WEBVTT 1 00:00:05.400 --> 00:00:09.000 On Thursday afternoons, when the city outside drifts into its 2 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:12.160 softest hush and the sun winks through clouds of dust 3 00:00:12.400 --> 00:00:16.480 dancing in old glass, I volunteer as the library's unofficial 4 00:00:16.519 --> 00:00:20.199 caretaker of last resorts. The job is more habit than 5 00:00:20.239 --> 00:00:24.519 heroics these days, a retired life spent among well thumbed pages, 6 00:00:24.879 --> 00:00:29.199 glowing spillovers of local history, and the endless grateful silence 7 00:00:29.239 --> 00:00:33.159 between borrowers and the books they need. That afternoon was 8 00:00:33.200 --> 00:00:36.560 just like any before it at first, anyway, I returned 9 00:00:36.560 --> 00:00:39.079 a tray of returns to the main floor, giving the 10 00:00:39.119 --> 00:00:42.240 spines a loving nudge back into place, from a habit 11 00:00:42.359 --> 00:00:45.560 formed after four decades as a full time librarian. My 12 00:00:45.679 --> 00:00:49.399 mind ticks off every shelf, every narrow aisle, the labyrinth 13 00:00:49.399 --> 00:00:52.799 of rooms no visitors feet have worn in years. Above 14 00:00:52.840 --> 00:00:55.560 the water stained oak of the local history wing. I 15 00:00:55.640 --> 00:01:00.520 found my hands sliding along the shelf labeled unfiled. It's 16 00:01:00.560 --> 00:01:04.000 almost a joke. Every library has won such shelf, the 17 00:01:04.079 --> 00:01:06.959 resting place of misfits and disks and books too odd 18 00:01:06.959 --> 00:01:10.439 to fit anywhere else. Except I had a memory, clear 19 00:01:10.519 --> 00:01:13.439 as the hands stamp on my overdue notice pad, that 20 00:01:13.560 --> 00:01:16.719 this corner had always held battered city directories and a 21 00:01:16.760 --> 00:01:20.760 spare broken microfilm reader, not an entire row of volumes, 22 00:01:20.799 --> 00:01:25.680 standing dark and unread beneath a blistered brass tag. The 23 00:01:25.680 --> 00:01:28.599 shelf bowed under the weight of perhaps thirty books, each 24 00:01:28.640 --> 00:01:32.480 a patchwork of careworn buckram or cracked filigreed leather, the 25 00:01:32.480 --> 00:01:34.840 sort of hand binding eyed of peg to an artisanal 26 00:01:34.879 --> 00:01:38.959 press from decades ago. The spines flashed titles in a careful, 27 00:01:39.079 --> 00:01:44.680 slanted hand South by Water Reminiscences Asterisk, the Lantern Parade 28 00:01:44.719 --> 00:01:49.239 and other festival's Asterisk, Lee Lines of Western Parkside Asterisk, 29 00:01:49.519 --> 00:01:53.200 and the Oddly Personal a year from Missus Gaull's window Asterisk. 30 00:01:54.200 --> 00:01:57.920 Faded tags fluttered at their edges, catalog codes written in 31 00:01:58.000 --> 00:02:01.079 nib thin blue ink, not a bar code or modern 32 00:02:01.159 --> 00:02:05.120 sticker among them. That was my first jolt of contradiction. 33 00:02:05.799 --> 00:02:08.719 I knew these books were strangers, yet they sat as 34 00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:12.759 if they had been here forever, each precisely numbered, nestled 35 00:02:12.800 --> 00:02:16.680 in order, as though a competent but possibly eccentric librarian 36 00:02:16.719 --> 00:02:20.360 had fussed over their placement. I perched on the edge 37 00:02:20.360 --> 00:02:22.840 of a rolling stool and ran through the catalog on 38 00:02:22.879 --> 00:02:26.280 the adjacent terminal, a terminal I helped install back in 39 00:02:26.319 --> 00:02:30.039 the nineties. The titles flickered to life, and each stated 40 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:34.759 always present as their circulation status. Most had shelving dates 41 00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:38.199 decades back, with a string of not quite right call numbers. 42 00:02:38.560 --> 00:02:42.400 Nothing current, but no note of acquisition, no signatures in 43 00:02:42.439 --> 00:02:47.439 the accession records, not even a missing tag stranger Still, 44 00:02:48.039 --> 00:02:51.120 records showed that Lee Lines of Western Parkside had been 45 00:02:51.199 --> 00:02:54.280 checked out twenty six times in the seventies and early eighties. 46 00:02:54.560 --> 00:02:57.159 Yet when I pulled out the faded slip pouch, it 47 00:02:57.240 --> 00:03:02.159 was blank. No pencil strokes, no debt, no borrowers names. 