Surprise appearances at the ALA Conference

With Amanda going to the upcoming ALA conference in Chicago, I dreamt last night that she called me, the first night. We chit-chatted, for a bit, and finally she said, "Oh, guess who I saw today?"
"Who's that?"
"Rikki Zengel!" Ms Zengel is a friend I knew at work, until she moved, she's a librarian.
"Oh that's cool."
"Guess who else? Mrs. Reusch, your high school librarian!"
Oh, yes, that's right! She's a Librarian! I thought...
"Yes, and guess who else? Obama!"
Oh, that's right! He's a librarian, isn't he?
"And, guess who else I met - Mr. Clean!"
Yes, that's right! Mr. Clean, he's a librarian too!

So, who do you think would make the best unlikely librarians?

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Excerpt from The Rounds at Diggery Bottoms

From "Chapter 7 - Aside - Tiffany's"

Martha woke up with an expired, sweaty cling about the limbs. The skin of her thighs had fused feverishly into the bedsheet, and he head had a quivering post-fever burn about the temples. It felt divine, slack, smooth, the edge of her melting indistinctly into the bed. She lay slack, savouring the discomfort of her shivering legs, for a minute.

She opened her eyes, and the feeling dissolved. Everything was real around her, suddenly and immovably real. The warm cradling hand beneath her belly was the sagging center of her old mattress, her skin, was blotchy through sweat-stained sheets, and black hairs were crawling out of the pores on her legs in a shoddy troop. Before she even knew it had been there, the warm dream that still rested against her lips started to dissolve down her chin. Quickly she tried to grab at the shreds of it, but the beautiful parts were too strong for her roasted brain to codify on such short notice. Something blue and violet, and very deep and warm, and dark and alone, and feeling like she was in a huge bassinet, that somehow was less ridiculous than she could imagine without the aid of unconsciousness. She felt a little pang of embarrassment at the abstraction, and tried weakly to push herself up to sitting. The last feeling of pleasant night-ness left her as a scorched headache rose into her brain. She mewled out a curled groan, winking her right eye convulsively.

"Nat? Nat are you there?"

A quiet line of footsteps approached down the hall. The door opened quietly, and Nat's head poked through "Mom? Are you awake?"

Martha moaned "Sweetie, can you get me some ibuprofen? Oh god, my head..."

The door snapped shut, the noise smashing back and forth against the walls of Martha's skull. She sunk back down to supine. A moment later Nat came back in with a glass of water, with a straw. He tiptoed across the room to Martha's bed, and said very quietly "Do you want a straw?"

She didn't answer, only reaching weakly out for the medicine, Nat dropped three dusty pills into her hand. She put them in her mouth, and wrapped her lips feebly around the straw - about half of the water ran down her face, but it was enough to swallow the pills, "Oh... I feel like hell."

Nat grinned, "Does this mean I can swear now, mom?"

She frowned and tried to suppress a laugh - it came anyway, but jarred her brain less than she expected.

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A Dream I Think I Had as a Child.

I reread what I wrote about Christmas this year, after spending all morning tramping up and down the halls of Pearson with my headphones on. Don't you love the feeling of having headphones on, when there are people around?

It reminds me of this dream I had when I was a child. I was walking through school, and the halls were full of people, talking, gossiping, complaining, telling jokes, making the noise that makes human beings so wonderful and awful, and then I found my hand on a scarf, a magical blue scarf. I drew it over the top of my head, over my ears, around my neck, behind my nape, In the way that I imagined Moslem women must wrap it. The silk muffled sound, and at first I felt as if I were wearing earmuffs. Then, I realized people weren't making the same words. There faces were the same, the same joking, gossiping faces, but the words were different, the gossiper was snivelling weakly, like a beaten dog, the joker was desperately shouting in the middle of a group of people, cackling like hyenas, wild and blood edged. And it was strange, because the faces still matched, though the tone had changed, and evryone was so muffled at first, but it intensified, until it was all louder than it had been, and I felt disoriented and dizzy. Then, I saw one face, standing to the side, an unremarkable, dark face, not speaking, the only face that didn't speak, and it looked at me, and it smiled, a weird smile, sympathetic and taunting all at once, and it murmured something, something very low, but I couldn't hear it, so I took off the scarf, and the face was gone.

That's what it's like, walking the halls with your headphones. It's like, perhaps there is a narrative to everything, after all.

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