in the library — part 4 of a serial
On the same day, on a Thursday. let’s say its a Thursday, a few Thursdays after easter and I am thinking we will be returning south in a few days time. If you looked closely you would see that I am relaxed looking well, more relaxed after a few weeks of gentle practice… Here in the library, in and around my head, in my library and in the bedroom all the multiplicit books (none are singular) generate an intensive ecology, a geopolitical space, by turns there is struggle and parasitic gentleness. The library is new, the shelves are all pale grey shelving 40 cm wide and variable heights from floor to ceiling. In the middle of this wall of shelves small windows are embedded, through which, beyond the lights you can see the drive, the pond and the hillside on which small trees have been planted. **** The ecosphere has giant clouds amongst which are giant storms, thunderhead clouds which extend high into the stratosphere. There are floods, streams of ideology and discourse which are everywhere on planes, trains, boards, in our singular dreams, discursive flows in multiple languages. We are living with the world’s police; obey us they say. Could you do this ? The network has started working… I liked our meetings because they always had that air of plotting and secrecy which characterizes people who spend so much time plannnnning and building, even if it’s only to tilt at windmills. And then I remember the desperate plotting in the years when we first arrived here. The godforsaken years of loneliness, surround by the desert of my exile, death and betrayal, then the slow acquiring of friends and trust. This was the end of that. These rooms are full of books being delivered in boxes, plastic crates and cardboard boxes, transported in cars and vans to be stacked on the library shelves, and some elsewhere i. up against the walls up to the ceiling; our books, duplicated, saved from the fear of our enemies and the bonfires of hatred, from the forgetting that came with the feeling of resounding defeat, changing over the years to victorious exile. I was the apprentice and part owner of the library. In the library: cataloguing, selecting, readying the raw material. You, writing without pause on the computer with a broken letter a, that you had to unstick with your finger every time you typed a word, And sometimes Elsa is in the room usually silent, sorting and ordering books shelving; reading, correcting, adding, cutting, moving, reading, looking for gaps and contradictions, suggesting ordering improvements. thus it went for hours, days, week, months between the south and the north. An assembly line. An immaterial factory. We didn’t finish before we left, leaving Elsa with the task of ordering the library, looking after the house… When I return to london, there will be a new minister who will instruct that Elsa is to be deported southwards. But Elsa has vanished. Not travelling as they will assume along: Gaedechensweg Goernestrafe Eppendorfer Landstraße Eppendorferweg Bundesstraße Hohe Weide Weidenallee Schanzenstraße Schulterblatt Neuer Pferdemarkt Wohlwillstraße Hein Hoyerstraße Reeperbahn Silbersackstrafße Hein Köllischplatz Antonistraße Pinnasberg Fischmark. Instead vanishing here in the north.
The air in this library in the north is subject to northern variations. From the giant storms of climate change to the sleepy stillness of the still underpopulated north. This is the case in all my libraries, genetic one winged angels struggling to survive the differences… Tomorrow as with all my tomorrows, instead of living, I will be on the phone, discussing my diary full meetings for next week. Writing them down in my techno-diary. I wonder how it is possible to live with the phone. How is it humanely possible? By the end of tomorrow eight meetings will have been arranged, documents piled on my desk or table. Contracts and calander entries appearing on my phone Impromptu meetings. I do not read that I will be on the phone tomorrow instead I moved and sat and spoke and in the later afternoon a videocall. I ate a sandwich during one caa, lunch, Elsa made a perfect salmon and cream cheese bagel and china tea for me. She was looking happier as she understood that she could treat this house as hers… During that Friday the phone would talk for a while, talked for hours, kept kept kept talking. One document was read aloud to me refusing to be cowed into silence. I asked; Do you need an answer now or will monday do? A provisional answer will do, so that we can begin preparatory work… I paused and remembered some of the people involved in this — then Yes, there are some very dangerous people involved in this so arrange a meeting… I am writing this in the office that I use in London, my feet on the low table the varnished surface have been marked by the hard heels of my shoes. Across the floor people are waiting for the 3PM meeting to start. They are going to tell me things I already know, which is why this time I am typing this rather than rereading the documents that I checked before. The air in this office is subject to savage variations, from cyclones to death. Its like my real libraries, if angels existed, they like the non-existent demons would be shelved in the library. So my office, is fundamentally unchanged since we took over the great house in the north and created the woods. The office is relatively small, 20 to 24 square metres its always full, of memories, of work, and in a few minutes people. There should be no threats approaching today, but you can never be sure.
This morning, that morning my daughters were still in the house, which is the place that had trees planted in their names. All the trees we planted that time will grow up with her, them. The trees are like my daughter, to lose a tree because of the increasingly violent storms is to lose a daughter. Or if I am being honest and I am trying, losing him… The man reading in the corner his feet up on the low table reading a book. What book? He said earlier, into his mobile ‘Before anything ele we need to talk, to take this phone call. send me the documents and I’ll read later, OK?’ Half listening I am trying to decide whether to read this or that? I’ll try this. I think. i have to be invisible, so that we who want to be forgotten can live.
