The Dimensions of the Vancouver Public Library
Artículo por José Tlatelpas
For Paty Spoonhead
The central building of the Vancouver Public Library is an
intimate dimension of many solitudes. From the origin of all the
winds come lost souls to search meetings by the sacred ways of
the books. Sometimes, the texts offer dreams, ambitions,
confidences, light.
I could say that it is a corral where summer`s baby bulls and
lost baby cows trot between the virtual grass of crazy
architectures. Here the humanauts navigate in golden spider webs
searching for a voice, a hope, a sin, secrets, understanding.
The workers of the library works. Some ones dream, others are
imprisoned and, secretly, read the dreams of the citizen readers
and citizens givers of readers. Like a coyote in the hill, I
watch them with my staring eyes, careful, inadverted, natural,
savage.
There I have seen a girl, remote and white, she works finding
dreams and, while she works, she dreams. Sometimes I find her
lost between the routes of her heart or the virtual spaces of a
misunderstanding society. Like her colleagues, she hoards, with
discretion, the transcourse of her intimacy. Sometimes, I watch
her to draw the courses, furtively, between the possibilities of
the titles of a book and, sometimes, to drag herself to the sidereal
magnetism of her own dreams, I see her navigating in the spaces,
human and delicate, sensual, unaccessible.
I know that there are several hidden stars between the shelves
and the books, workers, readers, security workers, directors,
tramps, dreamers. I know there are, in that place, secret fires,
content informations. I know a poet and a German theorician, a
delicate poetess in French, and the library worker, remote and
white. In a map, I could be the compass that identifies the route
of their lights.
The German poet has the long hair and try to hide his glance. Maybe he
fears that a reader could steal his thoughts and could be
discovered his quality of a prisoner. To maintain the freedom of
his dreams he hoards them. The eyes, a door of the Three Souls,
could allow them to escape. That is why he avoids to meet with the
eyes of the anonymous numbered readers. Because, sometimes, in
a library, for the administrators, each reader is a number, a
credential, a user of rights, a snawer of the services, a thief
of intimacy.
The poetess Quebequois seems hard as a soldier. She has the
look cold, the eyebrow… merciless. Nevertheless, when she goes over
the prologue, we could notice her soul trembling, between the
vibrations of her shyness, and that she is a very fine shell of
tenderness. I could say that she is even more subtle than the
dust that covers the yellow wings of the butterflies, more luminous than
the petals of a tulip, smaller than a daisy. And however, she
pretends to be a magic sculpture of white steel.
The remote and white library worker is a bandit. From her marble
tower she steals thoughts, attentions, my heart. Devoted to her job
she navigates like a tender kiss of paper in the Pacific ocean.
Her eyes are the eyes nearest to the Moon, her waist is a
treasure in a medieval tower, and for it fights the warriors of
the letters. Sometimes she shines so gorgeous and distracted,
that prevents any reading, she kidnaps the dreams, she takes the
ownership of my breath and its accents.
I walk between the books of pine, or between the printed pines.
Very near, the water surrounds me, the legislation, the
regulations, the obligatory silence. Quietly I rise by the
Canadian ladders and I look carefully, I am The Mythological
Coyote of The South.
My nose, dark and humid, discover the challenge of the summer
scents, the secret that navigates in the breeze, the intimate
perfume that seems inavderted. My soft hair is a spark between
the volumes and sometimes, as a thousand of years ago, I capture,
suddenly, the own heart of the unexpected.
