I often dream of working in a library.
I mean, that I am working in a library. Not that I aspire to work in a library as a job. Well, I wouldn’t mind that but it isn’t what I’m intending to say by those words. I’m saying that I often dream of working in a library, like while I’m asleep I’ll be dreaming about it. In the dream, I’m in a library and I’m supposed to be there because I work there. Typically, it’ll begin with me in the process of returning books to the stacks. I’ll be looking at a book’s backbone to decide whether it can be put on this shelf, and that’s how it begins. Dream time.
It’s happened often enough that the library dreams have kind of taken on a shared reality. I have enough memories of dream libraries that new dreams about libraries can draw from those. What confuses me about this is that I don’t understand why this started happening.
I mean, I’ve been to actual real life libraries but it isn’t as if I’ve spent all that much time in them. I’ve probably been inside of a few dozen libraries throughout the country, and these visits are often no more than a few hours long. And I’ve certainly never worked in a library. The only thing that comes close is when I was a senior in high school I volunteered at my local library to fulfill my community service hour requirement. During that time I never did typical librarian stuff. They had me ripping apart books that no one ever checked out. I was a decommissioner.
And it’s been quite a while since I’ve spent any amount of time in a library. So it’s a bit confusing why I have these constant library dreams. One possible explanation is that the library dreams started while my life was rife with libraries, but I never remembered those dreams. Then later I had dreams about those dreams, with the memories of the dreams discombobulating into new dreams, and these are the dreams I’m remembering. Of course, it’s also possible I’m just dreaming new dreams that happen to be in libraries. But why so many.
The dreams aren’t just mundane of course. As with many of my dreams, fantastic elements and horror elements will work their way in. The library will be on an alien planet, or in some fantasy universe where books are somehow magical and important. Often the dream will derail into something else entirely, as dreams often do.
But the start is usually the same. I’m in the stacks and I glance down at the book in my hand, my gaze hovering on its spine. I’m checking the title, the author, or the little number if it’s there. (Some of these libraries can be pre-Dewey apparently, or they exist in some universe where methods of organization are illogical or antilogical.) Then I either slide it onto the shelf or I don’t, and things go from there. Sometimes after doing this I see someone down the aisle from me, or someone walks by behind me. I hear their stride, the vibrations of their steps, and I turn around to see who it was. Sometimes I’m suddenly aware that the library has no roof, or it’s in the desert with the shelves just drying in the open sun. One of the books might come to life or sometimes I open a book and fall into it like Alice into a bad sequel. Sometimes I spy someone working in the next aisle and it’s me again, and it repeats.
There’s more to the beginning though, which is what I was thinking about this morning. There’s an awareness of a larger context. In that first moment, I’m at work. I’m in the library, but outside of the library there’s no wider world. The library does not exist in a city. It is everything. It is like Borges’ infinite library. Even though sometimes this will change because everything in a dream is subject to change, it always begins this way. This is an eternal, sprawling library and I am performing this tiny, mundane action in a deathly silent, slightly dusty but massive room. I am swallowed by it.
A few months ago I had one of these dreams where I stayed in the library the whole time. I became aware of the room I was in, and then I went in search of other rooms. I was pushing this cart through hallways lined with books. Everything was lit by candle and lamp. I think this was a world without electricity. You know, the books were all bound in that stately style, with the hard covers and gold inlay. My clothes weren’t modern at all. I think I had on a hood and what you might call a jerkin. Okay, so it was like that. And not only did I work in this library, I lived in it. Everyone did. Oh yeah, there were tons of other people, all living in the library and returning books to where they belonged, pushing carts down hallways lined with books. We’d sleep in the smaller rooms, but these rooms were also lined with books. There were just tons and tons of books, so many books that there wasn’t enough shelf space. Not enough shelf space, but rooms and rooms filled with shelves. Rooms with enough shelves to build a city out of, or to furnish a forest. Rooms with floors of shelves stacked higher than you could see from the bottom, and wooden staircases tacked on to the side of the shelves, and people would live their whole lives without ever returning to the bottom. They’d start families up there and generations would pass before someone from their dynasty would climb to the top of the room to return that book beginning in ‘AA’. This was an infinite, eternal library, the library of Babel. This concept is so close to my heart that I dream it again and again, in every variation. This time it was like this, with us humans living like little insects, crawling among its bones, sorting it. It was disorganized, incredibly disorganized. And at one point I found a room which gave me a clue as to why. There was a crowd gathered there, and it was immediately obvious why. In the