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the library, a visitor/2

As a matter of fact, Dr. Hausner had started talking again. The low drone of his voice brought me back from my existential self-doubt to the mundane world of the Summerville library. Or not so mundane as I had just recently discovered. I drifted off again as if lured away by my own obsessive thoughts.  What was real? What was dream? Where was I when I wasn’t aware of myself? Where was I when I was asleep in my bed? I pinched myself hard to make myself listen to the melodic voice of the blind man by my side.

“Normally they go about their own business, “ Dr. Hausner concluded at that moment.  “But of course they are bored.” He seemed to be thinking for a moment, folding his elegant white fingers in his lap. Then he added: “Even in the library.“ He sounded incredulous as if that was an incomprehensible idea.  “But what are they doing here?,” I ask. “Where do they come from?”

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the library, a visitor

Dr. Aaron Hausner cocked his head as if he was listening to the retreating sound of my voice slowly travelling into the distance of the library, finally getting caught in some shelves, its individual corresponding vibrations disintegrating and archiving themselves alphabetically in the juvenile fiction section somewhere between Susan Cooper, E.L. Königsburg and Madeleine L’Engle. “Dr. Hausner,” I whispered, “do you remember me?” He smiled. “You sound tired,” he observed instead of an answer, “I say, you don’t sound well at all.” I felt a brief wave of frustration and annoyance. No one ever answered my questions. But then the warmth of compassion in his voice reached me and to my surprise I felt my eyes filling with tears. I swallowed hard. It had been a while since someone had showed an interest in how I was feeling. We sat in silence for a while. Dr. Hausner didn’t press for an answer, and I sat back, not feeling the pressure to make any kind of conversation. There was a strange, comforting feeling that he kept me in his focus even though he didn’t inquire any further. We sat almost next to each other in silent company. I felt real and alive.

I don’t know whether I was crying. I might have been. There were a few moments when I felt peaceful. But after a while the questions came sneaking back to my mind. They were destructive and very smart about it. And I started feeling agitated again. Hell, I didn’t even know whether this grandfather, his reassuringly old fashioned, three piece suit clashing with his white skinned, bare feet in biblical sandals, who was providing me with his compassionate company, whether this man actually existed.  He immediately sensed my aggravation and shifted in his seat as if releasing me from his interest. Maybe my breathing pattern changed. Or maybe he was just a part of my mind, responding to me because he was me.  I briefly contemplated if I could ask some other visitor whether Dr. Hausner existed, but the problem was really, that everybody I would maybe choose to ask could equally be a fabrication of my mind. I couldn’t prove anybody’s existence. Not even my own. I just had to operate on the assumption that I existed and that people I talked to existed, too.

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lunacy

From that day on my world has been different. Even though I have lost some of the feverishness that I lived with back then, a feverishness that brought on a clarity about which I knew nothing as long as it lasted, I still hold it for possible that at any moment in our lives just about anything can happen. I still know that we are like divers in a deep ocean finding access to different currents and tides, each one of them distinctly different in temperature, clarity and speed. Accepting the reality of the girl in the window I acknowledged that I preferred to be raving mad to inhabiting a world without surprises. A suburban world where everything was designed to be stagnant or at least to create the never to be questioned illusion of stability. Even my free spirited artist mother surfed the tide of that illusion. That day I rejected the comforting hand of a reality created by others for needs I didn’t even knew I might have one day. Instead I allowed myself an unfiltered acknowledgement of the impulses that my brain felt inclined to produce. I did not know whether or not there was anything out there at all, I didn’t know if we possess any kind of objective reality but whereas before that had horribly worried me (along with the question how to prove to oneself that one exists at all outside the universe of our own brain), suddenly I was intrigued by the freedom of it. So what – if this girl in the mirror did not exist, I could still see her bright and clear, she looked like a normal kid.

