WEBVTT

1
00:00:05.160 --> 00:00:08.519
<v Speaker 1>Hollo, i' moalcan stories all the time. Glad you are here,

2
00:00:09.160 --> 00:00:10.039
<v Speaker 1>Let's get into it.

3
00:00:10.880 --> 00:00:13.560
<v Speaker 2>For as long as I can remember, the city library

4
00:00:13.560 --> 00:00:15.599
<v Speaker 2>has been the one place I could count on to

5
00:00:15.679 --> 00:00:19.920
<v Speaker 2>remain unchanged, even as the city itself blurred and rebuilt

6
00:00:19.960 --> 00:00:24.640
<v Speaker 2>around it. I suppose that's an occupational bias. A historian

7
00:00:24.760 --> 00:00:28.280
<v Speaker 2>is always searching for continuity, something firm to anchor the

8
00:00:28.399 --> 00:00:33.439
<v Speaker 2>uncertainty of memory and gossip, the flickering unreliability of local legend.

9
00:00:34.520 --> 00:00:37.880
<v Speaker 2>Three times a week, rain or shine, I settle into

10
00:00:37.920 --> 00:00:41.640
<v Speaker 2>my rhythm, walk the brick path beneath the elms, exchange

11
00:00:41.640 --> 00:00:44.759
<v Speaker 2>a smile with Sandra at the circulation desk, hang my

12
00:00:44.880 --> 00:00:47.960
<v Speaker 2>threadbare tweed jacket on the carved coat track, and make

13
00:00:48.000 --> 00:00:51.119
<v Speaker 2>my way to the local history alcove. I have always

14
00:00:51.159 --> 00:00:54.439
<v Speaker 2>insisted on the same little window seat, wedged between the

15
00:00:54.439 --> 00:00:58.159
<v Speaker 2>city directory collection and a row of slightly sun faded

16
00:00:58.200 --> 00:01:02.560
<v Speaker 2>family memoirs. If I'm feeling methodical, I phone in a

17
00:01:02.640 --> 00:01:05.319
<v Speaker 2>hold for the latest mystery novel or an out of

18
00:01:05.439 --> 00:01:09.879
<v Speaker 2>print city map. If I'm restless, I peruse the return's cart,

19
00:01:10.319 --> 00:01:15.400
<v Speaker 2>mentally correcting miss shelvings On this morning, A calm slate

20
00:01:15.439 --> 00:01:17.599
<v Speaker 2>gray week day, with the kind of autumn chill that

21
00:01:17.680 --> 00:01:20.640
<v Speaker 2>leaves cold in your socks. I entered the library as

22
00:01:20.640 --> 00:01:25.000
<v Speaker 2>I always had, Yet something unremarkable nagged a sensation as

23
00:01:25.040 --> 00:01:28.959
<v Speaker 2>faint and persistent as static electricity in a sweater. The

24
00:01:29.000 --> 00:01:32.920
<v Speaker 2>lobby's terrazzo floor chimed under my shoes and over my shoulder.

25
00:01:33.319 --> 00:01:37.840
<v Speaker 2>Sandra was warbling good morning to a child in mismatched boots.

26
00:01:38.439 --> 00:01:41.519
<v Speaker 2>I nodded to her, pocketed my battered note book, and

27
00:01:41.599 --> 00:01:44.879
<v Speaker 2>made for the historic wing, hoping to review a handful

28
00:01:44.920 --> 00:01:48.599
<v Speaker 2>of sauces on Saint Mark's Tower for the monthly round table.

29
00:01:49.599 --> 00:01:53.480
<v Speaker 2>That's when a gap, a precise, knife straight absence, caught

30
00:01:53.519 --> 00:01:56.599
<v Speaker 2>my eye in the local history shelves. Not the usual

31
00:01:56.799 --> 00:02:00.280
<v Speaker 2>casual sort of space left by an enthusiastic researcher or

32
00:02:00.280 --> 00:02:04.319
<v Speaker 2>careless page, but a blankness of intent. Three or four

33
00:02:04.359 --> 00:02:08.240
<v Speaker 2>inches worth of shelf stood untouched, a careful dent between

34
00:02:08.319 --> 00:02:12.039
<v Speaker 2>two clusters of titles so tightly packed their spines pressed

35
00:02:12.039 --> 00:02:17.719
<v Speaker 2>together in sunken mutual exhaustion. I stopped finger hovering, uncertain

36
00:02:17.759 --> 00:02:20.560
<v Speaker 2>if I ought to shift the volumes together. I'm by

37
00:02:20.680 --> 00:02:24.280
<v Speaker 2>nature a fixer of such small errors. But near the gap.

38
00:02:24.479 --> 00:02:26.639
<v Speaker 2>A fixed just to the under side of the varnished

39
00:02:26.639 --> 00:02:30.879
<v Speaker 2>oak shelf glinted a tiny brass plaque. The engraving struck

40
00:02:30.919 --> 00:02:34.639
<v Speaker 2>me immediately as wrong yet deliberate call hash l H

41
00:02:34.800 --> 00:02:38.560
<v Speaker 2>two hundred and thirty one r at The sequence made

42
00:02:38.639 --> 00:02:42.599
<v Speaker 2>no sense, not dewy, not Library of Congress, not even

43
00:02:42.639 --> 00:02:45.680
<v Speaker 2>the home grown color band system the library once trialed

44
00:02:45.680 --> 00:02:50.599
<v Speaker 2>in the sixties. No context, no corresponding label, no guidance,

45
00:02:51.159 --> 00:02:54.479
<v Speaker 2>just this cryptic slice of information, couched among books on

46
00:02:54.560 --> 00:02:59.879
<v Speaker 2>trolley lines and prohibitioneerer ice houses. I bent closer. The

47
00:03:00.080 --> 00:03:03.840
<v Speaker 2>brass was newly polished, barely smudged. No glue around the

48
00:03:03.919 --> 00:03:07.319
<v Speaker 2>edges suggested a hasty application, no roughness like one of

49
00:03:07.360 --> 00:03:11.759
<v Speaker 2>Anton's April fool stunts. A glance left right, no staff

50
00:03:11.800 --> 00:03:15.159
<v Speaker 2>in sight. Across the room, a young librarian looked up

51
00:03:15.159 --> 00:03:18.840
<v Speaker 2>from her cart, muttering something about occasional shelf shifting into

52
00:03:18.879 --> 00:03:21.439
<v Speaker 2>her phone. I made a faint note in my mind,

53
00:03:21.800 --> 00:03:25.080
<v Speaker 2>odd to say the least, but perhaps some internal update.

54
00:03:26.120 --> 00:03:28.599
<v Speaker 2>I pressed on with my research, but each time I

55
00:03:28.639 --> 00:03:31.680
<v Speaker 2>reached for a familiar title, my eyes kept flicking back

56
00:03:31.719 --> 00:03:34.800
<v Speaker 2>to that blank space. The anomaly hung over the day.

57
00:03:35.159 --> 00:03:38.919
<v Speaker 2>Unnecessary inexplicable, as though I had stumbled on the punchline

58
00:03:38.919 --> 00:03:41.919
<v Speaker 2>to a joke no one else had heard. All afternoon,

59
00:03:42.240 --> 00:03:45.759
<v Speaker 2>the gap remained untouched. No one else remarked on it.

60
00:03:46.080 --> 00:03:48.759
<v Speaker 2>Yet it felt as if, once observed, it no longer

61
00:03:48.800 --> 00:03:52.199
<v Speaker 2>belonged to the background hum of daily oddities. It had

62
00:03:52.240 --> 00:03:57.199
<v Speaker 2>become a question that refused to dissolve. Outside, dusk bunched

63
00:03:57.280 --> 00:04:00.759
<v Speaker 2>up against the stained glass windows, throwing patterns of blue

64
00:04:01.080 --> 00:04:03.599
<v Speaker 2>and rose on to the polished floor. As the lights

65
00:04:03.639 --> 00:04:07.120
<v Speaker 2>flickered on. I told myself i'd ask about the shelf

66
00:04:07.159 --> 00:04:10.000
<v Speaker 2>the next time, but found that the quiet puzzle had

67
00:04:10.000 --> 00:04:14.280
<v Speaker 2>already wormed into the usual order of my week. Retirement

68
00:04:14.319 --> 00:04:17.480
<v Speaker 2>had not made me less methodical. If anything, the free

69
00:04:17.480 --> 00:04:21.000
<v Speaker 2>time allowed my old fussy habits to ripen. For over

70
00:04:21.120 --> 00:04:24.319
<v Speaker 2>thirty years, I taught at the secondary school barely two

71
00:04:24.360 --> 00:04:29.199
<v Speaker 2>blocks from city Center, specializing first in Commonwealth history, then

72
00:04:29.240 --> 00:04:34.040
<v Speaker 2>in the city's improbable patchwork of neighborhoods, rivers and vanished factories.

73
00:04:35.079 --> 00:04:38.600
<v Speaker 2>I counted myself among the reliable characters at the library,

74
00:04:39.040 --> 00:04:42.360
<v Speaker 2>Whether by reputation or accident. Someone had once pinned a

75
00:04:42.360 --> 00:04:46.319
<v Speaker 2>little sign to the genealogy room that read unpaid archivist

76
00:04:46.800 --> 00:04:51.120
<v Speaker 2>answers all queries, whether requested or not. That was me,

77
00:04:51.519 --> 00:04:55.079
<v Speaker 2>and I leaned into it. The staff knew my routines,

78
00:04:55.519 --> 00:04:58.920
<v Speaker 2>especially Miss Renner, the head librarian, who had ushered over

79
00:04:58.959 --> 00:05:02.279
<v Speaker 2>forty years of change through the building's grand halls. She

80
00:05:02.360 --> 00:05:05.079
<v Speaker 2>and I once shared a running gag that the library's

81
00:05:05.120 --> 00:05:08.560
<v Speaker 2>expansion plans always seemed to involve at least one extra

82
00:05:08.639 --> 00:05:11.439
<v Speaker 2>corridor that no one could keep straight, as if the

83
00:05:11.439 --> 00:05:14.639
<v Speaker 2>building's senior architect had been guided by a hand prone

84
00:05:14.680 --> 00:05:19.519
<v Speaker 2>to deetours and afterthoughts. Still, for all its architectural eccentricity,

85
00:05:19.879 --> 00:05:23.519
<v Speaker 2>I had committed every major change to memory. I could

86
00:05:23.519 --> 00:05:26.720
<v Speaker 2>recite from experience the day the marble stairs were cordoned

87
00:05:26.759 --> 00:05:30.680
<v Speaker 2>off the summer, the new elevator stalled with seven oblivious

88
00:05:30.759 --> 00:05:34.120
<v Speaker 2>children inside, or when the stacks on the east side

89
00:05:34.399 --> 00:05:38.160
<v Speaker 2>lost their afternoon sun after the nineteen seventy five office

90
00:05:38.199 --> 00:05:41.879
<v Speaker 2>wing went up. Anton, on the other hand, was a

91
00:05:41.920 --> 00:05:47.240
<v Speaker 2>recent phenomenon. Young distracted, always scribbling in a grid line notebook.