48 00:03:02.680 --> 00:03:05.400 Beneath the dust and the tick of the ancient heating pipes, 49 00:03:05.639 --> 00:03:07.520 I felt a charge that had nothing to do with 50 00:03:07.599 --> 00:03:12.599 nostalgia or archival instinct. I rearranged the unfiled shelf. I 51 00:03:12.719 --> 00:03:16.560 dusted each spine, shifting them carefully, lining up the volumes 52 00:03:16.560 --> 00:03:20.680 in chronological order by their supposed publication date. Tomorrow, I 53 00:03:20.759 --> 00:03:24.360 decided I would devote my volunteer's shift to examining each 54 00:03:24.439 --> 00:03:28.599 book and tracking its history. There was undeniably something out 55 00:03:28.599 --> 00:03:32.960 of place here, something both obvious and overlooked. As I 56 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:35.840 slid the last book upright, I caught my own reflection 57 00:03:35.919 --> 00:03:40.439 in the brass sign lined face winter white hair librarian's hands. 58 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:43.800 Thirty eight years working in public stacks, and I could 59 00:03:43.840 --> 00:03:46.199 not account for the existence of even a single one 60 00:03:46.240 --> 00:03:50.319 of these volumes. It unsettled me in a gentle, insistent way. 61 00:03:50.879 --> 00:03:54.159 Who placed them here? Why do record say nothing unusual? 62 00:03:54.520 --> 00:03:57.800 And how, after all those decades circling every archive in 63 00:03:57.840 --> 00:04:00.240 the building, did I never once lay eyes on the 64 00:04:00.280 --> 00:04:04.680 shelf before. None of these were questions with simple answers. 65 00:04:05.080 --> 00:04:09.000 But after a life organizing other people's stories, perhaps now 66 00:04:09.000 --> 00:04:12.400 it was time to chase my own. I've always thought 67 00:04:12.400 --> 00:04:15.520 my mind runs on rails. It probably comes from a 68 00:04:15.520 --> 00:04:19.079 long habit of cataloging, a game of order and cross reference, 69 00:04:19.399 --> 00:04:23.279 always hungering for the next logical step. In retirement, that 70 00:04:23.439 --> 00:04:26.439 sense of order has shaped my days. I drift through 71 00:04:26.519 --> 00:04:29.600 walks in Wilton Park in the morning, daily stops into 72 00:04:29.639 --> 00:04:33.560 the same cafe, and three afternoons a week spent volunteering 73 00:04:33.600 --> 00:04:36.199 at the West City Library, where I once ran the 74 00:04:36.240 --> 00:04:40.360 local history desk. The building itself is like a companion, 75 00:04:40.720 --> 00:04:44.560 sprawling and erratic, with corridors that jog around old fire 76 00:04:44.600 --> 00:04:48.160 walls and staircases too narrow for modern needs. The city 77 00:04:48.199 --> 00:04:50.759 never could afford to redo the whole place, so each 78 00:04:50.800 --> 00:04:54.079 addition in each generation kept slapping new bricks on to 79 00:04:54.199 --> 00:04:58.240 ancient marble or fussy Edwardian woodwork. It leaves the library 80 00:04:58.279 --> 00:05:01.720 with its own odd logic, always to nowhere, two half 81 00:05:01.800 --> 00:05:04.759 hidden mezzanines, and at least three rooms that seem to 82 00:05:04.839 --> 00:05:09.439 exist only on rainy days. Volunteering offers an excuse to 83 00:05:09.480 --> 00:05:12.720 stay in the quiet swirl of things. I walk the stacks, 84 00:05:12.920 --> 00:05:17.160 reshelve returns, helps school children find materials for history projects, 85 00:05:17.439 --> 00:05:21.560 and chat with Marjorie, the senior librarian, all brisk efficiency 86 00:05:21.560 --> 00:05:24.519 over her wire rimmed glasses as she keeps the staff 87 00:05:24.600 --> 00:05:28.000 orbiting around her gravity. Marjorie loves the quirks of the 88 00:05:28.000 --> 00:05:31.079 building almost as much as the books. You know, I 89 00:05:31.120 --> 00:05:33.680 think the walls are in on some joke, she likes 90 00:05:33.720 --> 00:05:37.759 to say, and we're just following the punchline. There's erin 91 00:05:37.800 --> 00:05:42.000 as well, the new it higher mid twenties glasses, forever smudged, 92 00:05:42.279 --> 00:05:46.040 whom the staff called digital Whiz, both affectionately and perhaps 93 00:05:46.199 --> 00:05:48.720 to remind him the dewy decimal will not be going 94 00:05:48.800 --> 00:05:52.720 quietly into that good night. His latest project is digitizing 95 00:05:52.759 --> 00:05:55.519 the last of the paper catalogs. He shows up with 96 00:05:55.560 --> 00:05:58.399 a laptop, trembling under the weight of his worries and ambition. 