To me, a library is like a sanctuary. When I walk into a library, I feel a wonder and peace and hope growing inside of me. When I go into a library, I like to do it when I have a lot of time, so I can walk around the whole library, my fingers brushing lightly across the spines of books.
When I finally found the library at Korea University, I thought I would cry. It's enormous, reaching up five stories high, and has "Great Glass Elevators" and marble floors that echo the clicks of shoes. I entered the library as I normally do, just walking around feeling the weightiness of the assembled books. On the fourth floor I sat with my back to the wall smiling like a lunatic.
After a while, I began to wonder if the library had an English section. It did, tacked on awkwardly to the back. The English section is not nearly as well kept or grandiose. The walls are dirty, with layers of handprints that I imagined went back for the hundred years since the library was built. The lights are dim and flickering, the windows non-existant, and the books dog-eared and underlined. I wasn't dissapointed though, because, o rapture of my soul, I found five floors of English books! I walked agitatedly around the library, clasping Salinger to my heart and putting my fourhead against a shelf of British poetry. Finally, I sighed happily, sat down with Suzanne Collin's Catching Fire and for the next four hours, the whole library from the loudest echo of tapping against the tile floor, to the very last ancient and dirty thumb print, faded away and into nothing but the ink in front of me.
No comments:
Post a Comment