I found the library when I was a student. I don't remember how, but it would have been after I'd read something. It felt a bit like pulling a muscle you didn't know you had or that terrible feeling you get when you're looking out of the window while your train pulls out of the station and after a few seconds you realise it isn’t your train at all that’s moving but the one on the next track; the sight of its receding tail lights throws you back in your seat and makes your stomach churn. That's very much what it felt like when I discovered the library.
I knew from the start that it was quite extensive, but in the beginning I enjoyed only the occasional glimpse into it. It was exhausting and it almost hurt, like when you try to stare at something out of the corner of your eyes. Nowadays it unfolds whenever I care to look at it, but at the time, it required an enormous amount of concentration to see it. Think of unicyclists or tightrope walkers. Once they get the hang of it, they find it hard to believe that maintaining their balance ever posed a problem.
Neuroscience
I once met a neuroscientist on a train to Florence and he said he believed it was a form of synaesthesia. I found a number of related organisations but discovered they're all too busy smelling their colours to care much about my case.
All sections of my library are places I've been to between the ages of five and eleven. I have no idea why they would be from this particular period, but I suppose the neuroscientist on the train would have linked it to certain development stages of my brain. I should have asked but he got off in Bologna.
After a while, I tried to chart what I'd seen of the library. I sat on the balcony of my parents' house with an A4 notepad and started to write down the locations and books I'd spotted so far. I was perhaps twenty titles into the list when I felt an increasing tension in my chest, a sudden sadness I could not explain. I dropped the pen and threw away the list. Clearly, this wasn't the way to go.
"There will always be the playground under and I will forever find
on the
playground"
Ice
Ice
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