97 00:05:58.959 --> 00:06:01.920 When he hunkers down the staff lounge, he confides in 98 00:06:01.959 --> 00:06:06.199 me about his plan to finally sink the century. Then 99 00:06:06.240 --> 00:06:09.519 there's Missus Gaull, who seems older than City Hall itself 100 00:06:09.759 --> 00:06:12.360 and whose memory is as sharp as the glinting tip 101 00:06:12.399 --> 00:06:15.639 of her brass cane. She is our self appointed local 102 00:06:15.720 --> 00:06:20.079 history guardian, has been perhaps since before I started, and 103 00:06:20.120 --> 00:06:24.279 she visits several times a week, chasing law about vanished lounges, 104 00:06:24.560 --> 00:06:28.120 civic scandals, or old garden plots that grew into something 105 00:06:28.199 --> 00:06:32.079 more stubborn. More than once, she's cornered me about changes 106 00:06:32.120 --> 00:06:35.800 I'm certain never happened. This park fountain must be new. 107 00:06:36.120 --> 00:06:39.759 It was always a statue, I'm telling you. Or they 108 00:06:39.800 --> 00:06:42.720 never built the parking annex until after the big fire, 109 00:06:43.079 --> 00:06:46.560 though you'll never see that written anywhere. It's not just 110 00:06:46.600 --> 00:06:50.240 Missus Gaull. There's a shifting cast of retarees, local teachers, 111 00:06:50.519 --> 00:06:52.879 lost students who find a nook and stay for years. 112 00:06:53.319 --> 00:06:56.199 They share stories that never quite a line. The janitor 113 00:06:56.279 --> 00:06:59.120 swears he's seen a dumbwaiter operated on the second floor 114 00:06:59.240 --> 00:07:02.399 before it vanish. Marjorie jokes about a staircase in the 115 00:07:02.399 --> 00:07:06.680 north wing that leads sometimes up, sometimes sideways. These are 116 00:07:06.720 --> 00:07:11.480 treated as charming superstitions, complications of age and architecture, not 117 00:07:11.639 --> 00:07:15.800 mysteries in need of solving. Every so often I catch 118 00:07:15.800 --> 00:07:17.800 a glimpse of an aisle ending at a wall of 119 00:07:17.879 --> 00:07:20.800 glass bricks where I could have sworn years ago there 120 00:07:20.879 --> 00:07:23.839 was a window or an alcove with a tapestry showing 121 00:07:23.879 --> 00:07:26.600 a scene I don't recall. I chalk it up to 122 00:07:26.680 --> 00:07:30.680 memories tricks, and let it slide away until the unfiled 123 00:07:30.879 --> 00:07:34.959 shelf interrupted the routine. That shelf sits at the margin 124 00:07:35.000 --> 00:07:37.879 of everything, part of local history, but not in the 125 00:07:37.920 --> 00:07:42.319 official records, Filled with well made anonymous books, but neither 126 00:07:42.399 --> 00:07:46.279 new nor properly antique. The catalog entries are a puzzle, 127 00:07:46.600 --> 00:07:50.600 each flagged in collection, but with accession numbers that skip 128 00:07:50.720 --> 00:07:55.560 or repeat, and no donor or acquisition note. Our digital system, 129 00:07:55.800 --> 00:07:59.600 built on piles of reconciled paper logs, lets chaos creep 130 00:07:59.639 --> 00:08:04.439 in over the years, lost records, merged files, misfiled city 131 00:08:04.480 --> 00:08:08.120 projects swimming in a sea of blank entries. But the 132 00:08:08.160 --> 00:08:11.639 library itself, I see it as a living thing, always adapting. 133 00:08:12.000 --> 00:08:15.360 Staff have their theories. The building settles into new corners 134 00:08:15.360 --> 00:08:19.000 as the seasons turn. That's why Marjorie claims certain reading 135 00:08:19.079 --> 00:08:22.160 rooms are drafty one week and cozy the next. Aeron 136 00:08:22.199 --> 00:08:25.680 approaches it differently. There's a digital shadow for every physical 137 00:08:25.720 --> 00:08:29.680 space unless the building is well, unless it's actually changing 138 00:08:29.920 --> 00:08:34.039 and not just shifting records. He laughs after saying such things, 139 00:08:34.279 --> 00:08:38.279 like he's shrugging them back into reason. Still, lately, I've wondered, 140 00:08:38.720 --> 00:08:41.720 is the library's odd internal geography a symptom of old 141 00:08:41.759 --> 00:08:44.879 age or a clue about something more? Could the records 142 00:08:45.159 --> 00:08:49.919 eternal presentness be laziness or intentional sloppiness, or, even less likely, 143 00:08:50.240 --> 00:08:53.679 a sign of something strange at work. Today's discovery tilts 144 00:08:53.679 --> 00:08:57.679 these musings into a new register. After years immersed in systems, 145 00:08:57.919 --> 00:09:00.559 I plan to treat the unfiled shelf as its own 146 00:09:00.600 --> 00:09:03.919 sort of system, one to be re arranged, cross referenced, 147 00:09:04.080 --> 00:09:07.519 and read for clues. I've never been a dreamer in 148 00:09:07.559 --> 00:09:10.919 the grand sense, nor an investigator by nature, but I 149 00:09:10.960 --> 00:09:15.080 know the difference between benign neglect and wilful puzzle. These 150 00:09:15.159 --> 00:09:20.679 volumes present, unremembered yet meticulously cataloged, strike me as the latter. 