92
00:05:47.519 --> 00:05:50.560
<v Speaker 2>He was completing a thesis on urban planning and using

93
00:05:50.600 --> 00:05:54.680
<v Speaker 2>the library's meandering structure as a case study. He volunteered

94
00:05:54.720 --> 00:05:58.920
<v Speaker 2>for the occasional night's shift, filing census records and correcting

95
00:05:58.959 --> 00:06:02.600
<v Speaker 2>old cartography misprints, never losing the air of someone who

96
00:06:02.639 --> 00:06:06.920
<v Speaker 2>had only just arrived in adulthood with shoes untied. And

97
00:06:06.959 --> 00:06:10.759
<v Speaker 2>then there was missus Lee, a stalwart volunteer in genealogy,

98
00:06:11.040 --> 00:06:14.519
<v Speaker 2>all sharp wit and unmoored stories. She could tease from

99
00:06:14.560 --> 00:06:17.519
<v Speaker 2>microfeish the history of any city block, even as she

100
00:06:17.560 --> 00:06:20.759
<v Speaker 2>sometimes stopped mid sentence to confess she could not recall

101
00:06:20.839 --> 00:06:24.839
<v Speaker 2>her own daughter's address. She wore a silk scarf every day,

102
00:06:25.160 --> 00:06:28.120
<v Speaker 2>knotted differently for each season, and she claimed it helped

103
00:06:28.120 --> 00:06:30.959
<v Speaker 2>her find her way back out of the family archives.

104
00:06:31.959 --> 00:06:34.680
<v Speaker 2>These were the people who rounded out my weeks. Miss

105
00:06:34.759 --> 00:06:39.000
<v Speaker 2>Renner with her dignified recollections, Anton with half formed questions,

106
00:06:39.240 --> 00:06:43.920
<v Speaker 2>Missus Lee with her selective memory. Others orbited through regulars

107
00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:47.439
<v Speaker 2>like the History Round Table members, an assortment of reta ease,

108
00:06:47.680 --> 00:06:51.920
<v Speaker 2>amateur historians, and the odd lost student. No matter how

109
00:06:51.959 --> 00:06:55.600
<v Speaker 2>wide the world spun, these routines and these people offered

110
00:06:55.600 --> 00:06:59.519
<v Speaker 2>an anchor. The library itself, of course, lent itself to

111
00:06:59.639 --> 00:07:03.360
<v Speaker 2>change the brick and glass facade, grand as any museum,

112
00:07:03.720 --> 00:07:06.720
<v Speaker 2>was the backdrop for an interior that refused easy mapping

113
00:07:07.319 --> 00:07:10.199
<v Speaker 2>a ground floor reading room with a gravity defying column.

114
00:07:10.240 --> 00:07:13.839
<v Speaker 2>Here a bibliophal's nook there. Each expansion had left a

115
00:07:13.879 --> 00:07:18.240
<v Speaker 2>subtle seam. Even the permanent directories set in hand painted

116
00:07:18.319 --> 00:07:22.160
<v Speaker 2>tiles and then later in acrylic stands, never quite agreed.

117
00:07:23.279 --> 00:07:25.759
<v Speaker 2>I took care always to note when a shelf might

118
00:07:25.800 --> 00:07:31.839
<v Speaker 2>lose a category when genealogy gained a file. After all, histories, familial,

119
00:07:31.920 --> 00:07:35.639
<v Speaker 2>municipal were as much about what vanished as about what remained.

120
00:07:36.759 --> 00:07:39.680
<v Speaker 2>That's why when I noticed the gap and the brass plaque,

121
00:07:39.720 --> 00:07:42.399
<v Speaker 2>it stuck in my mind. It was not just that

122
00:07:42.480 --> 00:07:45.079
<v Speaker 2>it was new. It was that I would have recognized

123
00:07:45.279 --> 00:07:49.680
<v Speaker 2>instantly if it hadn't belonged before, A kind of professional pride,

124
00:07:49.720 --> 00:07:53.079
<v Speaker 2>I suppose, in knowing the geography of places and the

125
00:07:53.199 --> 00:07:57.279
<v Speaker 2>arrangement of their stories better than any one. I should

126
00:07:57.319 --> 00:08:00.360
<v Speaker 2>say now, I do not consider myself prone to annoi

127
00:08:00.519 --> 00:08:04.279
<v Speaker 2>or fancy. I believe in skepticism, the kind that leads

128
00:08:04.319 --> 00:08:07.879
<v Speaker 2>not to dismissal, but to careful checking, double checking, and

129
00:08:07.920 --> 00:08:11.000
<v Speaker 2>a willingness to admit to being mistaken. On my first

130
00:08:11.079 --> 00:08:14.279
<v Speaker 2>day as a teacher, I reminded my students that rumor

131
00:08:14.319 --> 00:08:17.439
<v Speaker 2>is often just a misfiled fact waiting for its card

132
00:08:17.480 --> 00:08:20.639
<v Speaker 2>to be rewritten. I have lived by that. It is

133
00:08:20.680 --> 00:08:23.920
<v Speaker 2>why I have always trusted the library to stay stubbornly itself,

134
00:08:24.240 --> 00:08:28.240
<v Speaker 2>no matter the change is outside. And so perhaps I

135
00:08:28.360 --> 00:08:31.519
<v Speaker 2>was the wrong or precisely the right person to be

136
00:08:31.560 --> 00:08:35.039
<v Speaker 2>so troubled by that little brass plaque, by the disturbance

137
00:08:35.080 --> 00:08:38.559
<v Speaker 2>in the perfect line of books. Perhaps that is why

138
00:08:38.600 --> 00:08:43.000
<v Speaker 2>several days later I returned specifically to check. It had

139
00:08:43.039 --> 00:08:46.480
<v Speaker 2>become a small obsession to return to the same shelf

140
00:08:46.679 --> 00:08:50.240
<v Speaker 2>to see if the gap remained, To finally politely inquire

141
00:08:50.320 --> 00:08:53.399
<v Speaker 2>about the odd call number. I even drew a small

142
00:08:53.440 --> 00:08:56.879
<v Speaker 2>map in my note book, marking the neighboring volumes, just

143
00:08:56.919 --> 00:09:01.080
<v Speaker 2>in case. History, after all, is often a footnote, overlooked

144
00:09:01.080 --> 00:09:04.519
<v Speaker 2>by all but the most determined. When I pushed open

145
00:09:04.519 --> 00:09:07.360
<v Speaker 2>the heavy, swinging door to the local history alcove, however,

146
00:09:07.720 --> 00:09:12.360
<v Speaker 2>my anticipation dissolved into mild bewilderment. The shelves, every one

147
00:09:12.360 --> 00:09:16.840
<v Speaker 2>of them, pressed together in a unified, unspectacular seam, no gap,

148
00:09:16.960 --> 00:09:20.080
<v Speaker 2>no plaque. The shelf, which weeks before had offered a

149
00:09:20.080 --> 00:09:23.879
<v Speaker 2>precise slice of nothing, now looked indistinguishable from every other.

150
00:09:24.360 --> 00:09:28.000
<v Speaker 2>The familiar run of books on local labor, riots, house histories,

151
00:09:28.240 --> 00:09:32.200
<v Speaker 2>and the Great Railway ghost stories. I ran my hand

152
00:09:32.240 --> 00:09:36.039
<v Speaker 2>along the underside where the plaque had been nothing but smooth,

153
00:09:36.320 --> 00:09:40.399
<v Speaker 2>unbroken wood. And here is where the contradiction settled. In

154
00:09:40.840 --> 00:09:43.919
<v Speaker 2>the book about the City's Lost Railway, my old favorite,

155
00:09:44.200 --> 00:09:46.519
<v Speaker 2>the one I had intended to review for round table,

156
00:09:46.919 --> 00:09:49.279
<v Speaker 2>did not occupy its customary place at the end of

157
00:09:49.320 --> 00:09:54.639
<v Speaker 2>the Transportation defunct sub section. Instead, that spot now housed

158
00:09:54.639 --> 00:09:58.320
<v Speaker 2>a battered guide to city fountains, wedged precisely where I

159
00:09:58.320 --> 00:10:01.519
<v Speaker 2>would have laid down the tome on the true trolley line.

160
00:10:01.799 --> 00:10:05.960
<v Speaker 2>Unsettled but determined, I checked the library's catalog, a system

161
00:10:06.000 --> 00:10:09.679
<v Speaker 2>I had trusted for decades. The books identifier had shifted

162
00:10:10.000 --> 00:10:13.480
<v Speaker 2>just one digit, almost as if by accident, no longer

163
00:10:13.600 --> 00:10:17.039
<v Speaker 2>LH two thirty D, but now cataloged as LH two

164
00:10:17.080 --> 00:10:19.840
<v Speaker 2>thirty E. When I keyed in the original number, the

165
00:10:19.919 --> 00:10:24.279
<v Speaker 2>record returned nothing, no cross reference, not even a transferred

166
00:10:24.279 --> 00:10:29.279
<v Speaker 2>to archive's message. The battered guide, once housed a shelf away,

167
00:10:29.759 --> 00:10:33.200
<v Speaker 2>now officially belonged beside the railway histories, as if it

168
00:10:33.240 --> 00:10:37.720
<v Speaker 2>had always been so. I found Anton that afternoon, shelving

169
00:10:37.720 --> 00:10:41.279
<v Speaker 2>a trolley of city council minutes, whistling a tune at odds.

170
00:10:41.279 --> 00:10:45.200
<v Speaker 2>With the solemnity of his burden, I explained as simply

171
00:10:45.200 --> 00:10:48.440
<v Speaker 2>as I could, my sense that something about the shelving

172
00:10:48.480 --> 00:10:53.519
<v Speaker 2>and catalog numbers had subtly but undeniably changed. He gave

173
00:10:53.559 --> 00:10:58.000
<v Speaker 2>a bemused shrug, pausing mid song. Since the catalog went digital,

174
00:10:58.240 --> 00:11:01.799
<v Speaker 2>there have been little blips happened with old records. Maybe

175
00:11:01.799 --> 00:11:05.840
<v Speaker 2>you spotted a transition in process. He flashed his lopsided

176
00:11:05.879 --> 00:11:09.559
<v Speaker 2>smile altogether too much like someone brushing away dust that

177
00:11:09.679 --> 00:11:13.120
<v Speaker 2>only I could see. It's always been this way, hasn't it.

178
00:11:14.159 --> 00:11:17.120
<v Speaker 2>That phrase it's always been this way has a way

179
00:11:17.159 --> 00:11:20.840
<v Speaker 2>of erasing the documentation of any oddity. But I am,

180
00:11:21.200 --> 00:11:26.120
<v Speaker 2>by temperament and training, opposed to erasure. I scribbled every

181
00:11:26.120 --> 00:11:30.039
<v Speaker 2>detail into my note book, shelf order, vanished plaque, the

182
00:11:30.120 --> 00:11:35.399
<v Speaker 2>numerical sleight of hand, Anton's cheerful indifference, my own recollection,

183
00:11:35.799 --> 00:11:40.360
<v Speaker 2>the electronic catalog, and the visible physical reality now disagreed

184
00:11:40.440 --> 00:11:43.159
<v Speaker 2>in ways that could not be written off as mere oversight.

185
00:11:44.240 --> 00:11:48.159
<v Speaker 2>Thus began for me a changing kind of curiosity, not

186
00:11:48.279 --> 00:11:51.240
<v Speaker 2>the laughter brushed sort that comes with finding a children's

187
00:11:51.279 --> 00:11:53.960
<v Speaker 2>book in the law section, but the prickling urge to

188
00:11:54.000 --> 00:11:58.559
<v Speaker 2>pursue an inconsistency until it stops wriggling. Over the next

189
00:11:58.600 --> 00:12:03.679
<v Speaker 2>several weeks, my life visits became a quiet investigation. I

190
00:12:03.720 --> 00:12:06.679
<v Speaker 2>tried to proceed as I always had, checking in on

191
00:12:06.759 --> 00:12:10.720
<v Speaker 2>the round table, reviewing the papers, fielding the occasional question

192
00:12:11.000 --> 00:12:14.519
<v Speaker 2>about city trivia from the staff. But each visit left

193
00:12:14.519 --> 00:12:17.399
<v Speaker 2>me more aware of the building's malleability, as though I

194
00:12:17.480 --> 00:12:21.840
<v Speaker 2>now carried a new lens. Each day, I documented every

195
00:12:21.840 --> 00:12:23.879
<v Speaker 2>minor shift that I could not chalk up to the

196
00:12:24.000 --> 00:12:27.799
<v Speaker 2>erratic hand of time or accident. Twice I watched the

197
00:12:27.840 --> 00:12:32.679
<v Speaker 2>poetry section, long familiar to me, slide improbably closer to

198
00:12:32.720 --> 00:12:36.480
<v Speaker 2>the corner hallway. The next day, that same hallway had

199
00:12:36.519 --> 00:12:39.639
<v Speaker 2>acquired an exit sign and a spill of new daylight

200
00:12:39.720 --> 00:12:43.279
<v Speaker 2>from a direction I had never known to exist. I

201
00:12:43.360 --> 00:12:46.799
<v Speaker 2>traced the local periodicals on a Tuesday and found three

202
00:12:46.840 --> 00:12:50.799
<v Speaker 2>shelving bays instead of the usual two. By Saturday, it

203
00:12:50.840 --> 00:12:54.960
<v Speaker 2>had reverted to the classic layout. I acquired a half

204
00:12:55.039 --> 00:12:58.759
<v Speaker 2>dozen maps of the library, some printed, others hand drawn,

205
00:12:59.080 --> 00:13:01.679
<v Speaker 2>and attempted to wreck consul them with my own movements.

