I wander into a library for the first time in three years. I am kind of lost and I mosy about aimlessly for a few minutes. A librarian smiles at me and offers assistance which I respectfully decline. I settle into a muddy footprint-marked chair beside a middle-age homeless man sitting quietlly with two backpacks and I eavesdrop upon a group of adolescents grouped in a nearby cluster of chairs who are quizzing each other on various academic topics. One young woman, accompanied by her friend, exits briefly for a cigarette.
I've sat for five minutes. The homeless man stumbles back into his chair as he attempts to get up. He smiles at me coyly and this time he succeeds in freeing himself. At least three dozen people have passed by. Men in suits, fathers and daughters, more homeless people and numerous juvenile delinquents mill about without any obvious objective. A few people walk by briskly, purposefully gabbing on their cell phontes.
What am I doing here? I found my way to this library with plans to spend some time writing content for the relaunch of my printing website, PrintHuge.com which my neighbors and friends, 350 Designs, have been working on for the last little while. However, I find myself observing these alien surroundings and reminiscing of the years I spent in libraries from middle school through sentence to a post-secondary institution. In a sense little has changed - in junior high I spent a lot of time in the library reading materials unrelated to my coursework. In high school, I was often found by our librarian covertly eating my lunch in a library corner. And in university, most of my peers remembered following a stream of drool to my comatose body as I napped in a chair in the middle of the Winspear Library.