151 00:09:21.279 --> 00:09:23.720 To morrow I will start with the first volume on 152 00:09:23.759 --> 00:09:27.279 the shelf and see where it leads. When the library 153 00:09:27.360 --> 00:09:30.840 opened the next morning, I arrived with a pad of notes, gloves, 154 00:09:31.039 --> 00:09:33.320 and a mug half filled with the good tea Missus 155 00:09:33.320 --> 00:09:38.240 Gaul sometimes sneaks me the unfiled shelf, weighted perfectly still 156 00:09:38.279 --> 00:09:41.080 among the mothball air and soft whir of the ventilators. 157 00:09:41.679 --> 00:09:45.000 I chose at random a slim green volume Lee Lines 158 00:09:45.039 --> 00:09:49.080 of Western Parkside, stamped nineteen seventy one. But if anything 159 00:09:49.320 --> 00:09:53.519 appearing older in style, I half expected a collection of 160 00:09:53.600 --> 00:09:58.600 generically eccentric city folklore. Instead I found a careful, indexed 161 00:09:58.639 --> 00:10:03.480 investigation of a defunct tram, photos of sunlit carriages, maps 162 00:10:03.519 --> 00:10:06.200 winding past houses I had never heard of, toward a 163 00:10:06.240 --> 00:10:10.519 district named fern Halo. The tram route was drawn cleanly 164 00:10:10.559 --> 00:10:14.080 over a city plan with dates and time tables spanning 165 00:10:14.159 --> 00:10:19.159 nineteen twelve to nineteen thirty four. There were stories children 166 00:10:19.240 --> 00:10:23.120 chasing after drivers who handed out candid chestnuts on New Years, 167 00:10:23.639 --> 00:10:27.799 factory workers swapping rumors about blue sparks leaping between the 168 00:10:27.879 --> 00:10:32.200 rails during a single foggy winter. I blinked and checked 169 00:10:32.200 --> 00:10:35.039 the nearest historical map, patched to the wall in the 170 00:10:35.039 --> 00:10:38.639 staff desk alcove. Fern Helo was not there, nor had 171 00:10:38.639 --> 00:10:41.200 I met any one in all my years who mentioned 172 00:10:41.200 --> 00:10:44.759 a western parkside tram. I scrolled the city records on 173 00:10:44.840 --> 00:10:48.120 my phone just to be sure. Nothing no mention of 174 00:10:48.159 --> 00:10:51.279 a tram by that name, nor photographs matching those in 175 00:10:51.320 --> 00:10:54.559 the book. The text read like the memory of something real, 176 00:10:54.879 --> 00:10:57.279 but as far as I could tell, the city's own 177 00:10:57.360 --> 00:11:01.759 record had rejected its existence. Back at the catalog terminal, 178 00:11:01.879 --> 00:11:06.080 I dug deeper. The book had allegedly circulated regularly checked 179 00:11:06.080 --> 00:11:08.919 out some forty times between nineteen seventy five and nineteen 180 00:11:08.960 --> 00:11:13.120 eighty three, with several in library use only notations. There 181 00:11:13.120 --> 00:11:16.240 were oddly no actual check out slips or cards in 182 00:11:16.279 --> 00:11:19.480 the back pocket. When I quizzed Marjorie, she pressed her 183 00:11:19.480 --> 00:11:22.639 thumb against her glasses and muttered, there's always been a 184 00:11:22.639 --> 00:11:26.120 trickle of odd ball local histories. We probably picked those 185 00:11:26.200 --> 00:11:30.600 up in a donation. People loved to embellish civic mythology. 186 00:11:31.159 --> 00:11:33.519 But she couldn't tell me how such specific books would 187 00:11:33.519 --> 00:11:37.320 have made it on to a shelf labeled unfiled, particularly 188 00:11:37.440 --> 00:11:42.679 with decades old catalog entries that claimed always present. I 189 00:11:42.759 --> 00:11:46.960 turned to my own carefully indexed archives, more habit than necessity, 190 00:11:47.480 --> 00:11:49.639 but a habit that had kept the city from losing 191 00:11:49.679 --> 00:11:52.480 more than a few pieces of its past. Not one 192 00:11:52.480 --> 00:11:57.279 of these unfiled books appeared in any cross listings, donor records, 193 00:11:57.559 --> 00:12:00.320 or annual shelf audits which I was, sir, and I 194 00:12:00.360 --> 00:12:03.919 had conducted myself in the years they were supposedly acquired. 195 00:12:05.039 --> 00:12:07.279 It was as though my own sense of the library, 196 00:12:07.759 --> 00:12:11.360 my personal map of every shelf, had simply accreted this 197 00:12:11.480 --> 00:12:14.960 collection without my knowledge or the knowledge of any staff 198 00:12:15.000 --> 00:12:20.120 member I could recall. I shut the book. Catalog data, memory, 199 00:12:20.399 --> 00:12:23.600 and the book's content all agreed it belonged, but none 200 00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:27.080 of the evidence of ordinary use survived. If these were 201 00:12:27.080 --> 00:12:31.159 failed city projects or phantasies committed to print, they wouldn't 202 00:12:31.159 --> 00:12:35.759 have been granted such a persistent, quiet presence. I jotted 203 00:12:35.799 --> 00:12:39.759 a question, are these ghosts of city dreams or inventions 204 00:12:39.799 --> 00:12:43.279 wearing the clothes of official memory? And tucked the note 205 00:12:43.360 --> 00:12:46.200 under the trolley map, feeling for the first time that 206 00:12:46.279 --> 00:12:50.759 even my curiosity was dancing upon boundaries I didn't fully grasp. 