Nostalgia and serendipity
Hello, friends. I spent yesterday morning very happily shuttling around libraries.
The first was Stauffer Library, the humanities and social sciences library at the university where I did my PhD. You could say I know my way around it. For a few years, it was as familiar to me as my own apartment. I had the positions of the stacks memorized; I knew which photocopiers worked best; I was on nodding terms with even the crustiest of staff. Heck, I had a personal study carrel on the fourth floor, with a lockable shelf where I kept my books. Nerd aristocracy, that was me.
Until yesterday, I hadn’t been back to Stauffer since that slightly bittersweet day when I returned the last of my library books and gave up the key to my study carrel. (I really loved that study carrel. I wrote tens of thousands of words in that carrel.) And then, this week, I needed to borrow a book. I was curious how the library might have changed, whether it would smell familiar, how they might have reinvented the “information commons”, aka the place where everybody used to check email at rows of sticky-keyed public computers. I was expecting a pleasant compare-and-contrast.
What I wasn’t prepared for was the rush of nostalgia that welled within me when I touched the outer door. Even the resistance of the door against my arm, the curvature of its handle in my palm, felt absurdly right. I crossed the foyer (empty, now that the academic year is over), entered the library itself, and suddenly, I was back. The only slightly discordant note was the absence of my backpack. I don’t think I’d ever entered that library without its weight on my shoulders.
After finding my book (I went to the wrong end of the stacks at first), I walked a circuit of the fourth floor. I even paid a visit to my former study carrel. Stauffer is still a terrific place to work: quiet, with lots of natural light. But I felt like a tourist there, an outsider who should know when to move along. And that’s appropriate, too.
Nostalgia is a fundamentally limited emotion or approach; it gilds the view, offers a shiver of delight, and little more. Worse, I think it inhibits more productive thoughts or feelings from developing. That’s a realization I’ll need to hold fast as I continue work on The Next Book. The past is elusive enough, without the fog of nostalgia.
After leaving Stauffer, I continued to the public library. And there, in the Friends of the Library’s book sale, was this:
Syonon: My Story, by Mamoru Shinozaki, is a memoir that’s been hovering at the edges of my research for The Next Book. I’ve thought, repeatedly, must chase that down. And there it was, sandwiched between The Wealthy Barber and What is My Cat Thinking? (I swear I didn’t make that up.) Really, what were the chances? And what if I’d given in to nostalgia and sat down to work at Stauffer? I might never have found Shinozaki.
Some of the most serendipitous moments of my life have been in libraries. How about you, friends? Have you had any big moments – serendipitous, nostalgic, or otherwise – in libraries, lately?