206
00:13:02.320 --> 00:13:07.080
<v Speaker 2>Pages quickly filled with messy lines and notations. Rooms alternately

207
00:13:07.120 --> 00:13:11.600
<v Speaker 2>designated meeting room or storage seemed to exist only on

208
00:13:11.679 --> 00:13:16.639
<v Speaker 2>alternate days. A reference to a children's study section appeared

209
00:13:16.679 --> 00:13:19.440
<v Speaker 2>in the print directory, but was nowhere to be found

210
00:13:19.440 --> 00:13:22.720
<v Speaker 2>in the actual building. And yet, in an old event

211
00:13:22.879 --> 00:13:27.320
<v Speaker 2>flier pulled from the archives, that self same supposedly demolished

212
00:13:27.399 --> 00:13:31.879
<v Speaker 2>room hosted a book day carnival in two thousand nine.

213
00:13:32.000 --> 00:13:36.120
<v Speaker 2>The contradiction was not merely physical but categorical. In one

214
00:13:36.159 --> 00:13:39.720
<v Speaker 2>interview at the Weekly History round Table, an amiable mid

215
00:13:39.759 --> 00:13:43.799
<v Speaker 2>morning gathering of half a dozen regulars, the topic turned

216
00:13:44.000 --> 00:13:48.039
<v Speaker 2>inevitably to the mystery of the changing maps. When did

217
00:13:48.039 --> 00:13:50.679
<v Speaker 2>they knock out the marble banister for the east stairs,

218
00:13:51.159 --> 00:13:56.639
<v Speaker 2>asked June, the round table's unofficial dramaturge. Don't be ridiculous,

219
00:13:56.919 --> 00:14:00.639
<v Speaker 2>counted Hal. They never removed the marble. It's there since

220
00:14:00.679 --> 00:14:03.320
<v Speaker 2>the day they opened the wing. You mean the north

221
00:14:03.360 --> 00:14:08.360
<v Speaker 2>stairs those got swapped during the asbestos fiasco. Wasn't there

222
00:14:08.399 --> 00:14:12.320
<v Speaker 2>a whole wing they closed for that? June pressed? Or

223
00:14:12.440 --> 00:14:15.159
<v Speaker 2>was that for the leaking roof? Offered s H. Wetta,

224
00:14:15.480 --> 00:14:19.679
<v Speaker 2>always the peace maker. Paging through her notes, the conversation

225
00:14:19.799 --> 00:14:25.399
<v Speaker 2>wound on, veering between colliding memories and gentle insistence. Dates shifted,

226
00:14:25.879 --> 00:14:31.519
<v Speaker 2>details inverted themselves. No consensus emerged. I scribbled down the variations,

227
00:14:31.799 --> 00:14:36.440
<v Speaker 2>adding them to my growing matrix of contradiction. Seeking clarity,

228
00:14:36.679 --> 00:14:39.559
<v Speaker 2>I approached missus Lee, who on any given week day

229
00:14:39.559 --> 00:14:43.080
<v Speaker 2>could be found adjusting microfilm reels like a composer at

230
00:14:43.120 --> 00:14:47.159
<v Speaker 2>a pipe organ. I led her gently into the genealogy section,

231
00:14:47.600 --> 00:14:50.879
<v Speaker 2>asking about the family history files that had or hadn't

232
00:14:51.279 --> 00:14:54.759
<v Speaker 2>moved to the end bay. Of course, it's always looked

233
00:14:54.799 --> 00:14:58.440
<v Speaker 2>just like this, she said, confidently. That little nook over there,

234
00:14:58.679 --> 00:15:02.159
<v Speaker 2>she gestured, vaguely, used to house the Polish records, didn't it?

235
00:15:02.519 --> 00:15:05.879
<v Speaker 2>Or was that the old Scandinavian corner? I remember, I think,

236
00:15:06.000 --> 00:15:09.600
<v Speaker 2>but not exactly why. She trailed off her hands, still

237
00:15:09.639 --> 00:15:13.600
<v Speaker 2>busy at the reels, her stories, vibrant and detailed, drifted

238
00:15:13.639 --> 00:15:17.600
<v Speaker 2>back and forth between certainty and doubt. On a particularly

239
00:15:17.679 --> 00:15:22.159
<v Speaker 2>drizzly Thursday, I delved into the online city archives. There, too,

240
00:15:22.440 --> 00:15:26.519
<v Speaker 2>uncertainty flourished. A recorded discussion of the children's study area,

241
00:15:26.960 --> 00:15:30.240
<v Speaker 2>torn down in the seventies, appeared alongside a more recent

242
00:15:30.279 --> 00:15:33.399
<v Speaker 2>flier referencing a grand parent story telling event in that

243
00:15:33.519 --> 00:15:37.679
<v Speaker 2>very room, just a handful of years ago, council minutes disagreed,

244
00:15:38.120 --> 00:15:42.919
<v Speaker 2>renovation schedules overlapped, and digital photographs seethed with discrepancies in

245
00:15:43.000 --> 00:15:48.559
<v Speaker 2>brick color, pillar location, and wall art. Frustrated but energized,

246
00:15:48.759 --> 00:15:52.039
<v Speaker 2>I sought out Miss Renner as the undisputed keeper of

247
00:15:52.080 --> 00:15:54.840
<v Speaker 2>the old blueprints. She brooded over the building with the

248
00:15:54.840 --> 00:15:58.080
<v Speaker 2>measured patience of one who had seen every initiative twice,

249
00:15:58.639 --> 00:16:03.600
<v Speaker 2>once in council committee, once in reality. Her office, dominated

250
00:16:03.639 --> 00:16:06.919
<v Speaker 2>by a wall of rolled plans, always smelled faintly of

251
00:16:07.039 --> 00:16:11.080
<v Speaker 2>ancient paper and lemon oil. She sifted through the stacks

252
00:16:11.279 --> 00:16:15.440
<v Speaker 2>and eventually produced two large format blueprints, both dated within

253
00:16:15.480 --> 00:16:19.320
<v Speaker 2>the past thirty years. In one, the events room was

254
00:16:19.440 --> 00:16:24.240
<v Speaker 2>unambiguously located beside the archives. In the other, drawn during

255
00:16:24.240 --> 00:16:27.639
<v Speaker 2>a quiet period of expansion in the nineteen nineties, the

256
00:16:27.679 --> 00:16:30.759
<v Speaker 2>same room resided almost on the opposite end of the building.

257
00:16:31.759 --> 00:16:35.120
<v Speaker 2>We had to redraw things so often, Miss Renner admitted,

258
00:16:35.519 --> 00:16:38.679
<v Speaker 2>Sometimes I wonder if the library itself doesn't prefer to

259
00:16:38.759 --> 00:16:41.879
<v Speaker 2>keep us guessing. She looked at me over her glasses.

260
00:16:42.279 --> 00:16:45.399
<v Speaker 2>But you say, the shelves themselves shift, not just in

261
00:16:45.440 --> 00:16:49.000
<v Speaker 2>the records I told her, as plainly as I could

262
00:16:49.120 --> 00:16:53.559
<v Speaker 2>about the gap, the plaque, the vanished room, the shifty numbers.

263
00:16:54.080 --> 00:16:58.320
<v Speaker 2>I've heard stranger, she replied finally, though her tone carried

264
00:16:58.320 --> 00:17:01.720
<v Speaker 2>more amusement than worry. But she promised to look into it,

265
00:17:02.000 --> 00:17:05.680
<v Speaker 2>and I left her puzzling over the discordant maps. It

266
00:17:05.720 --> 00:17:08.480
<v Speaker 2>had taken only a handful of days for the little

267
00:17:08.480 --> 00:17:11.160
<v Speaker 2>puzzle of the shelf gap to expand into a wider

268
00:17:11.160 --> 00:17:15.960
<v Speaker 2>web of contradiction, rooms and shelves, adjusting over night, event

269
00:17:16.039 --> 00:17:21.200
<v Speaker 2>fliers testifying to spaces nobody could find memories, refusing to reconcile,

270
00:17:21.400 --> 00:17:25.480
<v Speaker 2>even amongst those who ought to know. Every observation I

271
00:17:25.519 --> 00:17:28.359
<v Speaker 2>made seem to interlock with the next, forming a pattern,

272
00:17:28.920 --> 00:17:32.319
<v Speaker 2>not one of careless maintenance or clerical error, but an

273
00:17:32.359 --> 00:17:37.400
<v Speaker 2>ongoing choreography just beneath the surface, shifting gently around the

274
00:17:37.440 --> 00:17:40.880
<v Speaker 2>constancy of daily life. I would have called it a

275
00:17:40.920 --> 00:17:44.319
<v Speaker 2>recipe for unease, except that what I mostly felt was wonder.

276
00:17:44.960 --> 00:17:48.200
<v Speaker 2>My note book, once reserved for tidy lists, now bulged

277
00:17:48.240 --> 00:17:52.640
<v Speaker 2>with cross references, call numbers, shelf orders, quotes from round

278
00:17:52.640 --> 00:17:58.279
<v Speaker 2>table members, half overheard staff conversations. A mundane act retrieving

279
00:17:58.319 --> 00:18:01.079
<v Speaker 2>a book had given way to a search project that

280
00:18:01.160 --> 00:18:04.000
<v Speaker 2>was at once more elusive and more alive than anything

281
00:18:04.039 --> 00:18:08.200
<v Speaker 2>in my teaching years. The question that had begun so simply,

282
00:18:08.519 --> 00:18:12.200
<v Speaker 2>why had a single plaque appeared and vanished now cracked

283
00:18:12.240 --> 00:18:15.599
<v Speaker 2>open into something deeper. What determines the very shape of

284
00:18:15.640 --> 00:18:19.240
<v Speaker 2>this building? What could account for rooms and shelves fading

285
00:18:19.279 --> 00:18:22.079
<v Speaker 2>in and out of existence, for the blueprint and the

286
00:18:22.119 --> 00:18:26.039
<v Speaker 2>catalog to shift in ways that elude every simple explanation.

287
00:18:27.160 --> 00:18:30.720
<v Speaker 2>It became clear the answer lay neither in modern logistics

288
00:18:30.839 --> 00:18:34.799
<v Speaker 2>nor lazy maintenance, but in the terrain of memory itself.

289
00:18:35.799 --> 00:18:38.960
<v Speaker 2>I began tentatively, at first, to chart the discoveries in

290
00:18:39.000 --> 00:18:42.480
<v Speaker 2>my notebook by date and by witness. What emerged was

291
00:18:42.519 --> 00:18:45.960
<v Speaker 2>not a table of corrections, but a chart of competing realities.