207 00:12:51.840 --> 00:12:54.799 I decided the only way forward was to press further, 208 00:12:55.240 --> 00:12:59.360 to see how deep the contradiction ran. If curiosity is 209 00:12:59.399 --> 00:13:02.159 a muscle, mine has always twitched at the first sign 210 00:13:02.159 --> 00:13:05.720 of tension between fact and record. I devoted the next 211 00:13:05.759 --> 00:13:10.240 several days to systematically cataloging the unfiled shelf. I began 212 00:13:10.320 --> 00:13:17.039 cross referencing the books supposed facts, locations, names, festivals, architectural details. 213 00:13:17.480 --> 00:13:20.879 I poured over old city plans and microfiche, matching each 214 00:13:21.000 --> 00:13:24.759 book's claims against every database and directory the library held. 215 00:13:25.240 --> 00:13:30.120 The results only deepened the puzzle. South by Water reminiscences 216 00:13:30.159 --> 00:13:34.000 described in intimate detail, A riverside row of working class 217 00:13:34.039 --> 00:13:37.759 bakeries lined with poplar trees, which the author claimed was 218 00:13:37.799 --> 00:13:40.559 torn down in the mid nineteen fifties to make way 219 00:13:40.600 --> 00:13:43.799 for a garment warehouse, a street never marked on any 220 00:13:43.840 --> 00:13:48.039 extant city map. There were addresses and family names, even 221 00:13:48.039 --> 00:13:51.159 a recipe for lemon poppy seed bread. Yet none of 222 00:13:51.159 --> 00:13:54.559 the bakery names appeared in any city business registry. Not 223 00:13:54.679 --> 00:13:59.399 one obituary or birth record lined up in the luminous bridge. 224 00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:03.679 A memoir asterisk a woman named Beatrice recounted watching a 225 00:14:03.799 --> 00:14:08.519 lantern parade cross a delicate arched footbridge spanning the South Fork, 226 00:14:09.039 --> 00:14:12.240 a bridge I know for certain never existed, nor did 227 00:14:12.240 --> 00:14:15.960 any lantern parade ever feature in city festival bulletins or 228 00:14:16.000 --> 00:14:20.559 the local papers. The photographs were soft and sepia, more 229 00:14:20.600 --> 00:14:26.200 evocative than evidentiary, but with just enough familiarity buildings, store signs, 230 00:14:26.440 --> 00:14:30.000 forested banks that I could believe the story almost happened 231 00:14:30.279 --> 00:14:34.240 somewhere close to our world. Determined to test the limits, 232 00:14:34.559 --> 00:14:37.919 I returned asterisk the luminous bridge asterisk to the shelf, 233 00:14:38.279 --> 00:14:41.960 noting its exact place. As I did, I realized something 234 00:14:42.000 --> 00:14:44.840 subtle had shifted in the light. Where the corridor ahead 235 00:14:44.879 --> 00:14:47.440 had always dead ended at a supply closet, I now 236 00:14:47.480 --> 00:14:50.720 saw a gentle angle opening into a reading alcove I 237 00:14:50.720 --> 00:14:54.039 could have sworn had not existed the week before. The 238 00:14:54.039 --> 00:14:57.559 glass stretched in three panes, letting in a broad spill 239 00:14:57.600 --> 00:15:01.360 of sunlight. The view outside was a curve of brownstone 240 00:15:01.360 --> 00:15:05.440 houses and a narrow street lined with saplings. I paused, 241 00:15:05.559 --> 00:15:08.759 notebook in hand, watching an elderly couple walk a dog 242 00:15:08.799 --> 00:15:12.600 along the unfamiliar pavement. Too detailed, too ordinary, to be 243 00:15:12.639 --> 00:15:16.960 dreamt up whole. I backed away, unsettled, not with fear, 244 00:15:17.159 --> 00:15:20.720 but with the deep, delicious confusion of something barely grasped. 