center of a room was an impossible structure of books, a shelve-less structure. Shelve-less! That’s irresponsible, everyone knows that. You don’t form large structures without the help of the shelves. But in this room there it was, and they were many people helping to build it. Swarms of people were expanding this giant stack of books. It stretched upward higher than I could see, and it was ribbed with scaffolding that people were scaling like professional rock climbers. A system of ropes and pulleys was being used to haul carts of books towards the top. I walked closer and on my way I could saw the faces of fellow onlookers filled with awe, perhaps a religious or spiritual awe. Some were on their knees with arms outstretched in veneration. They were in worship to this giant free-standing stack of books. Everyone was invested in seeing it continue. How many books could be added? Perhaps enough to fill this enormous room, wouldn’t that be something, an entire room without shelves, filled to the brim with this innovative sculpture. A room full of rebels! I moved closer to the center, intent on finding some sort of leader for this cabal. Perhaps as a loyalist I intended to report them to the front desk. Perhaps that’s what was passing through my mind. Yet once I entered the central circle I forgot everything because I was so shocked. The leader of this insanity was none other than my good friend Fariq. He was unmistakably of Middle Eastern descent, although that really makes no sense in this world, the world of the library. This isn’t Earth, so there is no Middle East. There’s just Fiction, Non-Fiction, Periodicals, Poetry, Appendices, Indexes, you know, the different sections. But anyway, there was Fariq with his strong sweeping gestures, directing the hell out of this living blasphemy. I was shuddering with rage, and I thought about leaving without confronting him as I knew I should. I knew it was protocol to report him straightaway but I just couldn’t. I had to look him in the eye, this “friend” of mine. He needed to know that he had cracked my heart in two, like a book spine too carelessly tossed. And so I marched directly at him with drums boiling in my brain. The worst part was that when he saw me, he smiled. He was happy to see me, and I could see he immediately wanted to share the wonder of this monstrosity with me. He wanted us to be collaborators, comrades, co-conspirators. It’s as if he never knew me, never knew who I was, how seriously I took my librarian’s oath. Then once he saw my expression I knew that he knew, and that his soul had also been ripped in two. I could see it shatter within him, and though I was angry I was also sorry to have hurt this man whom I had loved like a co-worker for so many years. I did not want to feel the rest of that pain, and so I wrapped myself in rage. I swaddled myself in a broken wail and charged full force at him. As I tackled him he hugged my head close to his chest so I could hear his contrition. I thrashed in his embrace and lifted his whole weight with my neck. Fariq! How could you! How could make light of the librarian’s oath! To always shelve responsibly and to never use a book other than as a record of, or conveyance for, ideas which may or may not be worth their weight in paper! Yet he had, and so I beat him against that pile of books with all the power that his betrayal afforded me. In my wild fury I did not sense what caused the crowd around me to gasp, but their gasp was unmistakable and in unison. Then everyone started shouting at once, some barking orders, some in warning, others with a shrill despair. Once I felt the tremors, I suddenly knew what was happening. This tower of books, this irresponsible blot upon librarity, had wobbled. Of course it had. It had no shelves for stability. As any shelver knows, according to stack physics, an acceptable stack wobble is in inverse proportion to the quotient of radius to height raised to the power of average shelf length, and here the shelves were basically as squat as your standard ruled hard cover. We would feel the reverberations first, but the entire stack was coming down. A cataclysm. It was as the receptionists had foretold. The hard rain was upon us. Many spines would split this day. I watched in slow motion as people ran from the room, tripping over each other, helping each other up. A woman reached helplessly and screamed for her child, who stood a little ways away, sobbing pitifully, obscured by the legs of the rushing crowd. Classic. I moved off of Fariq and offered him my hand. Even at this distance to the door, there was a chance that we could still make it. He had betrayed me, yes, but that didn’t mean I wanted him to die. I wanted only for him to receive the proper number of demerits. He did take my hand, but didn’t move away from the tower. He beckoned me to sit beside him. Books were pelting the floor around us but I was too emotionally exhausted to care. If Fariq had something to say for himself, I’d hear him out. As I sat down, he grabbed a piece of the tower and wiggled one of the books free. When I saw the cover I think my heart restarted. It was an index of the first shelf section we’d ever sorted together. He must have requested it and kept it close by, through all these dusty years. I was touched, but also peeved, considering it must be long overdue by now. The fine should be withheld from his pay. Still, I suppose that didn’t matter anymore. I sidled closer and we cracked it open, to give it a first and last reading, as foolishness piled up around us, fallen books from the sky, as my real self stirred in its sleep, ready to awaken, ready to be confused as to how I can feel so sad and angry and happy at once.