When I discover a new section I often find it surprisingly packed with content. When I read Anna Kavan's Ice, it went to an adventure playground I had not previously identified as part of the library. When I walked into the playground in my mind, I saw there was already tons of stuff on medieval castles, a Wikipedia list of Christian demons, a book that questions the benefits of alternative medicine and a TV documentary on the Isenheim altar piece. Once a story has been given a place, I will never be able to read it again without that childhood memory as a backdrop. There will always be the playground under Ice and I will forever find Ice on the playground.
More tomorrow
One of the low-density wings of my library is a small park that I always thought was exclusively occupied by Michael Marshall Smith's short story More Tomorrow. The story has the segmented shape of a tapeworm and runs along the short side of the park. I recently immersed myself into it but then was distracted by something between two plane trees a few hundred metres away. It turned out to be a razor-sharp, hammock-sized expanse of exam papers I edited for a hairdresser's college many years ago. I've never cut anyone's hair in my life, but I do possess a certain theoretical knowledge on how to give someone a perm.
Artwork by Myriam Frey