292
00:18:46.440 --> 00:18:50.279
<v Speaker 2>This shelf moved, that room returned, This call number existed

293
00:18:50.319 --> 00:18:53.480
<v Speaker 2>for the briefest time, and then did not. Each piece

294
00:18:53.480 --> 00:18:57.240
<v Speaker 2>of the puzzle seemed contingent, provisional, dependent not on the

295
00:18:57.279 --> 00:19:00.759
<v Speaker 2>logic of records, but on the energy of notice, discussion,

296
00:19:00.880 --> 00:19:04.720
<v Speaker 2>and belief. Something else struck me at about the third week,

297
00:19:05.359 --> 00:19:10.359
<v Speaker 2>certain lost rooms, collections, or books seemed to reappear after

298
00:19:10.480 --> 00:19:15.519
<v Speaker 2>conversation about them. Sometimes almost immediately, other times after days

299
00:19:15.599 --> 00:19:18.640
<v Speaker 2>or weeks, often in a form mismatched to the memory

300
00:19:18.720 --> 00:19:22.960
<v Speaker 2>that summoned them. One morning, in a moment of gentle mischief,

301
00:19:23.279 --> 00:19:27.680
<v Speaker 2>I found Anton hunched behind the circulation desk, practicing cursive

302
00:19:27.799 --> 00:19:32.759
<v Speaker 2>signatures on a napkin. I launched a gentle experiment. Do

303
00:19:32.839 --> 00:19:36.319
<v Speaker 2>you remember the children's reading room, the old one with

304
00:19:36.400 --> 00:19:39.559
<v Speaker 2>the teal bean bags and the mural of the river boats?

305
00:19:40.160 --> 00:19:43.480
<v Speaker 2>He looked up, blinking. I thought that was only a rumor,

306
00:19:43.880 --> 00:19:47.640
<v Speaker 2>was there? Actually? He searched my face for confirmation. No

307
00:19:47.720 --> 00:19:51.039
<v Speaker 2>one ever showed it to me. I described it in

308
00:19:51.079 --> 00:19:55.160
<v Speaker 2>greater detail, painting the chipped paint and the dragonfly carpet,

309
00:19:55.480 --> 00:19:59.000
<v Speaker 2>the narrow, clear story windows, the habit of sneaking in

310
00:19:59.119 --> 00:20:03.319
<v Speaker 2>with a thermas of cooco. We talked it through, laughing

311
00:20:03.359 --> 00:20:07.039
<v Speaker 2>at our collective uncertainty. He promised to keep an eye out.

312
00:20:08.039 --> 00:20:11.400
<v Speaker 2>A week later, as we both passed the labyrinth of periodicals,

313
00:20:11.440 --> 00:20:15.519
<v Speaker 2>returning from lunch, he nudged my arm grinning. Found an

314
00:20:15.519 --> 00:20:18.880
<v Speaker 2>old corner I'd never noticed before had the weirdest bit

315
00:20:18.920 --> 00:20:22.079
<v Speaker 2>of pale blue on the wall. Looked just like your mural.

316
00:20:23.160 --> 00:20:26.279
<v Speaker 2>His tone was both playful and uncertain, as if he

317
00:20:26.359 --> 00:20:29.720
<v Speaker 2>waited for me to confess a prank, But I only smiled,

318
00:20:30.039 --> 00:20:34.440
<v Speaker 2>the implications tumbling quietly in my mind. It was as

319
00:20:34.480 --> 00:20:38.000
<v Speaker 2>if the act of discussing, of remembering in shared detail,

320
00:20:38.359 --> 00:20:41.799
<v Speaker 2>had carved a wedge into reality, if only for a moment.

321
00:20:42.839 --> 00:20:45.480
<v Speaker 2>From that day on, the catalog of phenomena in my

322
00:20:45.559 --> 00:20:49.720
<v Speaker 2>notebook changed. I stopped treating the entries as errors and

323
00:20:49.759 --> 00:20:53.799
<v Speaker 2>began to treat them like fleeting constellations, pattens, liable to

324
00:20:53.880 --> 00:20:58.400
<v Speaker 2>vanish if unacknowledged, newly vivid if summoned by collective attention.

325
00:20:59.519 --> 00:21:02.599
<v Speaker 2>Did we share the building with our memories? Did forgotten

326
00:21:02.640 --> 00:21:06.640
<v Speaker 2>details fade from catalogs and then the shelves themselves, only

327
00:21:06.680 --> 00:21:11.160
<v Speaker 2>to return under scrutiny. Were even the official blueprints as

328
00:21:11.200 --> 00:21:14.400
<v Speaker 2>provisional as a hand drawn map in a child's note book.

329
00:21:15.440 --> 00:21:20.039
<v Speaker 2>My skepticism, always my anchor, began to fray, replaced by

330
00:21:20.039 --> 00:21:23.599
<v Speaker 2>a kind of intellectual thrill, a fascination with the notion

331
00:21:23.759 --> 00:21:26.079
<v Speaker 2>that the library was not merely a warehouse of the

332
00:21:26.079 --> 00:21:30.279
<v Speaker 2>city's past, but a living palimpsest, a sort of architectural

333
00:21:30.359 --> 00:21:35.400
<v Speaker 2>negotiation between recollection and forgetting. The question now was not

334
00:21:35.480 --> 00:21:39.319
<v Speaker 2>merely why do the shelves move? But is the library

335
00:21:39.319 --> 00:21:41.960
<v Speaker 2>itself shaped by what is remembered and what is not?

336
00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:45.200
<v Speaker 2>In a city of steady change, could there really be

337
00:21:45.279 --> 00:21:49.119
<v Speaker 2>such a place where reality and memory contended in ongoing

338
00:21:49.359 --> 00:21:54.400
<v Speaker 2>daily dialogue. One rainy evening, while compiling old clippings for

339
00:21:54.440 --> 00:21:57.200
<v Speaker 2>the round table, I stumbled across the rumor of a

340
00:21:57.279 --> 00:22:01.480
<v Speaker 2>vanished city neighborhood, Silver End, an area I'd never heard of,

341
00:22:01.839 --> 00:22:05.640
<v Speaker 2>though its name hummed with old fashioned significance. It was

342
00:22:05.759 --> 00:22:09.440
<v Speaker 2>referenced off hand in an overdue biography, but nowhere else

343
00:22:09.480 --> 00:22:13.640
<v Speaker 2>in official records. The mansion set off a small fire

344
00:22:13.720 --> 00:22:16.960
<v Speaker 2>in my mind. I resolved to see if, just perhaps

345
00:22:17.200 --> 00:22:21.279
<v Speaker 2>the building itself could offer more. The next afternoon, with

346
00:22:21.359 --> 00:22:23.960
<v Speaker 2>the memory of Silver Ends still echoing in my mind,

347
00:22:24.359 --> 00:22:26.480
<v Speaker 2>I wandered a stretch of the back stacks said to

348
00:22:26.519 --> 00:22:30.240
<v Speaker 2>border the utility chase by, now a zone I knew

349
00:22:30.279 --> 00:22:32.880
<v Speaker 2>as well as my own kitchen. As I ran a

350
00:22:32.960 --> 00:22:37.160
<v Speaker 2>hand along a mobile shelf, it glided silently aside, revealing

351
00:22:37.200 --> 00:22:40.000
<v Speaker 2>not the cinder block wall I expected, but the mouth

352
00:22:40.000 --> 00:22:43.440
<v Speaker 2>of an impossibly narrow aisle, lit only by the thinnest

353
00:22:43.519 --> 00:22:48.400
<v Speaker 2>stream of dust laced daylight. I paused. This corridor had

354
00:22:48.400 --> 00:22:52.279
<v Speaker 2>no business existing. The area was boxed in according to

355
00:22:52.359 --> 00:22:56.000
<v Speaker 2>every structural plan I had ever seen or handled. The

356
00:22:56.000 --> 00:23:00.599
<v Speaker 2>blueprints in my bag confirmed the impossibility. There was quite

357
00:23:00.640 --> 00:23:04.519
<v Speaker 2>literally nowhere for this passage to go. But there it

358
00:23:04.720 --> 00:23:08.240
<v Speaker 2>was a tight avenue of mismatched shelves. The wood darker,

359
00:23:08.480 --> 00:23:12.519
<v Speaker 2>the grain worn smooth by countless unseen hands. The smell

360
00:23:12.640 --> 00:23:16.519
<v Speaker 2>was different, old paper, thickened by decades. I ducked in

361
00:23:16.799 --> 00:23:21.079
<v Speaker 2>the air suddenly cooler. The books here bore odd bindings,

362
00:23:21.359 --> 00:23:26.079
<v Speaker 2>fraying unpolished leather alongside factory embossed cloth, some with titles

363
00:23:26.119 --> 00:23:29.599
<v Speaker 2>impressed crookedly in gold. Their call numbers did not match

364
00:23:29.599 --> 00:23:33.000
<v Speaker 2>the catalog system, or indeed any system familiar to me.

365
00:23:33.559 --> 00:23:36.200
<v Speaker 2>As I ran a finger over the spines, a shiver

366
00:23:36.319 --> 00:23:40.000
<v Speaker 2>of words prickled at the edges of memory. Rivertown days,

367
00:23:40.480 --> 00:23:44.920
<v Speaker 2>a celebration, districts of the Silver End, the Farer's Loop incident,

368
00:23:46.000 --> 00:23:55.480
<v Speaker 2>whole stretches of civic history, whole neighborhoods, festivals, initiatives, and organizations, documented, indexed, authoritatively, described,

369
00:23:55.880 --> 00:24:00.519
<v Speaker 2>all entirely outside any record I had ever known. Some books,

370
00:24:00.559 --> 00:24:04.240
<v Speaker 2>bizarrely were arranged by categories that made sense only in retrospect.

371
00:24:04.880 --> 00:24:10.079
<v Speaker 2>Urban myths, first hand accounts, disbanded societies, lost streets, even

372
00:24:10.160 --> 00:24:15.160
<v Speaker 2>events provisional. One battered volume, written in eclipped formal script,

373
00:24:15.400 --> 00:24:19.160
<v Speaker 2>described Rivertown days at length, from its pageant queens to

374
00:24:19.200 --> 00:24:22.279
<v Speaker 2>the construction of a festival archway I had never glimpsed

375
00:24:22.279 --> 00:24:27.480
<v Speaker 2>in any city photograph. There were exaggerated festival pictures, maps

376
00:24:27.519 --> 00:24:30.839
<v Speaker 2>of a winding district known as Silver End, replete with

377
00:24:30.960 --> 00:24:34.799
<v Speaker 2>photos of shop fronts and several references to Fairer's Loop

378
00:24:35.119 --> 00:24:39.559
<v Speaker 2>and its annual lantern parade. I cracked a few books open.

379
00:24:40.039 --> 00:24:44.240
<v Speaker 2>The text was dense, complete with footnotes, civic planning references,

380
00:24:44.480 --> 00:24:47.680
<v Speaker 2>even lists of contributors. But a quick check through the

381
00:24:47.680 --> 00:24:52.400
<v Speaker 2>city directory, online newspaper archives, and council minutes showed no

382
00:24:52.680 --> 00:24:56.480
<v Speaker 2>sign these people or events had ever functioned outside the books.

383
00:24:57.240 --> 00:25:00.000
<v Speaker 2>Most striking were the books in languages that seemed almost

384
00:25:00.000 --> 00:25:04.480
<v Speaker 2>post but not quite familiar, or formats that recalled Victorian

385
00:25:04.519 --> 00:25:08.640
<v Speaker 2>gild reports or urban fantasy guides. I snapped photos with

386
00:25:08.720 --> 00:25:13.039
<v Speaker 2>my phone, the flash catching across the gold leaf each page.

