Of My Moleskine Notebook

And so I was in the Philosophy/Logic section, looking for books for the Thinking Skills entrance test for A Certain University when an unknown number came through on my phone.

“Ainaa Hafizah binti Azhar, saya daripada MPH bookstore”
-”Er, ya?”
“Awak ada order buku?”
“Er. Tak, kut.”
-”Ya, ada.”
“Eh. Takde. Buku apa ni?”
-”Entah lah. Dalam plastic”, and he went on, “awak ada dekat rumah?”
To this I answered “Haaah. APA?!”

About three hours later I arrived home and there it was, three books daintily stacked on the sofa; one of them with a cheque with my name printed across.

I think it’s the first time I’ve ever heard my mother acknowledge my writing, and it was rather funny how she tried to narrate what it was about to my father, to whom this must seem completely foreign.

Flipping through, cringe-worthy would be the biography section, while most people wrote about growing up liking Narnia and C.S Lewis, the younger me pontificated my love of prose and Nabokov. I’m afraid I may have come a bit as being up my own arse.

It’s a rather queer feeling though, reading something you wrote at 15. Trying to decipher how in God’s name did you ever possess so much passion and eidetic flair, when three years later you find yourself with a dumbed down level of college English, over-using phrases like like y’know, and yeah, exactly.

I’ve only been able to read a few of the other stories so far, but dear sordid blog reader, do rest assured that despite them omitting one line, that being the title of this post, I was the only 15 year old of the whole anthology who incorporated a graphic – though somewhat romantic- depiction of sex and -heavily implied- homosexuality, subtly enough to be published by a Malaysian bookstore.

Hehe. Now, some things never change.

The lower-ground floor of the library, for the most part of my being here, is usually half empty. All areas between and behind shelves would be completely devoid of any human life, leaving the lone librarian with the 80’s hairdo, ponderously pushing his trolley of unread political science books no one actually reads.

This past month has seen an exodus of students who would lug big bottles of water and their thick, earth-shattering ring folders, making homes out of the otherwise empty carrels. You know it’s exam season when you have to comb through rows of seats to find none un-occupied nor used as a sleeping pod.

In the midst of my own last-minute revision (can there ever be such a thing as consistent revision in the classical system?), I find myself in moments of wanton distraction and thought. As beautiful as it may sound, being surrounded by shelves heavy with discourses on history, to the more often read pop-psychology, to literature and beyond, I can’t help but feel that there is something sterile and unromantic about Sunway’s library.

Is it the overhead fluorescent lighting? Perhaps its the pallid depressed looking inhabitants, blasting bad screamo music from supposedly cool emo headphones. Maybe it’s just that sometimes the library feels like a temporary hide-out for people wanting to get some a/c.

I sometimes wonder how it must be like for the librarians. Do they go to work everyday feeling like they’ve been given a purposeful existence? Do they feel like it is their task, their god-given duty to sow the seeds of intellect into the apathetic post-pubescent? Or do they just arrive at 8.00 a.m. like most of us, to start another 8 hours of card scanning and book arranging?

Philip Larkin wrote a bulk of his poetry while working as a librarian at Hull University, my sister’s alma mater. He’s probably the most oft-quoted British post-war poet (‘They fuck you up your mum and dad’, anyone?) who I’ve still not found an opportunity to slip into in any of my GP essays. There’s always this underlying tone of nostalgia and regret, of loss and premature wisdom about his stuff. The sad meaningless sex, the sad meaningful sex, and the constant struggle to search for that something deeper, the intimacy beyond the sex.

Sometimes I wonder if the quiet man behind the check out counter has some sort of Larkin-like life after he punches out at five. Does he take the free shuttle bus home to a small apartment filled with half-drunk coffee mugs, leaving brown stain rings on stacks of papers he’s been working on for months? Does he smoke away his nights, lounging around in a kain pelikat and a milo ais, as he nurses some Perec or Le Clezio?

How does it feel dedicating your life to such a sturdy unchanging place where its visitors are constantly changing and leaving? Do they resent our youth, our temporary existence in the air-conditioned cement and steel space? Do they too hope for a day when they would leave the carpet for better pavements elsewhere? Or do they, like Larkin, find the place a temporary residence to rest their everyday existence, as they nurture their other lives elsewhere?

Either way, while I see the same faces everyday, we never have spoken more than the usual card, grunt, thank you. They don’t care whether I’m borrowing something they know I won’t make head or tail of (Pure Mathematics, Longman Publishing, 1993), neither do they respond to my exuberance upon finding something long catalogued, unread, and hard to find (The Story of Penguin, Jeremy Lewis).

Not that I’m asking for everyday chance encounters with the 80s hairdo man where he would pontificate about Ayn Rand or something, but just that it seems to me everything in the library seems like a transaction.

The sterility of the place comes from how it is only used when it is needed, and never seen as anything else otherwise. A place for a nap, for those last minute homework completions, to facebook your status (is Bored and Tired and omggggg hungry la!), and of course, to study for the tedious exams that everyone’s lives seem to revolve around.

No conversation about some new piece of literature, no soul-searching, existential struggle. No poetry from no prose-filled mind.

Early this year, a friend of mine was having trouble locating the Economics section and was given a rather disgruntled answer when the object of her search was in fact a row behind her.

Dear reader, can you blame me for thinking what the answer would be if I chose to ask, “I am looking for the Critic for Pure Reason”, and being answered,

“We’ve been looking for that for a while, too”.