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Leonardo and mirror script

I sat down on my chair and opened my notebook. A yellow, folded over sheet of legal paper slid out and in one smooth gliding motion fell onto the floor. The old lady. I had completely forgotten about her note. I picked it up and unfolded it. The creases were precise like origami folds and still remembered the birdlike fingers folding them with sharp determination. The lettering elegant and even, very pretty, did not at all resemble the kind of handwriting to jot down a passing thought on a small piece of legal paper. I could read it and couldn’t at the same time. I got the rhythm and it seemed strangely familiar. It wasn’t all that difficult to decipher and yet it took a moment to realize how the writing had been transformed without becoming a stranger to itself. Most everyone who is capable of reading will eventually grasp the concept of script as reflected in a mirror. The old lady had been writing in mirror script. Once I recognized that she had used mirror writing I could read it as you would, too. My mother had once told me that Leonoardo da Vinci had used mirror writing in his journals. He only ever used his right hand writing from the left to the right side of the page when he was addressing someone else through his writing. For all other purposes he chose to write right to left side of the page, reversing his letters as he spelled each word. Historians have discussed ever since what could have motivated him to do so. Some have said that he wanted to make it harder for others to steal his ideas. I don’t think that could have been the reason. Anyone can read mirror script fluently just with the tiniest bit of practice. A genius like Leonardo could have done much better encoding, thereby disguising his secrets. I think he just chose to write from left to right because he was – as is known – left handed. A man who loved to draw in the most precise, specific way, would he not have hated to smear his own writing? But anyhow, reading reverse script is not all that difficult. But I wanted to make sure I got it right. So I lifted it up against the window. There it was, the writing clear and beautiful. I had recognized it even in mirror image, even before I had recognized it as such, I had listened to the words so often and had read them many times, they were like a familiar face. “The Road goes ever on and on. Down from the door where it began. Now far ahead the Road has gone, And I must follow, if I can.” She had painted the letters JRT underneath. And I must follow if I can. As if I didn’t know. I stared at the lettering in the mirror of the window glass against the darkening sky. I stared at myself holding the sheet against the pane. I stared at myself n the window glass. Who was I? Where was I? The other me looked back, a pale, shimmering reflection.

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anticipation and tesselation

The floor in the library greeted me with the reliable intricate tessellation I had marveled at since I had moved to Summerville. Knowing that it would have seemed strange if I had stood still and just stared at the carpet tiles I walked slowly towards the lockers trying to mirror the rhythm of the tiles with my feet. I stuffed my backpack into a cubby hole and tried to work out – not for the first time – the plan for quasi-periodic tiling of the plane with only 2 figures each with a five fold symmetry. It had a peculiar energy to it. Also not for the first time I asked myself who in the world had come up with this specific mathematical tessellation for a library floor carpet. Following the outlines of the tiles with my gaze I felt my heartbeat slow down and my fear subside.
Stepping to the side still following the edges of the tiles I had a sudden feeling that I would run into someone. For a split-second I felt an intense anticipation of a physical obstacle, a person I would run into whose body I already felt like you feel a chair in a dark room the moment before you hurt your shin. I had an apology on my lips as, looking up, I still waited for the run-in. But nothing happened. There was no one near me, in fact, the lobby was empty, even the front desk was temporarily unoccupied as a metal sign indicated. I felt confused. Have you ever mistaken a shadow on the pavement for a shallow hole in a road and stepped down too hard or, being preoccupied while walking up the stairs, have misjudged the number of steps and taken one more step than necessary to climb the staircase? I had exactly that kind of empty anticipation, a strange stomach upsetting emptiness as if I had taken one step too far, out into nowhere.
For a moment I waited. The hum of voices on the first floor of the library reassured me. I had missed a heartbeat just now, but after a moment of reconnecting with reality I finally crossed the lobby and walked up the stairs. And yet I felt like every step I took was echoed by a second, like I was walking with a friend at my side. I checked twice whether someone walked up the winding staircase right behind me, in my blind spot, so to speak, but there was no one.
Tuesday afternoon at the library. I like vacation as much as the next person, but there is something special about a school afternoon at the library. I like the idea that the library is a space solely dedicated to the transfer of knowledge from the pages of a book into a brain. I like the hushed atmosphere, people writing excerpts from gaping volumes, an old lady in woolen stockings inexplicably spending her days copying Anna Karenina in a beautiful script on fine stationary with the initials LNT, kids hanging out mostly with some kind of school assignment, procrastinating and talking in low voices with occasional shrieks.
Towards the back shelves of the first floor there was a little niche with a chair I favored. It was right at the window behind a safe wall of three aisles of age old art books. Art was clearly not a favorite topic in Summerville and the volumes were mainly collecting dust, emitting this strange smell only library books acquire over time (and that makes you want not to read whatever it is that is hiding inside because the smell indicates that the contents of the book have expired since, are deceased and encased in their last dwelling, like a body in a sarcophagus.)