self checkout

2024 – In the yesterday library stacks, “straightening”, an art book the kind I’d never really look at speaks to me. I take it home. I’m buying a cheap, used copy a couple of hours later.

Perhaps exactly like: 1971 – “Hey. There’s a new Social Welfare major. You should try it.” Salem (State College). Like, 2008 – Coming upon “Wherever You Go, There You Are” on a March Saturday. North Truro (Library). Like, 2018 – “I’m trying this new diet. Keto.” Portland (Johnson Creek).

For me, every so often, something, some suggestion of sorts, shows up and I think, “That’s cool,” and my life flies 27 times around the planet. And things are never the same again. Just like that.

Is life ever truly buoyant without a library card?