my ebony tower part 3 travelling

ah the library

i say you can tell the prospects of a community by its library or lack of library
like some might say you can tell a city by its quality of night life

and i saw why i do not frequently escape the walls of my own enclosure

it was a horrific experience
and it embarrassed me

and that this establishment and its inhabitants were a reflection of me
and i did not like what i saw

in a hypothetical if someone had a wondrous gift to share and rightly but in this case wrongly surmised
that within the bosom of books i would find many awake to admire this addition this gift

to start of there were these kids supposedly studying but shouting profanities regularly being dissuaded from their task
and to find a few hours from closing time that the paper they were doing was on the easiest of difficulties and they had taken the better part of twelve hours to do so
with the test tomorrow

and further more with their summarizing of their career path and their prospects
they had reverence nor any real understanding of path chosen

then immediately beside me i was beset by a person free from self control or reverence for the bosom of books or others in that mind state
and they began to snore uncontrollably
so bad it was increasing in decibels
and the sleep so deep that their phone a few mere milimetres from the earlobe could not jog them from slumber
so i assisted in tapping the chair

i thought what happened to silence in a library

then i happened to glance to my left where a woman was huddle behind a book stand
cross legged upon the floor breastfeeding her baby a mere hopscotch away from the toilets and secluded area
one could remark how it is a natural occurrence
but why on the floor with a thinly veiled attempt at obscuring others view
with ones body tilted towards children
and a few steps from the lavatory
and lastly why in a library

you would not do so in a nightclub or a restaurant so blase
in a sense lesser establishment
not one which feed your soul your consciousnesses
then i heard a guy smugly describe poorly to another guy book sections
then haughtily announce i am going to look for the science books
cue surrey accent
and later on i wandered upstairs
and saw their philosophy section
it was one row
with spaced out zone of three books

of books on philosophy not even philosophy itself
and then downstairs


the school girls arrived
huddling in the corner to talk about boys
and to inform you they go to an all girls school
yeah
note to parents segregation does not work
but the whole anti intellectual vibe their has put me off going

and let me not get started on the people who go to the library to play games and go on youtube to watch music videos

and i did get in these people shoes and returned thankful i have my own

this concludes part 3

Would you like silence with that

Silence
the stillness of it all
when is the last time many of us had silence
or stillness


the vicinity of others or their sounds evade our inner sanctum

i was recently on twitter and there were some people discussing how they want to go back into reading
which made me think they are reading
but what they were really implying
about reading
still puzzled me

there was nothing stopping them
having an ebook open then or just switching designated
twitter time for reading time

the business of people
people are busy or think they are
but the fact is no body is as busy
as they think they are
they just have either not managed their moments
to optimum efficiency
or have very different priorities

so it can come down to priority management
of which we are all guilty of

for if we briefly dip into the concept of being busy
what counts as busy
the first things people say is work
well that is only true of some people
so the unemployed
the student from university down to
emeritus
have amply time
but back to those who work


it can be broken down further into what kind of work
from transport work
retail work
or
office work
the 9 to 5
 where some people are famed for having enough
 time on their hands
to search face book
and send chain emails


i used to work in a coffee shop when the silence or stillness dawned on me
and it is the reaction to the stillness which defines you
it did help that i was doing a philosophy degree

but stillness
is something we have to re imagine
re define
re live
for some the stillness is only here
the remote
or that one place
removed from the self
but we must adapt to our surroundings



for even in this concrete jungle their avenues of escape
of seclusion
and refuge
and if not we can create them


We make time
and these are the scenes of our new stillness
not just the sides of mountaintops
or the visit to the country side
but the journeys
the trains
the buses
the platforms
the walking to get groceries
the possibilities
are endless

for i stumbled onto it when i began an early working job
i had all this free time
and at first you play games
but after you realise your battery does not hold up so well

and it hit me that using this time
the journey
i could use it constructively
and even use it to see how fast i finished
books
that it even
jumped into break time
and my toilet time