245 00:15:21.799 --> 00:15:25.000 Later that afternoon, the corridor ended as it always had. 246 00:15:25.360 --> 00:15:28.039 There was only a blank wall and a faded silence 247 00:15:28.120 --> 00:15:31.120 is sacred sign where the alcove had been. When I 248 00:15:31.159 --> 00:15:34.120 asked Marjorie, she only grinned, if it's not on our 249 00:15:34.200 --> 00:15:37.240 fire exit plans, then it doesn't exist, or it only 250 00:15:37.279 --> 00:15:40.120 exists when you need it. I could not tell if 251 00:15:40.159 --> 00:15:43.960 she was joking, evasive, or simply sharing in the building's myth. 252 00:15:45.000 --> 00:15:48.159 With Erin, I ran another experiment. I brought him a 253 00:15:48.159 --> 00:15:51.919 list of locations, streets, and names from the unfiled books 254 00:15:52.240 --> 00:15:54.679 and asked him to compare them to his digital overlays 255 00:15:54.679 --> 00:15:58.200 of the city's maps. We found nothing at first. Then 256 00:15:58.440 --> 00:16:00.679 in some of the oldest topo maps scanned into the 257 00:16:00.679 --> 00:16:05.799 microfiche archive, faint, half raised pencil lines emerged where Fernolo's 258 00:16:05.840 --> 00:16:10.679 tramway should have run on overlays. Ghostly traces appeared, faint 259 00:16:10.679 --> 00:16:15.399 street outlines that modern maps had entirely effaced. Missus gaull 260 00:16:15.440 --> 00:16:19.559 As ever, volunteered her own recollections. South By water, she said, 261 00:16:19.600 --> 00:16:24.000 wrinkling her nose. Of course, my grandmother's bakery Myrtles was 262 00:16:24.039 --> 00:16:26.279 there before they tore it down to make the warehouse. 263 00:16:26.840 --> 00:16:29.120 Yet when we searched the names and addresses in both 264 00:16:29.159 --> 00:16:33.240 the city's business directories and genealogical records, there was nothing 265 00:16:33.879 --> 00:16:38.399 that's odd, she conceded, squinting suspiciously at the directory. But 266 00:16:38.600 --> 00:16:41.120 just because it's not written doesn't mean it wasn't there. 267 00:16:42.279 --> 00:16:45.559 That evening, as I shelved the last returned volume, I 268 00:16:45.600 --> 00:16:48.799 slipped a folded scrap of notepaper between the leaves of 269 00:16:48.840 --> 00:16:53.919 asterisk lay lines of Western parkside asterisk not cataloged only 270 00:16:53.960 --> 00:16:57.720 my own scribbled date and the words who built the Tram? 271 00:16:58.360 --> 00:17:00.759 I returned the book to its slot and went home. 272 00:17:01.840 --> 00:17:05.400 The next morning, when I opened a different unfiled volume, 273 00:17:05.559 --> 00:17:09.119 at Less Steps Essays on Hidden Landmarks, I found a 274 00:17:09.160 --> 00:17:11.880 passage I had not read before, a description of a 275 00:17:11.920 --> 00:17:16.880 librarian discovering a mysterious question, handwritten on library paper, who 276 00:17:16.920 --> 00:17:20.759 built the tram? The story continued, now, recounting that the 277 00:17:20.839 --> 00:17:24.400 librarian's investigation led her to a faded city ledger and 278 00:17:24.440 --> 00:17:27.680 a heated debate with a councilman who allegedly denied the 279 00:17:27.720 --> 00:17:31.960 tram's existence thirty years after it was built. I sat 280 00:17:32.000 --> 00:17:35.480 amazed the books had not just acknowledged my action, they'd 281 00:17:35.519 --> 00:17:40.279 incorporated it, moving details, not just memory, but trajectory between volumes. 282 00:17:40.799 --> 00:17:44.000 Across the stacks, the corridors met at changed angles, and 283 00:17:44.079 --> 00:17:47.799 in the far atrium an unfamiliar stairwell appeared, leading briefly 284 00:17:47.839 --> 00:17:51.319 to balcony. Through the windows, I glimpsed a square teeming 285 00:17:51.400 --> 00:17:55.079 with small lamplet stalls, a perfect match for the market 286 00:17:55.079 --> 00:18:00.240 festival described in yet another unfiled book. I turned away away, 287 00:18:00.559 --> 00:18:05.440 heartbeat audible, but not in panic, just in delighted, unsteady wonder. 288 00:18:05.519 --> 00:18:09.559 At the limits of knowing, these changes I realized were 289 00:18:09.599 --> 00:18:14.119 never the same twice. Some residents remembered vanished places. Others 290 00:18:14.160 --> 00:18:19.880 rebuffed these memories as fanciful mistakes. Some details tramways, bakeries, parades, 291 00:18:20.240 --> 00:18:24.559 stayed only inside books or on fleeting map overlays, reappearing 292 00:18:24.599 --> 00:18:28.160 and disappearing according to who remembered, believed, or looked in 293 00:18:28.160 --> 00:18:31.440 the right place at the right time. The boundaries between 294 00:18:31.559 --> 00:18:36.400 library and city grew stranger thinner. I found myself consumed 295 00:18:36.440 --> 00:18:39.359 by the urge to test further to puzzle out whether 296 00:18:39.400 --> 00:18:43.079 the books were generating their own histories or simply mirroring 297 00:18:43.119 --> 00:18:47.279 the shifting collective memory of our community. But even as 298 00:18:47.319 --> 00:18:51.759 the contradictions deepened, the doors of the library kept quietly opening. 