387
00:25:13.119 --> 00:25:16.400
<v Speaker 2>Each record detailed a world that by every measure of

388
00:25:16.440 --> 00:25:21.079
<v Speaker 2>public record simply never existed. Bringing a stack into the

389
00:25:21.119 --> 00:25:25.799
<v Speaker 2>reading room, I tested theory against memory. I approached Miss Wrenner,

390
00:25:26.039 --> 00:25:29.359
<v Speaker 2>who pressed her lips together in amused skepticism when she

391
00:25:29.440 --> 00:25:33.799
<v Speaker 2>heard my description of Rivertown days. That sounds like the

392
00:25:33.839 --> 00:25:36.400
<v Speaker 2>sort of thing we'd have done in the fifties or sixties,

393
00:25:36.680 --> 00:25:40.559
<v Speaker 2>she mused, then shook her head. But no, nothing like

394
00:25:40.599 --> 00:25:44.839
<v Speaker 2>that comes to mind. Missus Lee, when pressed, peered over

395
00:25:44.880 --> 00:25:49.000
<v Speaker 2>her spectacles and frowned. Of course, I attended a festival

396
00:25:49.160 --> 00:25:52.240
<v Speaker 2>just like that once, But it wasn't called Rivertown, I

397
00:25:52.279 --> 00:25:55.960
<v Speaker 2>don't think, Or was it. She trailed off into uncertainty,

398
00:25:56.279 --> 00:26:00.720
<v Speaker 2>unsure whether she'd conjured the memory herself. Nobody else in

399
00:26:00.759 --> 00:26:03.440
<v Speaker 2>the library or in the city offices knew a thing

400
00:26:03.480 --> 00:26:07.319
<v Speaker 2>about these events or places. The anomalous corridor seemed to

401
00:26:07.359 --> 00:26:12.000
<v Speaker 2>close itself up within hours later, trying to retrace my steps,

402
00:26:12.319 --> 00:26:15.559
<v Speaker 2>I found only an unbroken wall, as if the passage

403
00:26:15.559 --> 00:26:20.160
<v Speaker 2>had been a fleeting architectural hallucination. That night, I spread

404
00:26:20.160 --> 00:26:24.119
<v Speaker 2>out my growing dossier, photographs of the impossibly shelved books,

405
00:26:24.480 --> 00:26:28.039
<v Speaker 2>catalog print outs that no longer matched physical reality, a

406
00:26:28.079 --> 00:26:31.039
<v Speaker 2>pair of blueprints now more contradictory than ever, and a

407
00:26:31.039 --> 00:26:37.319
<v Speaker 2>patchwork of recollections, each pointed uncannily persistently to the existence

408
00:26:37.359 --> 00:26:40.759
<v Speaker 2>of shifting phenomena not just tied to the library's geography,

409
00:26:41.160 --> 00:26:44.359
<v Speaker 2>but to some deeper entanglement with the currents of memory

410
00:26:44.400 --> 00:26:48.359
<v Speaker 2>and city history itself. My mind whirled as I compared

411
00:26:48.359 --> 00:26:53.519
<v Speaker 2>the timelines, the cataloging systems, the unraveling and reforming shelf sequences.

412
00:26:54.160 --> 00:26:56.960
<v Speaker 2>This was no longer a matter of misfiled books or

413
00:26:57.039 --> 00:27:01.000
<v Speaker 2>accidental renovations. Instead, it began and to seem as though

414
00:27:01.039 --> 00:27:05.880
<v Speaker 2>the library itself was generating new records, complete physical artifacts,

415
00:27:06.400 --> 00:27:09.799
<v Speaker 2>out of the whispers of collective remembering and forgetting, the

416
00:27:09.839 --> 00:27:14.160
<v Speaker 2>back and forth of possibility and history. The next morning,

417
00:27:14.400 --> 00:27:17.880
<v Speaker 2>before the library filled with children and committee chairs, I

418
00:27:17.920 --> 00:27:21.359
<v Speaker 2>approached Miss Renner and Anton in her office, laying out

419
00:27:21.359 --> 00:27:24.720
<v Speaker 2>my findings in as measured a tone as my excitement

420
00:27:24.759 --> 00:27:29.480
<v Speaker 2>would allow. Miss Renner, after some hesitation, uncorked a bottle

421
00:27:29.519 --> 00:27:32.519
<v Speaker 2>of logic. Do you know there have always been stories

422
00:27:32.559 --> 00:27:36.079
<v Speaker 2>about vanishing rooms here? When I started, the old head

423
00:27:36.160 --> 00:27:39.880
<v Speaker 2>librarian insisted the genealogy alcove used to face the river.

424
00:27:40.519 --> 00:27:44.440
<v Speaker 2>No blueprints supported it, But well, the older you get,

425
00:27:44.720 --> 00:27:49.599
<v Speaker 2>the more plausible the impossible seems anton. Ever, the pragmatic

426
00:27:49.759 --> 00:27:53.079
<v Speaker 2>leaned forward, eyes wide with the prospect of a good puzzle.

427
00:27:53.640 --> 00:27:57.440
<v Speaker 2>What if libraries do more than just store records, he suggested,

428
00:27:57.880 --> 00:28:00.720
<v Speaker 2>What if they generate them? What if if rumor and

429
00:28:00.799 --> 00:28:04.799
<v Speaker 2>memory are admitted as evidence. What if the city's wishes, fears,

430
00:28:05.039 --> 00:28:08.960
<v Speaker 2>and half remembered stories get a say. I sat there,

431
00:28:09.160 --> 00:28:12.680
<v Speaker 2>notebook open between us, feeling the air in the office thicken,

432
00:28:13.160 --> 00:28:16.160
<v Speaker 2>not with fear, but with a sense of doors creaking

433
00:28:16.240 --> 00:28:20.920
<v Speaker 2>open behind ordinary things. The simple library of my previous

434
00:28:20.960 --> 00:28:24.559
<v Speaker 2>weeks had vanished, replaced by something at once familiar and

435
00:28:24.680 --> 00:28:29.720
<v Speaker 2>breathlessly undetermined, a vessel of all that was remembered, half forgotten,

436
00:28:30.039 --> 00:28:34.400
<v Speaker 2>wished for, or quietly disbelieved. The question now, as I

437
00:28:34.440 --> 00:28:37.680
<v Speaker 2>set down my pen, was both larger and more marvelous

438
00:28:37.680 --> 00:28:41.000
<v Speaker 2>than before. What is the boundary, if any, between the

439
00:28:41.039 --> 00:28:44.359
<v Speaker 2>records we keep and the possibilities we create? And if

440
00:28:44.359 --> 00:28:47.680
<v Speaker 2>the library itself is alive to those currents, what else

441
00:28:48.160 --> 00:28:52.039
<v Speaker 2>out there in the city awaits rediscovery? Shaped by our

442
00:28:52.119 --> 00:28:56.839
<v Speaker 2>shifting consensus. All certainty for now had been replaced by

443
00:28:56.839 --> 00:29:00.839
<v Speaker 2>a mysterious and tremendous multiplicity, one that had been hiding

444
00:29:00.920 --> 00:29:05.480
<v Speaker 2>perhaps in plain sight among the shelves all along. Miss

445
00:29:05.519 --> 00:29:09.359
<v Speaker 2>Wrenner's office still quivered with the aftermath of our improbable discussion,

446
00:29:09.799 --> 00:29:13.480
<v Speaker 2>Her rolled blueprints cast like driftwood by the tide, antm

447
00:29:13.559 --> 00:29:17.279
<v Speaker 2>perched as if half poised for escape but unwilling to blink.

448
00:29:17.960 --> 00:29:21.119
<v Speaker 2>Between us. My notebook lay open pages, a blur of

449
00:29:21.160 --> 00:29:24.400
<v Speaker 2>hasty short hand and clippings, all pointing to our new

450
00:29:24.559 --> 00:29:29.599
<v Speaker 2>essential uncertainty. Shelves, rooms, and histories not just remembered, but

451
00:29:29.720 --> 00:29:33.400
<v Speaker 2>made and unmade by our very need to remember. I

452
00:29:33.400 --> 00:29:36.519
<v Speaker 2>could almost hear the city itself breathing through the mulli

453
00:29:36.559 --> 00:29:40.400
<v Speaker 2>and windows. Almost without needing a word, the three of

454
00:29:40.480 --> 00:29:43.680
<v Speaker 2>us assembled an unspoken pact. If the library was in

455
00:29:43.759 --> 00:29:48.160
<v Speaker 2>dialogue with our recollections, our skepticism, and our imaginings, then

456
00:29:48.200 --> 00:29:51.319
<v Speaker 2>the next step was obvious. Anton ripped a page from

457
00:29:51.359 --> 00:29:54.799
<v Speaker 2>his gridlined pad and drew a looping question marked outline

458
00:29:54.839 --> 00:29:58.759
<v Speaker 2>of the library's main floor. Miss Wrenner scavenged colored pencils

459
00:29:58.759 --> 00:30:02.000
<v Speaker 2>from her drawer. We should at least document the range

460
00:30:02.000 --> 00:30:05.680
<v Speaker 2>of realities currently on offer, she said, her lilt threaded

461
00:30:05.720 --> 00:30:10.160
<v Speaker 2>with playfulness. There was an exhilaration more than a scientist

462
00:30:10.279 --> 00:30:14.000
<v Speaker 2>in a moment of discovery less than religious awe somewhere

463
00:30:14.000 --> 00:30:17.559
<v Speaker 2>between the two that ran through me. If the present

464
00:30:17.640 --> 00:30:21.079
<v Speaker 2>shape of things was not fixed, but disputed, mapped by

465
00:30:21.119 --> 00:30:24.519
<v Speaker 2>consensus and imagination, then what might we find in the

466
00:30:24.559 --> 00:30:29.599
<v Speaker 2>company of many memories colliding? Within two days, invitations spread

467
00:30:29.920 --> 00:30:33.599
<v Speaker 2>quietly to avoid spooking any one into self conscious performance,

468
00:30:34.200 --> 00:30:38.200
<v Speaker 2>round table regulars, a couple of staff, missus Lee, who

469
00:30:38.359 --> 00:30:41.559
<v Speaker 2>arrived with her scarf tied in a complicated double knot

470
00:30:41.799 --> 00:30:45.240
<v Speaker 2>for courage, even a handful of the city's more attentive

471
00:30:45.319 --> 00:30:49.400
<v Speaker 2>high schoolers lured by the vague promise of campus credit research.

472
00:30:50.440 --> 00:30:53.400
<v Speaker 2>We began the survey in the main entry, with Sandra

473
00:30:53.559 --> 00:30:57.000
<v Speaker 2>keeping an amused eye from the desk and occasionally chiming

474
00:30:57.000 --> 00:31:00.279
<v Speaker 2>in with her insistence that they put the bath rooms

475
00:31:00.319 --> 00:31:03.039
<v Speaker 2>on the left in seventy seven. I'll swear to it

476
00:31:03.119 --> 00:31:07.559
<v Speaker 2>until I die, and anyone who disagrees owes me coffee.

477
00:31:07.920 --> 00:31:11.599
<v Speaker 2>Each participant received a template of the floor plan printed

478
00:31:11.599 --> 00:31:15.880
<v Speaker 2>from the digital archives, along with colored pencils, sticky notes,

479
00:31:16.119 --> 00:31:19.000
<v Speaker 2>and an hour to wander and record the building as

480
00:31:19.000 --> 00:31:22.680
<v Speaker 2>they remembered it. What followed was a chaos of memory.

481
00:31:23.160 --> 00:31:26.400
<v Speaker 2>In one version, the teen writing lounge had always been

482
00:31:26.440 --> 00:31:29.599
<v Speaker 2>a glass walled perch over the lobby's mosaic tile. In

483
00:31:29.680 --> 00:31:32.599
<v Speaker 2>another it existed only as a windless room behind the

484
00:31:32.599 --> 00:31:36.440
<v Speaker 2>staff break area with bean bags in acid green. The

485
00:31:36.440 --> 00:31:40.000
<v Speaker 2>spiral stairs on four out of eighteen maps snaked up

486
00:31:40.039 --> 00:31:44.079
<v Speaker 2>from the periodical section to a loft labeled phantom mezzanine.

