B (21:52)
Distant. You feel a lovely detachment from the city. You turn back to the library, and a great bronze door greets you. It is heavy, ornate, and beautifully detailed. You reach for the handle. The metal is cool in your palm, and as you take a nice, deep breath, you push gently. As the doors open with a soft groan and you enter, you are in Astor Hall. It's like a cathedral made from white marble. It's quiet here, and the air feels cooler, and the air carries the faint scent of paper, stone, and polished wood. You look up at the soaring vaulted ceilings and massive marble arches curving overhead. You see large bronze chandeliers casting a warm light, and on either side of the hallway are big, wide marble staircases going up to the floor above. You hear the hushed voices and gentle footsteps of others in the hall. And as you walk, you feel connected to all, all the readers and all the scholars who have passed through this same space. Humans have collected knowledge since the dawn of civilization. When we made the transition from nomads to farmers, we began to grow our food on a schedule and save seeds for the following year. Life became more stable as we grew our food and traded goods with our neighbors. We had more time. Time to think about our future. Time to reflect on our past. Time to sit and think and write and make art. Time to learn. And we began to gather knowledge. In the 7th century BC in Mesopotamia, King Ashurbanipal collected over 30,000 stone tablets, known as cuneiforms, that covered a wide range of living literary, religious, and scientific texts. He organized them by subject, and his was the first known library. As you allow your shoulders to relax and your breath slows down, you approach a staircase. And as you step up, you sense the marble beneath your feet, smooth and elegant, and your fingertips brush the carved balustrade along the stairs. And with every step you take, you're going deeper and deeper into relaxation. Now you're at the top of the stairs, and you pause before a tall set of wooden doors. You push the door gently open, and you enter an amazing place. You are in the Rose Main Reading Room. It is vast. You relax and take it in. This reading room is the size of a football field or a whole city block. You look up at the ceilings, or 52ft high and painted with clouds and soft light. Down the length of the room, you see long oak tables fitted with amber reading lamps, and it feels like you've stepped into a dream. As big as this room is, it is the softest, gentlest place in the whole city. The air smells faintly of paper and linen bindings. You walk slowly between the tables, and the wooden floor creaks quietly beneath your steps. The original architects of the library didn't stop at the building. They designed everything the tables, the chairs, the lamps, the chandeliers, even the waste baskets. This room feels beautiful. As you walk, you hear the subtle turning of pages, the whisper of a pencil on paper, the quiet clicking of a keyboard. You sit down at a table now and feel your mind settle like dust in a sunbeam, drifting down, down. 500 years after the first library was built, the scholars of Alexandria, Egypt, sought to collect every book in the world, written on scrolls of papyrus. They wanted to get copies of every text in existence in Greek, Egyptian, Persian, Hebrew, and more. They sent emissaries to Athens and Rhodes to buy entire private libraries. Every ship entering Alexandria's harbor was searched for scrolls, and scholars translated all all works into Greek, building a huge cosmopolitan archive. The great library at Alexandria held between 400 and 700,000 scrolls, making it the largest collection of texts in the ancient world. You stand up from the table and make your way to a small staircase going down toward the stacks beneath the reading room. Although they're no longer open to the public, you have special access tonight to the library's deep, hidden heart. You follow a small brass sign that is Authorized access. You pass into a narrow hallway, and it feels even quieter here, and then through another door. As you enter a cool, dim world, metal shelves rise on either side of you, heavy with books. The air smells even older here, like parchment and a little leather. Your footsteps echo on the worn linoleum as you walk down a stack. You brush the spines of the bottom books with your fingertip. Some are cloth, some are leather. They have embossed lettering. You are here hanging out with thousands of millions of minds, millions of ideas, whole other worlds. It is unlimited, all tucked away neatly on pages. We've gone from writing on rocks to papyrus to paper as we continue to gather our minds together, strengthening our humanity. Your finger stops on one spine. This book feels right. You pull it from the shelf. Its cover is worn and smooth. Its title is gilded and slightly faded. But this is the perfect book for you tonight. As you open to the first page, the paper crackles softly. You read a line and it fills you. You smile because this is the book you came you find a corner within the stacks tucked away a small alcove lined with dark wood and in it you find a single deep armchair beside a lamp. You sink into the chair and it creaks softly under your weight. You rest the book on your lap turning the pages slowly as you are filled by the words entering into you as images and feelings and ideas you are filled and changed and transported you are free and here you are in the heart of the building so relaxed so full so peaceful as you go deeper and deeper your eyelids are growing heavier and you lean back and you feel the texture of the armrests beneath your fingertips and your whole body is breathing itself peacefully calmly without effort. Your shoulders soften your jaw relief releases and your whole body settles into rest and you feel satisfied so you close the book and the chair becomes a bed and the lights go down and you are hell in the heart of the library safe and sound as you drip and float entry.
