why not

that's the view outside, from where i am seated happily in the louis matheson library at monash uni. strange that i'd be happy to take a half-hour drive out of the city to be inside some old crumbly building, contented, and doing my work. this is even more odd because i have never spent more than an hour at a go within the old crumbly library of rmit, which also happens to be the university i'm currently enrolled at. which also happens to be 2 strollable blocks away.

it is not so much that the building and shelves that are falling apart, but what they contain within them that draws me to the library. i love the smell of old, stashed up books - and it has recently been pointed out to me that it reminds one of a prolonged musty whiff of leftover sour-ish fart, but that doesn't deter me at all. the books i want keep getting borrowed or put on hold by someone else at the rmit library, while the library at monash has got all the books i need. and with 5 storeys, there are endless cubicled desks i can hole myself up at and get stuff done. i feel smart and productive and efficient at the expense of a half-hour drive.



sitting at my desk, i notice and begin to feel comforted by the droning whirr of the air-conditioning duct. it intrigues me that there have been so many books published that surely not all have been borrowed and perused. if books had feelings, i wonder how they'd react to, literally, being left on the shelf.



and then i notice, as i slip my student card back into my wallet, that the friendship band a friend had once made for me is showing signs of fraying. that is an understatement, actually. the frayed portion is barely hanging by 2 threads. it's been there ten years now, which attests to the amount of time i have used this wallet, and have not removed the band that says 'god's baby'. i could never make it out, but the friend who made it insists it's there. it is a remnant of the bygone churchie days, and i'm sorry to tell you, H, that i need to remove it for safe(r)keeping now. thanks for making that constant reminder.