487
00:31:44.599 --> 00:31:47.799
<v Speaker 2>Four others included a tunnel to the school gardens behind

488
00:31:47.799 --> 00:31:53.240
<v Speaker 2>the fiction stacks. Anton, with impish seriousness, detailed the old

489
00:31:53.400 --> 00:31:57.319
<v Speaker 2>underwater mural in the main corridor, something Miss Renner and

490
00:31:57.400 --> 00:32:01.039
<v Speaker 2>missus Lee both denied, but which three others described in

491
00:32:01.039 --> 00:32:06.519
<v Speaker 2>intricate chromatic detail. We compared our findings immediately, laying every

492
00:32:06.599 --> 00:32:09.880
<v Speaker 2>map and marked up directory across the conference table. It

493
00:32:09.920 --> 00:32:12.680
<v Speaker 2>did not add up. Two people would argue a certain

494
00:32:12.680 --> 00:32:16.359
<v Speaker 2>corridor never existed, while a third quietly would stand and

495
00:32:16.400 --> 00:32:19.680
<v Speaker 2>describe its shape, the precise candescence of the lamp shades,

496
00:32:20.000 --> 00:32:24.359
<v Speaker 2>the loamy sent particular to that isolated space, sometimes prompting

497
00:32:24.400 --> 00:32:28.400
<v Speaker 2>an oh, now I do recall, and sometimes evoking only

498
00:32:28.440 --> 00:32:32.559
<v Speaker 2>blank confusion. No one could agree on a definitive version

499
00:32:32.599 --> 00:32:35.599
<v Speaker 2>of the building. Yet at the moment that a memory

500
00:32:35.640 --> 00:32:39.160
<v Speaker 2>crystallized between several of us. Something subtle would ripple through

501
00:32:39.200 --> 00:32:43.640
<v Speaker 2>the surroundings. A hallways acoustic changed, the crown molding seemed

502
00:32:43.640 --> 00:32:47.680
<v Speaker 2>to shimmer. A door, long painted shut stood ajar. If

503
00:32:47.680 --> 00:32:52.440
<v Speaker 2>the conversations shifted elsewhere, or if consensus evaporated, these features

504
00:32:52.480 --> 00:32:57.400
<v Speaker 2>faded away, sometimes replaced by another small oddity, sometimes leaving

505
00:32:57.440 --> 00:33:01.519
<v Speaker 2>only the ineffable sense of something out of joint. Missus Lee,

506
00:33:01.680 --> 00:33:04.880
<v Speaker 2>who started the day cheerfully skeptical, was the first to

507
00:33:05.000 --> 00:33:08.640
<v Speaker 2>articulate what I'd only been dancing around. It's as if,

508
00:33:09.000 --> 00:33:11.839
<v Speaker 2>well as if being certain makes a thing more real.

509
00:33:12.319 --> 00:33:15.240
<v Speaker 2>But when we bicker or stop caring, it's like letting

510
00:33:15.279 --> 00:33:19.400
<v Speaker 2>go of a string. The balloon floats off or turns invisible.

511
00:33:20.440 --> 00:33:22.680
<v Speaker 2>She said this with a laugh, But there was a

512
00:33:22.720 --> 00:33:26.680
<v Speaker 2>shiver beneath it. I recognized a sense of the ground shifting,

513
00:33:26.960 --> 00:33:31.039
<v Speaker 2>but not in any way that threatened. Midway through, Anton

514
00:33:31.119 --> 00:33:33.960
<v Speaker 2>led us on a spontaneous group walk, tracing where he

515
00:33:34.000 --> 00:33:37.599
<v Speaker 2>insisted the mural corridor should be Sandra, who had just

516
00:33:37.680 --> 00:33:41.119
<v Speaker 2>that weak swap to the afternoon shift, complained, you're all

517
00:33:41.240 --> 00:33:44.400
<v Speaker 2>chasing ghosts. But as two others threw in memories of

518
00:33:44.440 --> 00:33:48.160
<v Speaker 2>strangely cool air by the reference desk, and an unexplained plaque,

519
00:33:48.160 --> 00:33:51.240
<v Speaker 2>once seen but now vanished. A flutter of faint blue

520
00:33:51.279 --> 00:33:54.799
<v Speaker 2>brushstrokes flickered into sight at the corner, the barest echo

521
00:33:54.880 --> 00:33:58.359
<v Speaker 2>of moving water. It vanished as soon as we tried

522
00:33:58.400 --> 00:34:01.640
<v Speaker 2>to pin it down, but not before three participants reached

523
00:34:01.680 --> 00:34:04.759
<v Speaker 2>out to touch the wall and declared it slightly colder,

524
00:34:05.079 --> 00:34:10.400
<v Speaker 2>slightly damp. I found myself laughing, a bubbling, delighted sound.

525
00:34:10.440 --> 00:34:14.360
<v Speaker 2>I almost didn't recognize. The physical world was not surrendering

526
00:34:14.400 --> 00:34:18.960
<v Speaker 2>to nonsense, the library was not becoming a fantasy. Instead,

527
00:34:19.079 --> 00:34:21.400
<v Speaker 2>it felt as if there was a kind of negotiation,

528
00:34:21.840 --> 00:34:26.039
<v Speaker 2>as if the building was porous to vivid, mutually sustained memory.

529
00:34:27.079 --> 00:34:30.280
<v Speaker 2>As the exercise wore on, I noticed a pattern wherever

530
00:34:30.320 --> 00:34:34.480
<v Speaker 2>two or three recollections strongly overlapped, especially those tinged with

531
00:34:34.559 --> 00:34:39.039
<v Speaker 2>nostalgia or described with detail, the evidence of their truth increased.

532
00:34:39.519 --> 00:34:42.360
<v Speaker 2>A faint whiff of poster paint in the phantom mezzanine,

533
00:34:42.920 --> 00:34:45.239
<v Speaker 2>a single step up in a corridor that had always

534
00:34:45.599 --> 00:34:49.880
<v Speaker 2>officially been flat, an unexplained, neatly hand lettered sign on

535
00:34:49.920 --> 00:34:53.159
<v Speaker 2>the community board advertising a chess club meeting in the

536
00:34:53.280 --> 00:34:57.679
<v Speaker 2>very room Anton had always sworn was storage, and yet

537
00:34:57.800 --> 00:35:01.280
<v Speaker 2>attempts to trap these anomalies by mapping or photographing them

538
00:35:01.440 --> 00:35:05.519
<v Speaker 2>directly almost always failed. A photograph would yield only the

539
00:35:05.679 --> 00:35:10.920
<v Speaker 2>unremarkable expected walls and signs. The phantom mezzanine vanished from

540
00:35:10.920 --> 00:35:15.079
<v Speaker 2>every picture, leaving only shadows. The evidence abided by the

541
00:35:15.119 --> 00:35:19.480
<v Speaker 2>same laws as a shared story, real while being told absent.

542
00:35:19.559 --> 00:35:23.440
<v Speaker 2>As soon as consensus waned that night, I left the

543
00:35:23.480 --> 00:35:27.079
<v Speaker 2>building with a sense of reality not undermined, but expanded,

544
00:35:27.480 --> 00:35:32.360
<v Speaker 2>a crowd sourced reality, collective but always provisional. The gap

545
00:35:32.360 --> 00:35:35.960
<v Speaker 2>between imagination and experience was narrower than I had ever

546
00:35:36.039 --> 00:35:39.760
<v Speaker 2>allowed in my years of teaching. All my skepticism had

547
00:35:39.760 --> 00:35:44.719
<v Speaker 2>not been wasted, it had simply mistaken its object determined, Now,

548
00:35:44.960 --> 00:35:48.480
<v Speaker 2>I resolved to aim my curiosity outward. If the library

549
00:35:48.519 --> 00:35:51.719
<v Speaker 2>could be so constructed, woven as much from what's wished

550
00:35:51.719 --> 00:35:55.679
<v Speaker 2>for or half recalled as from what's truly documented, then

551
00:35:55.719 --> 00:35:59.800
<v Speaker 2>what of the city's broader, less tangible stories. The next morning,

552
00:36:00.079 --> 00:36:02.719
<v Speaker 2>note book in hand, I set out with Anton for

553
00:36:02.760 --> 00:36:07.320
<v Speaker 2>the impossible isle. We found it, though naturally it took

554
00:36:07.360 --> 00:36:11.960
<v Speaker 2>a peculiar combination of reference points, conversational cues, and the

555
00:36:12.000 --> 00:36:15.360
<v Speaker 2>mild disinterest of a passing page to even slide aside

556
00:36:15.400 --> 00:36:19.679
<v Speaker 2>the mobile shelf. This time I brought missus Lee, hoping

557
00:36:19.719 --> 00:36:22.719
<v Speaker 2>her selective memory would stir the contents, and to my

558
00:36:22.840 --> 00:36:27.280
<v Speaker 2>surprise it did. Within the books, again clustered in less

559
00:36:27.320 --> 00:36:31.880
<v Speaker 2>than expected logic, here were the lost city streets, harbor promenade,

560
00:36:32.199 --> 00:36:36.480
<v Speaker 2>lakeside market, garnet Court, Each book filled with maps and

561
00:36:36.519 --> 00:36:41.360
<v Speaker 2>now even old photographs sepiotone groupings posed in front of storefronts,

562
00:36:41.719 --> 00:36:45.159
<v Speaker 2>children with dogs, a parade I could almost picture, winding

563
00:36:45.199 --> 00:36:49.719
<v Speaker 2>down some blind alley of recollection. Missus Lee, squinting at

564
00:36:49.719 --> 00:36:53.639
<v Speaker 2>a photograph, tapped a finger. I know that face. Didn't

565
00:36:53.639 --> 00:36:55.960
<v Speaker 2>he run the hardware store near the old bridge in

566
00:36:56.320 --> 00:37:00.360
<v Speaker 2>what did they call it? Silver End? She faltered, ganning

567
00:37:00.400 --> 00:37:05.480
<v Speaker 2>my expression for confirmation. Anton, his brow furrowed, told her gently,

568
00:37:05.920 --> 00:37:10.880
<v Speaker 2>No such neighborhood exists, at least it doesn't now. She shrugged,

569
00:37:11.039 --> 00:37:15.239
<v Speaker 2>not fussed, and drifted to a shelf marked initiatives, failed

570
00:37:15.280 --> 00:37:21.440
<v Speaker 2>and forgotten. Pamphlets described citywide tramway pilots, ambitious utopian gardens,

571
00:37:21.719 --> 00:37:25.800
<v Speaker 2>a neighborhood literary journal called Asterisk, The Loop Ledger Asterisk.

572
00:37:26.280 --> 00:37:29.119
<v Speaker 2>None of which survived any cross examination of the city

573
00:37:29.159 --> 00:37:33.400
<v Speaker 2>newspaper archives, nor the proud oral traditions of the round table.

