960 remember encountering, and yet whose footnote references reappeared whenever I 386 00:25:12.039 --> 00:25:16.039 walked the older wings. On impulse, I mapped the sequence 387 00:25:16.039 --> 00:25:19.160 of book ghosts by their physical traces, Starting from the 388 00:25:19.160 --> 00:25:22.960 main stacks and moving toward the lowest, most irregular corridor, 389 00:25:23.200 --> 00:25:26.519 where staff only rarely ventured. I slid through a half 390 00:25:26.519 --> 00:25:30.559 concealed door tucked behind rolling archive shelves, one omitted from 391 00:25:30.559 --> 00:25:34.400 official floplands, its handle hidden beneath a mess of superannuated 392 00:25:34.440 --> 00:25:39.559 book carts. Beyond the corridor grew stranger, unlit, caked in dust, 393 00:25:39.960 --> 00:25:44.079 lined with battered tables and crates. Here were books absent 394 00:25:44.119 --> 00:25:47.640 from the main shelves, piled in stacks of various ages, 395 00:25:48.079 --> 00:25:51.759 some battered almost to a legibility, some pristine as if 396 00:25:51.799 --> 00:25:56.039 freshly minted. Every book sat beside a hand written slip, 397 00:25:56.359 --> 00:25:59.200 a name of its last known borrower or would be borrower, 398 00:25:59.519 --> 00:26:02.720 the occasion it was last handled. Sometimes a summary or 399 00:26:02.799 --> 00:26:08.119 brief account, occasionally paired with an odd event storm, festival, fire, 400 00:26:08.240 --> 00:26:14.279 drill interruption. Some entries described local events, bridges, processions, disasters 401 00:26:14.640 --> 00:26:17.440