any given saturday

I am sitting in my new "office" a.k.a. the San Francisco Public Library, Noe Valley Branch. My time in China convinced me that it's time to get serious and treat writing my dissertation like any other job, so that I can move on and get a real job. For the next nine months, between the rigors of farmers market shopping and triathlon training, you can find me in the back corner of my newly-renovated, well-lit neighborhood library.

Every geek has a special relationship with libraries. (I know that's no longer true - you can graduate from college without stepping foot in the library - but humor me.) When I walk into a library, the stillness quiets my chattering mind. My senses recall the first libraries of my prolonged academic journey. The slanted light through vertical blinds moving across the atlases and encyclopedias. The smell of aged paper and the rustle of shuffling feet. The sheer sense of wonder at what is captured on such a simple medium - histories, discoveries, frivolities and more. And, always for me, a profound sense of inadequacy; I will never be able to read even a small fraction of the books worth reading, broadly or narrowly defined.

Even in the tiny two-room Noe Valley library, which has neither silence (especially when Boswick the clown is performing downstairs) nor all that many books (though stocked with Oprah's magazine), I feel as close to religious as I ever do. At the moment, there are more people on computers than reading and flipping pages. But the power of the colorful, plastic-sheathed objects persists. From my seat I can see two books by Ha Jin, five volumes of Proust and Amanda Quick's steamy Wicked Widow. All just added to my epic 'to read' list.

If all goes as planned, mine will be out there someday in the recesses of some library. Writing is harder than going to China to help earthquake victims. There is no immediate satisfaction, only doubt that what one writes will resonate with and perhaps change another human being, however slightly.