574
00:37:34.440 --> 00:37:38.679
<v Speaker 2>This backstage of the library, this impossible corridor, felt like

575
00:37:38.719 --> 00:37:43.199
<v Speaker 2>the repository of everything that might have been. Out of curiosity,

576
00:37:43.440 --> 00:37:46.639
<v Speaker 2>I borrowed one slender volume, returning it to the primary

577
00:37:46.639 --> 00:37:49.480
<v Speaker 2>reading room, laying it gently between the new books and

578
00:37:49.519 --> 00:37:53.440
<v Speaker 2>the local history display. I watched quietly as patrons drifted

579
00:37:53.480 --> 00:37:56.679
<v Speaker 2>by Hall. One of the round table contrarians skimmed a

580
00:37:56.719 --> 00:38:00.440
<v Speaker 2>page and announced, I remember the Lakeside Market smelled of

581
00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:04.679
<v Speaker 2>oranges before they built that hideous apartment block. Another shook

582
00:38:04.679 --> 00:38:08.239
<v Speaker 2>their head. I swear you're remembering somewhere else. They never

583
00:38:08.320 --> 00:38:12.159
<v Speaker 2>sold produce after the fire. Already you could see the

584
00:38:12.199 --> 00:38:15.519
<v Speaker 2>thing happening. The more we talked, the clearer the weird

585
00:38:15.639 --> 00:38:20.639
<v Speaker 2>shifting line between fact and fiction grew. Out of scrutiny, disagreement,

586
00:38:20.880 --> 00:38:25.400
<v Speaker 2>and affectionate debate. An odd stabilization occurred. The book's entry

587
00:38:25.440 --> 00:38:29.639
<v Speaker 2>migrated to the digital catalog as asterisk Lakeside Market a

588
00:38:29.679 --> 00:38:33.840
<v Speaker 2>community History, and its call number edged itself into proper sequence.

589
00:38:34.760 --> 00:38:37.920
<v Speaker 2>But a day later, when conversation died away and no

590
00:38:38.039 --> 00:38:41.800
<v Speaker 2>one referenced the neighborhood. Again, the catalog reverted, the book

591
00:38:41.840 --> 00:38:48.280
<v Speaker 2>simply drifting, first misshelved, then returned, then absent entirely. I

592
00:38:48.400 --> 00:38:51.159
<v Speaker 2>was left with a distinct impression, not just that the

593
00:38:51.199 --> 00:38:54.679
<v Speaker 2>library recorded asterisk the fullness of reality, but that it

594
00:38:54.719 --> 00:38:57.920
<v Speaker 2>preserved a sort of quantum of possibility, a many world's

595
00:38:57.920 --> 00:39:01.800
<v Speaker 2>shelf of half enacted, half ignored stories and places. The

596
00:39:01.840 --> 00:39:05.519
<v Speaker 2>act of attention, of memory, of dispute even was the

597
00:39:05.599 --> 00:39:09.679
<v Speaker 2>main ingredient. It was not simply archive. It was collection,

598
00:39:10.039 --> 00:39:13.559
<v Speaker 2>curation and negotiation of all that wavered at the edges

599
00:39:13.599 --> 00:39:18.039
<v Speaker 2>of collective. Knowing this all begged a new experiment, I

600
00:39:18.079 --> 00:39:21.400
<v Speaker 2>approached Anton with my wildest idea. Yet, what if we

601
00:39:21.480 --> 00:39:25.360
<v Speaker 2>fabricated an event out of whole cloth, no basis, in fact,

602
00:39:25.519 --> 00:39:29.360
<v Speaker 2>no rumor nothing salvagable from the past, and seeded it

603
00:39:29.400 --> 00:39:31.960
<v Speaker 2>in the local history to test what kind of echo,

604
00:39:32.159 --> 00:39:37.079
<v Speaker 2>if any, the library produced. Anton, delighted, reached for his

605
00:39:37.119 --> 00:39:40.519
<v Speaker 2>ever present supply of fluorescent post it notes. The Big

606
00:39:40.599 --> 00:39:43.760
<v Speaker 2>Silver Parade nineteen sixty eight, he said, with a flourish

607
00:39:44.000 --> 00:39:47.199
<v Speaker 2>penning out a flier, complete with sketched trombones and confetti.

608
00:39:47.719 --> 00:39:51.440
<v Speaker 2>Come one, come all, celebrate the city's unity route down

609
00:39:51.559 --> 00:39:55.400
<v Speaker 2>King Street, live music Mayre's address. We added details with

610
00:39:55.480 --> 00:39:59.360
<v Speaker 2>care make it plausible but clearly fabricated. We left the

611
00:39:59.360 --> 00:40:02.679
<v Speaker 2>fly attack to the cork board inside the local event archive,

612
00:40:02.960 --> 00:40:07.239
<v Speaker 2>then waited days passed on my next visit, or what

613
00:40:07.320 --> 00:40:10.840
<v Speaker 2>felt like the appropriate time interval, for time also ran differently.

614
00:40:10.840 --> 00:40:14.079
<v Speaker 2>Amid these uncertainties, I found to my mingled horror and

615
00:40:14.119 --> 00:40:17.320
<v Speaker 2>delight that not only had our flier accumulated a small

616
00:40:17.360 --> 00:40:21.800
<v Speaker 2>passel of curious sticky notes, did this really happen? Sounds fun?

617
00:40:21.920 --> 00:40:24.480
<v Speaker 2>Wish we could do it again? But a new entry

618
00:40:24.519 --> 00:40:28.239
<v Speaker 2>had appeared in a battered library bulletin referencing the return

619
00:40:28.280 --> 00:40:33.280
<v Speaker 2>of the Silver Parade, last seen in sixty eight, even stranger,

620
00:40:33.480 --> 00:40:36.639
<v Speaker 2>in an out of the way shelving area, three pamphlets

621
00:40:36.639 --> 00:40:40.320
<v Speaker 2>and a thin typescript book chronicled the Big Silver Parade,

622
00:40:40.679 --> 00:40:45.000
<v Speaker 2>its impact and legacy. The effect was not perfect, The

623
00:40:45.079 --> 00:40:47.719
<v Speaker 2>memory was delicate and felt more like a house of

624
00:40:47.800 --> 00:40:51.880
<v Speaker 2>cards than a robust scaffolding. But it had occurred. We'd

625
00:40:51.920 --> 00:40:56.320
<v Speaker 2>watched by pure invention and the mild complicity of passing curiosity,

626
00:40:56.599 --> 00:40:59.880
<v Speaker 2>as the library generated asterisk, a trace, then a wreck,

627
00:41:00.400 --> 00:41:04.000
<v Speaker 2>then for a short time a sliver of official reality.

628
00:41:05.079 --> 00:41:07.920
<v Speaker 2>Eager to pull the thread further, I attempted to remove

629
00:41:07.960 --> 00:41:12.239
<v Speaker 2>the fliers. Oddly, the literature clung to its existence. Some

630
00:41:12.400 --> 00:41:16.519
<v Speaker 2>pamphlets no longer appeared in the catalog, but resisted full excision,

631
00:41:16.960 --> 00:41:21.760
<v Speaker 2>reappearing after being reshelved, or at times simply unreadable, as

632
00:41:21.760 --> 00:41:24.960
<v Speaker 2>if the type had run with water. The effect was

633
00:41:25.000 --> 00:41:29.440
<v Speaker 2>neither sinister nor comic, but instead deeply and quietly fascinating.

634
00:41:30.440 --> 00:41:33.320
<v Speaker 2>When I confessed all to Miss Renner, she smiled with

635
00:41:33.400 --> 00:41:37.000
<v Speaker 2>the calm of someone who has long grown comfortable with ambiguity.

636
00:41:37.719 --> 00:41:41.639
<v Speaker 2>There are stories cartographers drawing in whole towns by mistake

637
00:41:41.719 --> 00:41:45.280
<v Speaker 2>on maps, and those towns becoming real for decades just

638
00:41:45.360 --> 00:41:48.920
<v Speaker 2>by virtue of being repeated. Perhaps our library is just

639
00:41:49.079 --> 00:41:52.679
<v Speaker 2>more transparent, more honest about how we shaped the world.

640
00:41:52.760 --> 00:41:57.079
<v Speaker 2>By discussing it later, reflecting by the main windows over

641
00:41:57.119 --> 00:42:01.199
<v Speaker 2>the dusklet stacks, I found my fascination shift again. The

642
00:42:01.320 --> 00:42:04.920
<v Speaker 2>library was not some magical engine conjuring nonsense, nor a

643
00:42:05.039 --> 00:42:10.119
<v Speaker 2>random generator. It was curating on several translucent tears, the possible,

644
00:42:10.239 --> 00:42:14.559
<v Speaker 2>the mistaken, the cherished, the almost true. There was a reckoning,

645
00:42:14.800 --> 00:42:19.679
<v Speaker 2>a system, even a gravity to what persisted. Anton confirmed

646
00:42:19.800 --> 00:42:23.719
<v Speaker 2>after further trials that a pure fiction rarely lasted unless

647
00:42:23.719 --> 00:42:27.760
<v Speaker 2>it was picked up, wondered about, debated, or woven into

648
00:42:27.800 --> 00:42:32.639
<v Speaker 2>the city's myriad family stories. Small typos or tangential flights

649
00:42:32.639 --> 00:42:37.360
<v Speaker 2>of invention disappeared unless they were fed by conversation and retelling.

650
00:42:38.400 --> 00:42:41.280
<v Speaker 2>It was at this stage that my curiosity, no longer

651
00:42:41.320 --> 00:42:45.719
<v Speaker 2>so easily satisfied by collecting examples, shifted to pattern. With

652
00:42:45.840 --> 00:42:49.679
<v Speaker 2>Missus Lee Anton and others, we began to log instances

653
00:42:49.679 --> 00:42:54.519
<v Speaker 2>of shelf shifting and catalog distortion beyond ordinary forgetfulness. The

654
00:42:54.599 --> 00:42:58.000
<v Speaker 2>results built a new theory. The more something was debated

655
00:42:58.159 --> 00:43:01.679
<v Speaker 2>or fondly remembered, the longer it persisted in the architecture,

656
00:43:02.079 --> 00:43:05.920
<v Speaker 2>sometimes even migrating into wider memory, as if the library

657
00:43:05.960 --> 00:43:10.760
<v Speaker 2>ceded the city's oral histories. Conversely, things that failed to

658
00:43:10.800 --> 00:43:15.719
<v Speaker 2>arouse attention that evoked neither nostalgia nor disputation faded rapidly.

659
00:43:16.280 --> 00:43:20.800
<v Speaker 2>Files overwritten records blacked out or dissolved into ambiguous shelf space,

660
00:43:21.159 --> 00:43:24.599
<v Speaker 2>a palimpsest forever in the process of being rewritten. We

661
00:43:24.639 --> 00:43:28.039
<v Speaker 2>saw this most clearly in the catalogs. Entries with misspelled

662
00:43:28.079 --> 00:43:31.760
<v Speaker 2>street names or orphaned event descriptions which gleamed for a

663
00:43:31.840 --> 00:43:34.559
<v Speaker 2>day or two in the digital record, and then slipped

664
00:43:34.599 --> 00:43:37.679
<v Speaker 2>back into the void unless enough people noticed to keep

665
00:43:37.679 --> 00:43:42.639
<v Speaker 2>the anomaly alive. Such meticulous culling and renewals slowly raised

666
00:43:42.639 --> 00:43:46.920
<v Speaker 2>a deeper question. If reality within these walls and perhaps beyond,

667
00:43:47.440 --> 00:43:52.559
<v Speaker 2>depended so directly on consensus, recollection and imaginative attention, what

668
00:43:52.679 --> 00:43:57.440
<v Speaker 2>exactly was being stored, manufactured, or preserved? Here was the city,

669
00:43:57.800 --> 00:44:01.719
<v Speaker 2>through its library, maintaining a WRECS reord of all possible histories,

670
00:44:02.159 --> 00:44:05.159
<v Speaker 2>or only those that were most needed, most beloved, most

671
00:44:05.320 --> 00:44:09.599
<v Speaker 2>argued over? And what finally might this say about all

672
00:44:09.639 --> 00:44:13.280
<v Speaker 2>the other archives, the histories half glimpsed and never quite

673
00:44:13.280 --> 00:44:17.639
<v Speaker 2>committed to certainty by the world beyond. As the weeks passed,

674
00:44:17.880 --> 00:44:21.159
<v Speaker 2>I conducted longer interviews, not just with miss Renner or

675
00:44:21.199 --> 00:44:24.719
<v Speaker 2>Anton or missus Lee, but with children with newcomers to

676
00:44:24.760 --> 00:44:28.039
<v Speaker 2>the city, with high school students and juniors who'd spent

677
00:44:28.079 --> 00:44:32.119
<v Speaker 2>their saturdays curled beneath the reading windows. I asked about

678
00:44:32.119 --> 00:44:36.280
<v Speaker 2>the oldest, strangest, or most cherished memory they carried of

679
00:44:36.320 --> 00:44:40.840
<v Speaker 2>the library or the city at large. Their responses mapped

680
00:44:40.840 --> 00:44:44.840
<v Speaker 2>alongside my chaotic blueprints produced not only a topography of

681
00:44:44.880 --> 00:44:49.159
<v Speaker 2>shifting rooms, but a heat map of changing convictions. One

682
00:44:49.199 --> 00:44:54.159
<v Speaker 2>participant recalled with unswerving confidence that the old auditorium was

683
00:44:54.199 --> 00:44:59.159
<v Speaker 2>once painted sky blue. Another insisted it had always been cream.