299 00:18:52.759 --> 00:18:55.920 When I first began tending the library's records as a trainee, 300 00:18:56.119 --> 00:18:59.279 there was comfort in history, stubbornness, a sense that the 301 00:18:59.319 --> 00:19:02.279 stories that survived did so because they were, in some 302 00:19:02.400 --> 00:19:06.680 lasting sense true. But now half way through my seventh decade, 303 00:19:06.839 --> 00:19:11.200 I was surrounded by precise, consistent details in these unfiled 304 00:19:11.400 --> 00:19:14.440 books that simply did not or could not fit with 305 00:19:14.519 --> 00:19:18.680 my own account. I brought my dilemma to Aaron, sitting 306 00:19:18.680 --> 00:19:22.240 together in the cluttered breakroom, which always smells faintly of 307 00:19:22.319 --> 00:19:26.359 forgotten oranges. I spread my notepad and a print out 308 00:19:26.359 --> 00:19:31.160 of the unfiled shelf's catalog entries before him. I can't 309 00:19:31.200 --> 00:19:35.319 find these books anywhere in the acquisition logs, I told him. 310 00:19:35.640 --> 00:19:39.039 He stared at the entries, scrolling through a digital blueprint 311 00:19:39.039 --> 00:19:43.240 of the library. It's wild, he mused. There's a special 312 00:19:43.279 --> 00:19:46.640 collection code, but the barcodes skipped to the current system 313 00:19:46.680 --> 00:19:49.559 back in the nineties. These don't appear on my last 314 00:19:49.680 --> 00:19:54.400 database sweep, and yet here they sit, cataloged but unmapped, 315 00:19:54.799 --> 00:19:59.960 always present but never accessioned, I said, He nodded, then hesitated, 316 00:20:00.519 --> 00:20:03.599 you want something weird. The last three times I updated 317 00:20:03.599 --> 00:20:06.880 the digital map, the software flagged in error. A reading 318 00:20:06.920 --> 00:20:09.759 room at the end of local history. I kept deleting 319 00:20:09.799 --> 00:20:12.640 it as an artifact. But then to day, when I 320 00:20:12.759 --> 00:20:15.599 was in that back corridor, there was a window. The 321 00:20:15.640 --> 00:20:18.880 whole place felt bigger. I thought maybe they'd finally moved 322 00:20:18.880 --> 00:20:22.319 a wall for AIDA compliance. But the construction logs say 323 00:20:22.359 --> 00:20:26.359 no permits for thirty years. His words left a shiver 324 00:20:26.440 --> 00:20:30.559 of humbling excitement smoldering in my chest. The building space, 325 00:20:30.839 --> 00:20:34.480 like its stories, was negotiable. History was not just being 326 00:20:34.519 --> 00:20:39.279 lost or miscataloged. It was being rewritten, retold, perhaps even 327 00:20:39.359 --> 00:20:43.680 relived in tiny increments by whoever cared to look. Later 328 00:20:43.759 --> 00:20:46.400 that day, I took an unofficial field trip into the 329 00:20:46.480 --> 00:20:50.720 archive vaults, a space even Marjorie rarely enters unless a 330 00:20:50.759 --> 00:20:54.279 patron requests assistance with a century old will or fire 331 00:20:54.359 --> 00:20:58.880 insurance plan. There, in a stack of yellowed, unindexed clippings, 332 00:20:59.200 --> 00:21:03.359 I found a single misfiled photograph down Town, adorned with 333 00:21:03.440 --> 00:21:07.440 garlands and lanterns, crowds parading by a bonfire in the 334 00:21:07.480 --> 00:21:12.599 city square. The reverse was stamped twice Founder's Day, but 335 00:21:12.720 --> 00:21:15.920 nowhere in any official record does the city claim to 336 00:21:15.960 --> 00:21:21.079 have celebrated the event. I compared the buildings, window shapes, awnings, 337 00:21:21.160 --> 00:21:24.480 the shade cast by now vanished elms, and they belonged 338 00:21:24.559 --> 00:21:28.279 unmistakably to our city, though the festival had never happened, 339 00:21:28.359 --> 00:21:31.799 not for us. I tucked the print out away and 340 00:21:31.880 --> 00:21:35.839 found myself questioning the very nature of library memory. If 341 00:21:35.880 --> 00:21:39.359 buildings can refuse to stay put, what else might resist 342 00:21:39.440 --> 00:21:43.240 the flattening of the official record. That evening, with my 343 00:21:43.319 --> 00:21:46.759 own notion of fixed narrative crumbling, missus Gall approached me 344 00:21:46.799 --> 00:21:50.000 by the check out desk, her cane tapping a slow metronome. 345 00:21:50.519 --> 00:21:53.680 Do you ever remember, she asked, quietly, that book of 346 00:21:53.720 --> 00:21:57.759 reminiscences my brother donated about the bakery at south By Water. 347 00:21:58.079 --> 00:22:01.079 I shook my head, but she seemed un bothered. I 348 00:22:01.119 --> 00:22:05.039 think sometimes places turned slippery. What we keep calling mistakes, 349 00:22:05.319 --> 00:22:10.720 I think they're really just versions. The words sat with me. Versions. 350 00:22:11.359 --> 00:22:14.440 Years of training told me to treat discrepcies as errors. 