Library

Library:

Excerpt from “The Glass Bead Game” (Das Glasperlenspiel), by Herman Hesse

“Sometimes he felt capable of any achievements. At other times he might forget everything and daydream with a new softness and surrender, listen to the wind and rain, gaze into the chalice of a flower or the moving waters of a river, understanding nothing, divining everything, lost in sympathy, curiosity, the craving to comprehend, carried away from his own self toward another, toward the world, toward the mystery and sacrament, the at once painful and lovely disporting of the world of appearances.”

Can you imagine being presented with this passage and only understanding every third or fourth word? My abounding love for learning, books, and literature is steering my aspirations, the goals of my service, toward the creation of a public library. I have not yet reached the six month mark and have not, therefore, participated in the famed In-Service Training (IST) which will provide me with the basic knowledge and courage to start a real project. At this point I couldn’t get started even if I was overly anxious enough to want to. The training will be mostly centered on funding sources available to volunteers. Unfortunately, books are very expensive. But, I have opened my eyes to start searching for the future librarian for the Public Library and Community Center of K___ M________. (Edited for security)

Other volunteers have succeeded in the creation of a library but stories, myths, and warnings are circulated about wonderful libraries without librarians, without the money to pay them, or without continued interest from the community. It is very anti-PC of me to say this, but having a library without patrons still seems better to me than having no library at all. I grew up with a library always available (not that I spent ALL my time there) and I have grown to love stepping into the atmosphere of silent contemplation only a library can offer. It’s almost as if the building itself is thinking…deeply thinking. It’s like a living organism with one organ dwelling hopelessly on romance and love, another organ totally rational and valuing only pure facts and figures, and yet another devoted to distant pasts and forgotten languages and cultures. To stumble around a library is to stumble around the world, when your checkbook can’t quite provide the means to do so in real life. I just can’t imagine what my life, especially the last five years of my life, would have been like if libraries didn’t exist. So, you, faithful blog readers, will clearly be hearing more about libraries from me.

Today was bittersweet; as is every day to some extent, especially in the Peace Corps. I spoke to my favorite high school teacher and he informed me that he no longer works at the CEG, he has been reassigned to a different village. For many volunteers, myself included, this is a constant surprise and disappointment. People from schools and mayor’s offices will appear one day, brighten your life indescribably, and disappear the next. You think you find someone who will be a key to your happiness and possibly someone who will provide help with projects and moments later they are moved to some random location, sometimes hundreds of kilometers away. They have little to no say, of course, because they are in need of the job and saying no to a new assignment means you’re broke! I value flexibility and I try to embody it literally and figuratively, but my God, it sometimes seems there is no rhyme or reason to the process. En tous cas, I wish my friends wouldn’t be taken from me with such stunning frequency.