684
00:44:59.679 --> 00:45:05.639
<v Speaker 2>These conflicting recollections debated passionately, sometimes produced brief, fragile evidence,

685
00:45:06.119 --> 00:45:09.760
<v Speaker 2>a sky blue ceiling beam here, a borrowed folding chair

686
00:45:09.840 --> 00:45:14.159
<v Speaker 2>painted cream there, but vanished if not revisited within days.

687
00:45:14.880 --> 00:45:18.519
<v Speaker 2>Incorporating these narratives, I began to see a fabric emerge,

688
00:45:18.840 --> 00:45:23.039
<v Speaker 2>a dynamic, city scale version of the palimpsest, endlessly revised,

689
00:45:23.079 --> 00:45:26.840
<v Speaker 2>not only in fact but in belief. My scribbled diagrams

690
00:45:26.880 --> 00:45:30.719
<v Speaker 2>now coexisted with digital spreadsheets and a short presentation I

691
00:45:30.800 --> 00:45:34.039
<v Speaker 2>crafted for the History round table, not a lecture, but

692
00:45:34.079 --> 00:45:38.800
<v Speaker 2>an invitation to see the records of the city as vital, plural, alive,

693
00:45:38.880 --> 00:45:43.119
<v Speaker 2>to revision alive because of it. At the round table,

694
00:45:43.320 --> 00:45:46.639
<v Speaker 2>instead of my usual prasis, I spoke of what we'd witnessed.

695
00:45:47.239 --> 00:45:49.960
<v Speaker 2>The library isn't the cold warehouse of the city's past,

696
00:45:50.320 --> 00:45:54.000
<v Speaker 2>I said, feeling every eye sharpened with curiosity. It is

697
00:45:54.039 --> 00:45:57.880
<v Speaker 2>an ever renewed conversation. Every floorboard and call number and

698
00:45:58.000 --> 00:46:02.840
<v Speaker 2>vanished room is the record of concern, nostalgia, hope, rumor invention,

699
00:46:03.360 --> 00:46:06.119
<v Speaker 2>a palimpsest not only of what was, but of what

700
00:46:06.239 --> 00:46:09.639
<v Speaker 2>could have been. And perhaps that's not unique to hear.

701
00:46:10.079 --> 00:46:13.280
<v Speaker 2>Perhaps every town hides such a place somewhere, if you

702
00:46:13.360 --> 00:46:17.239
<v Speaker 2>know where to look. What happened next was a gentle eruption,

703
00:46:17.719 --> 00:46:23.119
<v Speaker 2>each member offering suddenly their own impossible memory. June recalled

704
00:46:23.119 --> 00:46:26.880
<v Speaker 2>an old city lane that vanished overnight. S h Wetta

705
00:46:26.920 --> 00:46:31.320
<v Speaker 2>recounted a vanished corner bakery, too stubbornly remembered to be dismissed.

706
00:46:32.360 --> 00:46:37.320
<v Speaker 2>The line between recollection, wish and disguised fabrication dissolved not

707
00:46:37.440 --> 00:46:41.760
<v Speaker 2>to confusion or chaos, but to delight, the joyful acceptance

708
00:46:41.800 --> 00:46:45.800
<v Speaker 2>that certainty is overvalued, that meaning comes more from sharing

709
00:46:45.840 --> 00:46:49.719
<v Speaker 2>and disputing than from the silent accumulation of proven fact.

710
00:46:50.840 --> 00:46:54.280
<v Speaker 2>In that moment, I recognized the climax of my investigation.

711
00:46:54.960 --> 00:46:59.079
<v Speaker 2>The library's phenomena were not merely eccentricities of space or catalog.

712
00:46:59.559 --> 00:47:03.280
<v Speaker 2>They were revelations about the way human communities anchor themselves,

713
00:47:03.679 --> 00:47:06.760
<v Speaker 2>not just in what's true, but in what's asterisk held

714
00:47:06.800 --> 00:47:09.280
<v Speaker 2>as true for as long as enough of us care

715
00:47:09.639 --> 00:47:14.480
<v Speaker 2>or wonder or remember together. The building, its static outline,

716
00:47:14.480 --> 00:47:18.280
<v Speaker 2>as provisional as any myth anchored those shared stories, and

717
00:47:18.360 --> 00:47:21.800
<v Speaker 2>in anchoring gave them just enough embodiment that the world

718
00:47:21.880 --> 00:47:26.679
<v Speaker 2>seemed bigger, richer, more provisional, and infinitely more wondrous than

719
00:47:26.679 --> 00:47:30.880
<v Speaker 2>I had believed possible. After the round table, I lingered

720
00:47:30.880 --> 00:47:33.719
<v Speaker 2>in the stillness of the genealogy room, not out of

721
00:47:33.760 --> 00:47:37.840
<v Speaker 2>doubt or defeat, but in quiet awe. All those years

722
00:47:37.840 --> 00:47:43.719
<v Speaker 2>of demanding reliable references, tidy conclusions, single correct versions. How

723
00:47:43.800 --> 00:47:48.239
<v Speaker 2>small those ambitions felt now compared to the generative, complicated,

724
00:47:48.440 --> 00:47:54.719
<v Speaker 2>collective wildness of memory. Outside the city, Pilgrims, students, ritarees.

725
00:47:54.840 --> 00:47:58.840
<v Speaker 2>City staff wandered under the shifting trees, none the wiser

726
00:47:58.880 --> 00:48:01.639
<v Speaker 2>that within these walls, the record of the city was

727
00:48:01.719 --> 00:48:05.800
<v Speaker 2>being drafted, erased, and reimagined, not by a select few,

728
00:48:06.239 --> 00:48:10.000
<v Speaker 2>but by every voice willing to wonder. Missus Lee, on

729
00:48:10.079 --> 00:48:13.119
<v Speaker 2>her way out, paused beside me. You know, to day

730
00:48:13.159 --> 00:48:16.880
<v Speaker 2>I remembered something else. My sister's wedding happened right here

731
00:48:17.039 --> 00:48:19.880
<v Speaker 2>in a room that doesn't exist now, or maybe it

732
00:48:19.960 --> 00:48:26.039
<v Speaker 2>never did. She smiled, untroubled. It was nice all the same. Anton,

733
00:48:26.239 --> 00:48:29.599
<v Speaker 2>shaking out his note book, added, maybe next year we'll

734
00:48:29.639 --> 00:48:33.360
<v Speaker 2>rediscover another lost hallway, if we remember it hard enough.

735
00:48:34.360 --> 00:48:38.639
<v Speaker 2>Miss Renner, hearing this, only winked in that final hour,

736
00:48:38.960 --> 00:48:41.639
<v Speaker 2>as the last patron slipped away for the evening, I

737
00:48:41.719 --> 00:48:44.719
<v Speaker 2>returned to my usual reading nook by the window, watching

738
00:48:44.800 --> 00:48:48.840
<v Speaker 2>lamplight scribble bright shapes across the floor. The city outside

739
00:48:48.880 --> 00:48:53.119
<v Speaker 2>looked unchanged, commuters crossing the square, street lights blinking on

740
00:48:53.199 --> 00:48:57.079
<v Speaker 2>at precise intervals, a dog chasing a stubborn pigeon. But

741
00:48:57.159 --> 00:49:00.519
<v Speaker 2>the world now thrummed with hidden richness, not just for

742
00:49:00.559 --> 00:49:03.280
<v Speaker 2>what we know, but for what we allow ourselves to remember,

743
00:49:03.440 --> 00:49:08.360
<v Speaker 2>to imagine, to stubbornly half believe. The library, my anchor,

744
00:49:08.760 --> 00:49:12.159
<v Speaker 2>my greatest subject of study, had revealed itself less as

745
00:49:12.199 --> 00:49:15.000
<v Speaker 2>a stockpoll of what's fixed, and more as a living,

746
00:49:15.239 --> 00:49:20.440
<v Speaker 2>co authored network of remembered possibility. I realized, with profound

747
00:49:20.519 --> 00:49:23.480
<v Speaker 2>humility that much of what I'd taken as rigid fact,

748
00:49:23.840 --> 00:49:27.079
<v Speaker 2>what I defended in my classroom or round table arguments,

749
00:49:27.440 --> 00:49:31.920
<v Speaker 2>had always borne the fingerprints of collective provisional agreement, each

750
00:49:32.079 --> 00:49:37.840
<v Speaker 2>certainty provisional, each record reversible, and every community alive. Not

751
00:49:37.880 --> 00:49:42.079
<v Speaker 2>because it found the perfect record, but because it kept telling, revising,

752
00:49:42.280 --> 00:49:46.159
<v Speaker 2>and sharing the stories it needed. I will always return

753
00:49:46.199 --> 00:49:49.639
<v Speaker 2>to the library. Sometimes I search for my favorite shelf.

754
00:49:49.960 --> 00:49:53.960
<v Speaker 2>Sometimes I walk unfamiliar corners, now cheerfully tolerant of their

755
00:49:54.000 --> 00:49:58.960
<v Speaker 2>shifting outlines. The history round table continues, heated debates and all,

756
00:49:59.360 --> 00:50:02.159
<v Speaker 2>but the tone is lighter, closer to joy than to

757
00:50:02.239 --> 00:50:06.559
<v Speaker 2>frustrated research. The city's map may be drawn and redrawn,

758
00:50:06.880 --> 00:50:10.400
<v Speaker 2>but it is always richer for possibility. So let me

759
00:50:10.480 --> 00:50:13.519
<v Speaker 2>leave you with this, the last and most important implication

760
00:50:13.599 --> 00:50:16.360
<v Speaker 2>I have to offer. Perhaps if you return to your

761
00:50:16.400 --> 00:50:20.440
<v Speaker 2>own library, or your favorite block, cafe, alleyway, even your

762
00:50:20.519 --> 00:50:24.199
<v Speaker 2>corner store often and attentively enough, you might some day

763
00:50:24.280 --> 00:50:27.039
<v Speaker 2>stumble across a book, a room, or even a whole

764
00:50:27.079 --> 00:50:30.039
<v Speaker 2>street you have only half remembered or only just begun

765
00:50:30.079 --> 00:50:33.519
<v Speaker 2>to imagine, and perhaps for a little while, it will

766
00:50:33.559 --> 00:50:36.840
<v Speaker 2>be as real as anything else. You know. That is

767
00:50:36.880 --> 00:50:39.599
<v Speaker 2>the wonder open to all of us, the world we

768
00:50:39.719 --> 00:50:46.679
<v Speaker 2>shape together with the shifting, indelible work of memory.

769
00:50:45.960 --> 00:50:48.440
<v Speaker 1>And that is the end. Thank you for listening, and

770
00:50:48.480 --> 00:50:58.719
<v Speaker 1>I will see you in the next one.