An Article About Libraries and Spiders

Today I went to the library at my local brick building. I sat in a somewhat comfortable chair with a sign near it that said "reading area." I wasn't reading. I was sitting in the reading area but I wasn't reading--this small rule-breaking gave me some odd satisfaction.

I couldn't help but notice that absolutely nobody in the library was reading a book. Most of the people were either sitting at tables and talking with friends, or listening to ipods, or typing on laptops. The one thing they all had in common: none of them had books in their hand.

I looked at the books sitting on the shelves. None of them had been touched. Come to think of it, I couldn't think of a single occasion when these books had actually been read. They just sat there. The computers, on the other hand, were abuzz with activity. People typing on them all the time.

We, as a species, are leaving something behind as of this millenium. Some don't want it that way, but that hasn't changed the verdict. A death sentence for paper. Writers must now be typers, because books sit alone on bookshelves without hands to hold them or turn their pages.

I heard a soft, moaning sound. It was all around me. I shifted in my comfortable chair to look around for the source of this miserable noise. I realized it was coming from the pages of the books. They knew they were being neglected, and they were miserable because of it. Their misery was filling the room. The sound of their moaning depressed me, so I started listening to my ipod, with the volume turned up so loud I couldn't hear anything anymore.

My right arm is blue, but sometimes it is red. My left arm is absolutely colorless.

"Reading Area" said the sign.

This morning, I was sitting on the toilet and a spider crawled across the bathroom floor, then stopped. I threw a clump of toilet paper at the spider, to try to get him to move. He didn't. This afternoon (after my library visit) I went back to the bathroom, and I saw that the clump of toilet paper I had thrown was still sitting on the floor. The spider was nowhere to be seen.

You know, sometimes I wonder...about winter...