Trust Me, You're Alive

Life is a repeated cycle of getting lost and then finding yourself again.

Jay Woodman

I borrowed my first Murakami novel from Arlington downtown library in summer of 2021. Back then I didn’t have a driving license, didn’t own a car and used Uber and share-rides for transit. The library being close to my apartment easily became my favorite place to hang. In the book when the protagonist got into a cab or got off one onto the street, I always imagined it to be outside the library. Maybe it had something to do with discovering that Murakami stayed in New York at the time and I had never visited the city. But then I’ve hardly visited many places I’ve read of in books. Anyway.

I got a membership at my local library earlier this week, I’m allowed to borrow 50 books with my card. I smiled stupidly at the librarian who told me that – I think it was 15 back in Arlington but it very well might have been 50. It was just a number I knew I’d never hit. First world stuff I suppose, I hope kids here don’t have to negotiate with their parents on how many books they can borrow on a visit.

The library here is much smaller, but the familiar vibes remain – nobody wants to be spoken to unless it’s critical like how do I check out. I have used the library to create routine in life or to get back into something of the sort more than a couple times. Mostly through reading, sometimes to write or to work when the silence in the house was too loud. And when I walk in after a hiatus is when I’m unequivocally convinced that life’s too short – too short to discover all the authors and learn everything there is to be learnt in the world. It’s a little depressing but the next few days of my life become colorful, or are made colorful by this reminder of the passing nature of life and its brevity.

When I track through my Goodreads history, it makes me smile. The long breaks between reads are concordant with my own behavior, falling out of routine or losing all grounding once or twice even, sometimes quite consciously too. I guess losing yourself once in a while is okay.