Today

Hi there,
   It's me again and I haven't got much to say but I figured I should write anyway. Yesterday I discovered the most amazing thing I've ever discovered! Now you might be wondering what is this magical things so I'll tell you. It was the library! Now someone might read this and think well what's so great about a library and why did you just discover it so I suppose I should explain that as well. You see I've known about libraries ever since I was a child and quite like most children I thought it was a great place but no one ever explained just how amazing it actually is which is especially unfortunate considering I love to read, but yesterday I went and discovered for myself just how wonderful the library truly is and I suppose discovering it for myself made it even more amazing then if someone had simply plopped me down and told me it was amazing. I went to the library with the intention of simply getting a library card because in my 19 years of life I've never had my own library card and after reading an article on artofmanliness that mentioned in passing the free resources one could attain through the library, and given my hunger for learning I figured I should get a library card. So on I went with my beautiful girlfriend Alexandria to the library and I walked in and to be honest at first it wasn't much different than I remembered it nothing fanciful or wonderful about it other than the smell of books which I happen to love, especially old well read books. Then we started walking around not really with any purpose just sort of meandering through the collection of knowledge with some sort of inkling of looking for The Great Gatsby but not really a hard and fast search for the book. I was just breathing in the smell of dust riddled pages, and soaking in the signs labeled philosophy, art, and all other sort of words. These signs hung from the ceiling and above different bookcases almost like lighthouses beckoning you to your desired shore. The shore we desired to find happened to be fiction which given its tremendous size was quite easy to find but also given my limited knowledge of how the library works a little overwhelming to navigate. So there we were delighted to have found the fiction section but a little lost on how to find the precise treasure we were looking for. We started meandering the aisles in a somewhat orderly fashion just skimming the books and hoping we'd just find the one we were looking for by pure happenstance when I started noticing that all of the books had tiny white tags on the bottom of their spines almost like a tattoo. Now these white tags had but only six letter printed upon them in two rows of three stacked on top of each other in all capital letters and a very squarish robotic looking font and the top three letters on all of the books were identical FIC. It didn't take much of a leap to figure out that these letters stood for fiction which was the shore we had landed on while drifting in the sea of knowledge that is known as the library. But what about the other three letters these were the same on books that were next to each other but then changed through the alphabet as you moved down the aisles. Once again it didn't take long before I realized that these corresponded to the authors of the books with the three letters being the first three letters of the authors last name. This may seem a fanciful way of explaining something so ordinary but to me it wasn't ordinary like I said I've never really gotten to experience the library in all of its fullness and I'm simply recounting the event with all the wonderment I beheld upon actually experiencing it. Once I figure out how the books were organized the search was on to discover our treasure, The Great Gatsby. We walked through the aisles at a much brisker pace then before now that we had a way of attaining what we were actually hunting down all we had to do was simply skim of over the black and white tattoos on the books spines every once and a while to ensure that we were headed the right way. DEF, EAC, FIC we had made it to the F's! Now all we had to do was close in on our prize. Skimming the spines of the books in silence with eyes somewhat squinted in pure concentration we saw the name we had been looking for Fitzgerald. There weren't as many books with this name on their spines as I had expected there to be but all the same it only made the search easier but then to soon the search was over we had look at the whole section and not seen The Great Gatsby. But how could this be it's an entirely famous book by an entirely famous author if you can't get such a book at the library where can you get one? So, we looked a second time, and a third, and we even halfheartedly skimmed the section a fourth time but there was nothing to discover it simply wasn't there. Well we had come all this way and the search had been so enjoyable I thought why not look for another book and this time I decided to search for The Story of B by Daniel Quinn. You see I've been wanting to read this book for over a year ever since I read Ishmael and it changed my life but despite my want for the book I couldn't quite separate myself from the sum of cash that was required to purchase it and none of my friends had even heard of it so I couldn't borrow a copy from someone. Here we are though I thought to myself perhaps the have a copy I can read for free so we searched for the QUI section in the FIC section and discovered that there was only one Daniel Quinn book. This time it didn't take looking three times to come to grips with the fact that the library didn't have the book I so desperately wanted I simply accepted the fact as it was. After this disappointment though I figured it was time to get my library card and see if perhaps they did have the books that we  wanted so bad and perhaps we just hadn't seen them so head hanging low we walked to the counter in one last attempt to get what we wanted and it is here that my amazement really took hold. The nice lady at the desk was like an oracle able to attain any book with any piece of knowledge in it that you could ever desire! As I was signing up for my card she explained that they could get The Great Gatsby from one of their other branches and put it on hold for us and they would email me to let me know when it was available. She also sent me to another desk to request The Story of B because it wasn't in any of their libraries but they told me the would request it from another library and they would call me when it came in which would be in about three to four weeks. While they were explaining all of this and I was walking back and forth between the desks I started to notice even more of the details that made up the library such as all the amazing seating furniture they had they had dozens of couches and chairs and every single one of them looked so comfortable that it seemed almost dangerous to sit in them for fear of not ever being able to get back the cloud like hug that you would surely receive upon sitting down. I also noticed that there was free coffee and creamer being offered as if to say it's alright just have your cup of Joe and sit down relax and enjoy yourself and bury yourself deep into a book, it was almost to much to resist. As is if all this wasn't enough I noticed a huge book on tape section as well as a movie section filled with classic movies that seemed so good I can't believe we ever kept making movies after them for surely they can't be improved upon. The books on tape section is important because for those of you who haven't tried it's quite like watching a movie except you're given the script and characters but you get to direct it and choose what everything looks and feels like through the power of your mind. Finally I noticed the magazine section which was less impressive than everything else I'll admit but still wonderful considering all the magazines you could read on a monthly basis without ever having to pay for a subscription. Finally though I had to leave this wonderful magnificent place for I had a job to get to so I begrudgingly pulled myself away I know I'll return though, for I have to because I checked out my very first book My Ishmael by Daniel Quinn for those of you interested. This my friends is the story of how I got to discover the library which you get to read all because the love of my life is out of town and I feel lost without her and don't know what to quite do with myself. Quick Alex come back before the internet has to be dragged through another story!