351 00:22:14.960 --> 00:22:18.119 Now with each anomaly, I found myself wondering not what 352 00:22:18.200 --> 00:22:21.279 had gone wrong, but what they might mean. I clung 353 00:22:21.359 --> 00:22:24.400 to that idea. Maybe the library was less an archive 354 00:22:24.440 --> 00:22:27.880 of truth than a living memory of almosts of streets 355 00:22:27.920 --> 00:22:32.359 that nearly were celebrations that nearly happened, stories that almost 356 00:22:32.400 --> 00:22:37.759 became official. Perhaps the building and its strange, malleable margins 357 00:22:38.160 --> 00:22:41.319 was a reservoir for all the city's possible selves, a 358 00:22:41.400 --> 00:22:45.519 zone where fact and almost fact could intermingle without collapsing 359 00:22:45.559 --> 00:22:50.240 into certainty. My focus shifted from seeking out problems to 360 00:22:50.319 --> 00:22:53.480 looking for pattern for meaning. I started to map not 361 00:22:53.599 --> 00:22:57.079 just what didn't fit, but why it persisted. I circled 362 00:22:57.079 --> 00:23:02.160 the unfiled books stories not as myth, but as persistent proposals, 363 00:23:02.160 --> 00:23:05.759 invitations for our collective imagination to try them on, if 364 00:23:05.799 --> 00:23:09.480 only for a moment. The question was no longer whether 365 00:23:09.519 --> 00:23:13.599 the unfiled shelf cataloged errors, but what it was designed 366 00:23:13.599 --> 00:23:17.559 to hold. I decided, for the first time to bring 367 00:23:17.599 --> 00:23:21.559 my curiosity out into the open. That meant making allies 368 00:23:21.599 --> 00:23:24.640 out of my fellow volunteers and the regulars whom the 369 00:23:24.720 --> 00:23:29.880 library had quietly accumulated over the years. One Friday, I 370 00:23:29.920 --> 00:23:32.839 booked out a table near the old city directories and 371 00:23:32.920 --> 00:23:36.640 invited Eron and Missus Gaull to join me. I presented 372 00:23:36.640 --> 00:23:39.799 them with my working hypothesis and a tall stack of 373 00:23:39.839 --> 00:23:44.359 anomalous books. I want to know, I said, whether these 374 00:23:44.400 --> 00:23:49.720 places and events are inventions or if they represent something more. Eron, 375 00:23:49.839 --> 00:23:53.440 tapping nervously on his phone, said, well, if the building 376 00:23:53.519 --> 00:23:56.759 isn't mapping exactly to the blueprints, maybe the books are 377 00:23:56.799 --> 00:24:01.960 acting like trigger points, dig sites for men. Missus Gall, 378 00:24:02.160 --> 00:24:06.160 wrapping both hands around her cane, just smiled, Serene. A 379 00:24:06.240 --> 00:24:09.480 city hasn't one history, but many. We mostly agree on 380 00:24:09.559 --> 00:24:13.279 the main one, but the others, well, libraries remember what 381 00:24:13.319 --> 00:24:17.279 people almost did too. We divided up the books and 382 00:24:17.359 --> 00:24:19.960 each took notes on whether their facts connected to our 383 00:24:20.000 --> 00:24:23.640 own experiences or to anything in the city's official record. 384 00:24:24.240 --> 00:24:28.119 The results were a patchwork. Aaron remembered hearing his grandfather 385 00:24:28.240 --> 00:24:31.119 speak of a trolley that once crossed an open field. 386 00:24:31.720 --> 00:24:35.039 Missus Gaull recalled two addresses on Amity Street, where no 387 00:24:35.160 --> 00:24:39.079 building currently stands, but whose descriptions in the books matched 388 00:24:39.079 --> 00:24:44.319 her childhood recollection. Still, others in the staff dismissed these accounts. 389 00:24:44.680 --> 00:24:49.039 Looking at the unfiled shelf, as a sentimental redundancy, best 390 00:24:49.119 --> 00:24:52.799 left to collect dust. The next day, Buoyed by this 391 00:24:52.920 --> 00:24:56.160 limited consensus, I set out to find proof that these 392 00:24:56.240 --> 00:25:00.640 histories had left traces outside imagination and story. Went with 393 00:25:00.799 --> 00:25:05.039 Marjorie's reluctant blessing into the library's deep stacks, a section 394 00:25:05.200 --> 00:25:08.960 reserved for preservation, with volumes older than myself and not 395 00:25:09.039 --> 00:25:13.799 digitized even by Eron's most recent efforts. There, nestled between 396 00:25:13.799 --> 00:25:17.440 a forgotten local gazette and a shelf of cracked municipal receipts, 397 00:25:17.799 --> 00:25:21.960 I stumbled upon a tattered, hand written ledger. The ledger, 398 00:25:22.079 --> 00:25:25.440 dating from perhaps nineteen o five or thereabouts, was written 399 00:25:25.480 --> 00:25:28.759 in an elegant, looping cursive and annotated with a careful 400 00:25:28.839 --> 00:25:31.960 librarian's hand. On first glance, it appeared to be a 401 00:25:31.960 --> 00:25:35.480