It's got the SF Public Library, the Asian Art Museum, the Symphony, the Opera House (also home of the SF Ballet), the Orpheum Theater (where I saw Mamma Mia... YES), the Bill Graham Auditorium (where I saw Lady Gaga... I'm really trying to build the cultured thing here...), and the ever lovely City Hall. There is also some random art project room which housed, up until recently, a strange installation of insulation pipes, styrofoam, and casually-strewn blue cellophane that would play the sound of a toilet flushing every time someone walked by. This wasn't particularly appealing, considering that the room was stationed right in the nook where all the homeless people slept and, hence, smelled like pee. But, then again, maybe the artist knew that and was using the homeless people as part of a "life in art" concept piece.
Anyway, I LOVE the SF Public Library. It's huge - five floors - and absolutely gorgeously designed with all these angular corners and beautiful spiraling shapes. Here's a picture I snuck in looking across to one of the interior study rooms on the fourth floor.
The first time I went to the SF Public Library, I wanted to pick up a copy of Ender's Game, which was not available. I ended up going home with:
1) Super Sad True Love Story. A book that Paul had suggested to me, which is a bizarre dystopian future satire about a sad middle-aged Jewish man in love with a young and bratty Korean girl. At times the tone felt very, what I call, "contemporary," which roughly translates to "trying too hard to be funny," but overall I found it to be an enjoyable book.
2) The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle. This was a staple of my childhood, largely responsible for my completely unrealistic maritime fantasies of sailing the high seas on a pirate ship and climbing the main mast to cut away the sail before the ship crashes down in fiery inferno during a lightning storm. Well, it was this book and my obsession with one day meeting a giant squid and/or Kraken live and in person. I had to hover creepily in the children's section to pick this one out, but I felt I must have it because I recently reread Island of the Blue Dolphins while home for vacation and wanted to remember more stories that I loved as a kid. It took me three renewals to finish because a) I just didn't have time, b) I'm a slow reader, and c) dude, this book has a substantial amount of pages, like, legit reading.
3) Some book about American fiddling, complete with transcriptions of many little ditties in the American songbook. I had been wandering the library for a while and discovered that there was a whole music section, complete with row upon row of totally free sheet music that you could borrow and illegally photocopy. I had just ended up on the floor with a couple of huge volumes of Disney piano music, wishing that someone knew me well enough to buy me things like this without me having to ask, when I also inexplicably made friends with some old black dude who wanted to have a date with me "same time, same place" next weekend.
One day, my friend, we shall meet upon the stormy seas.
So, naturally, I knew that this visit would be just as riveting, and it did not disappoint. In fact, as soon as I entered, I was overtaken by that book smell. I don't know what it is about book smell, but it just engulfs your entire olfactory system and traps you in this semi-delirious state of wonder. I was literally wandering from floor to floor with my backpack straps hoisted in my hands in a permanent state of ponderment. No matter how stressful the rest of my day might be, being in a library can make me feel at total peace.
The thing that I realized is, part of the reason why the SF Public Library was so amazing, was that it simultaneously targeted memories for me that wove through my entire life. Being in elementary school and spending hours poring over the adventures of Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. Walking over to Summit Library from middle school, getting a slurpee at 7-11, and sitting on the front steps while Carmen told me about how her cousin used to sing a song that literally went like, "Boobies grow, boobies grow, period come, period come," with accompanying hand gestures (Aurora has huge boobs now, so I guess it worked). Digging through random historical novels for this and that random tidbit that I could quote in my English research paper, despite how little those facts and events meant at the time to kids who knew so little about life and the people who already lived it. Endless CTY summers bounding up and down the sterile hallways of the F&M lab buildings, brimming with adolescent love and gossip and summer freedom. Copying pages of scientific journals in the basements of the MIT libraries, trying to get the CopyTech card to work and sleep-deprived from too many last-minute psets. For some reason it reminded me of being in the Stata Center, too. Something about the lighting, I guess.
The similar theme that tied these memories together was the singular feeling that can only be described as, "here I will gain knowledge." If you think about it, libraries are a particularly wonderful gift that so few people utilize nowadays because there is such a thing as the internet. But anyone can go to the library. You don't have to have anything in this world (except for maybe clothing, I've never seen a naked person in a library), and you can just go inside a library and come out with something new. And there is nothing to worry about. In all those many memories is buried the very sacred feeling of being a student again, when you didn't have a job and didn't have to think about where your life was headed and didn't have to worry about if you were going to have babies before your ovaries dried up... when the only thing that ever mattered was putting information into your brain. This is the safest place I can be, because it is so laughably achievable. Sitting at home on my computer, I get the sensation that I'm supposed to be doing something, that I'm supposed to be using this information somehow, that maybe I'm wasting my time, and there is this nagging awareness of the world. In the library, there are only books and magic.
Having all these memories, I was made aware of another strange sensation. I realized how disjointed life is. Each section stands alone as a chapter written by a different hand. High school. College. Work. And I wonder sometimes, who am I today and what does this person have to do with who I was ten years ago? So much of what I have come to know as my life exists in this bubble. But as I spiraled slowly up the entire building, shuffling my feet and touching things here and there just because I could, I felt like I was going through my entire life, picking out pieces here and there, and wrapping myself in all those small moments that have brought me to this very point in time.
Anyway, it turns out there's a lovely calligraphy exhibit on the top floor with all sorts of calligraphic artwork, which was mostly beautiful except for one that kept cursing someone's "fuckery" in letters that looked like they came out of a really old Bible. In fact, there were so many great pieces it just made me think how difficult it really would be to make it as an artist in this world, and how odd it is that I know so many who have. I made my way back down the the main level and jotted down some reference numbers with those awesome timeless tiny pencils, and went looking for some books.
In the end, I checked out the book American Creation by Joseph Ellis, which is about the American Revolution and part of my eternal fantasy to become someone who is really into historical fiction (like my eternal fantasy to become a runner, the promise of this is somewhat questionable). I also got Tina Fey's Bossypants on audiobook, at Stephanie's suggestion. I've already listened to it while scourging the house and subsequently taking a bath, and I would agree that the audiobook is the way to go.
