Chapter Nine: Escapism (~jinghan)

Note from the author: I came home today fueled with the need to write a blob about libraries, it seems Cara has beat me to proclaiming the awesomeness of the Rowden White Library, so I apologise for seemingly stealing the idea straight out of her head and claiming it to be mine. (I do believe the professors call that plagiarism.)

It was 4:15pm, and I was obliged to wait at uni until 6pm to have dinner with my family, whom all happened to be in the city on this particular Monday evening. Eating out wasn’t to be complained about, but in the meantime I had a lot of time to burn, no money, no food, not even a book to read – unless you counted the newspaper or my physics lab manual…

Speaking of lab manual – I needed to finish skimming it and submit my pre-lab online before 8:45am the next day.

I did not particularly feel like trecking all the way across uni to the main Baillieu Library. It was true that I hadn’t had the chance to explore this maze of a library yet, and like the alleys and streets of melbourne it promised many secret and exciting adventures – none of which I was inclined to partake in with a heavy bag on one shoulder.

The Mathematical Sciences library, was a nice little one-room affair that was good for buckling down for an hour and getting some real study done. I like the fact that this library seemed to belong only to a select group of brave (and nerdy) students and usually if I needed to study it was my first port of call. But today the nagging beginning of a headache that threatened to be a nuisance in the face of real study throbbed a little harder at the prospect of going to the Mathematical Sciences library.

The Frank Tate learning center was filled with nice couches and quirky modern furniture, it seemed like a perfect place to go and study with a group of classmates, but wandering it’s collection of interesting rooms alone it always felt a little lonely to have to occupy that space alone. There was a nice hush about the place, but in one’s own company it promised to be a lonely silence.

By the time I had finished considering my options my feet had already subconsciously let me to the Union House, and since I was here I may as well go to the Rowden White library. After all, if there was one reason why I purchased a union membership it was for this benefit alone – I may as well make use of it.

In my first few weeks of immaculate first-year rule obeying I had strictly obeyed the “Do not study” signs standing with their mock formality in the middle of the big communal desk in the Rowdan White. But then one day my friend had laughed at me and said “everyone studies there, Jinghan!” and dragged me along to go study with her in the Rowdan White in the twilight hours when most people were crammed into train on the way home. Even still, I was still a little self-conscious as I took out my lab manual and skimmed and highlighted the notes.

“Do you want a mac or a PC?” the librarian asked when I went to the desk to borrow a computer to complete my pre-lab on. “Mac please!” She swapped my library card for a card with the computer’s name on it. I looked at it as I walked over to the computers. It said “PC4 Dexter” and I couldn’t be bothered correcting her error. The pre-lab too me no time, I consciously avoided navigating to facebook, but took the chance to clean out my inbox that had a way of getting very messy and very full and very forgotten. There was an email from Shannon that I hadn’t replied to for a while, I noticed.

The physics assignment I had put in my bag in the morning, hoping that I would take advantage of this stretch of time between my last lecture and tending to my growing hunger, reminded me of it’s existence. But one cannot maintain the stress levels needed to prompt one to study in the Rowden White, with it’s comforting music always wafting in the background, and relax looking people wandering around almost always aimlessly. So I opened the email.

What started as an email about the fourth spacial dimension had somehow evolved into a reminiscence of younger days, when (alas) facebook didn’t exist and I spend my time pouring over books. I wasn’t a strong reader, even Harry Potter had been too difficult for my comprehension skills, but given the right book I could stay up to all hours reading. And I missed that, one can set getting cold and sore and a little dizzy from being on the computer till early hours of the next morning, but a book never lead down that disastrous road that is as close to a hangover experience as I have ever had. On facebook, I always found myself clicking back and forth between pages, seemingly looking for something but really procrastinating on replying to messages and hoping something new would pop up in the iconic little notification box. But a book, I recalled, was reassuringly linear with a beginning, middle and end.

I should not have been surprised when, instead of heading back to the desk and taking out my physics assignment (it wasn’t due until the next week I reassured myself), I stopped by the books propped up on the window sill. “Love Machine” It was such a ghastly pink-covered thing that I had to pick it up and read the blurb just to check it was as ghastly as the cover and title suggested.

It wasn’t.

And after reading two pages just to check that the inside was less than what the blurb promised, I was hooked. Sure it was about a guy who worked in a sex shop. And sure that figure on the front cover turned out to be representative of a sex doll. And before you accuse me of reading tacky romance, or cheep porn, let me say: there was something about the way the narrator spoke that made you relate to him as a person. How did he end up where he was? What was his life story? Where would he go from here? The style of the writing promised something profound hidden underneath something that we easily make assumptions about based on surface value – it made me remember the sort of reader that I was.

And before I knew it, instead of standing by the book shelves flicking through a book, I was sitting in a comfy seat engrossed by the book. People wondered in and out of the library. Some greeted each other and chatted about their choice of major. Some looked exhaused and headed towards the TV room where they presumably flopped down on a beanbag or lounge chair. Some joined me at the desk and did some light study or read the news paper. If I was living away from home, and close to the uni, this is where I would have spent my time after classes, I decided. It offered a place to regain you sense of self, without being an isolated or lonely. It offered calm without oppressive silence. It was the lounge room of the uni, a homely common space for individuals to escape the hectic world outside.

Later, when I went to the desk to borrow the book, I realised that I could not have chosen a more awkward book to be reading. I cursed the cover designer for the completely unrepresentative and embarrassing cover again at the restaurant when we were waiting for our meal, and again on the train home. Despite this, I felt this would be perhaps my chance to escape the hectic pseudo-social world of the internet where it was so easy to fall into the trap of judging people and worrying about people judging you, and re-immerse myself in the world of books where you could find humanity in anyone and create your own thoughts unjudged.