So, last weekend, I went out to Union Square in to study, and it was a great chance to explore the city and get work done. Building on that good experience, today, went down to the New York Public Library bearing books and homework.
I realise now that I realy do like simply riding the subway. The people that one may meet in the subway system no longer seem threatening, and are only amusing for the most part, and certainly harmless. Similarly, the old infrastructure, the open tracks, leaky ceilings, screeching brakes, jerky cars, worn staircases, graffiti-ed walls and general grime in the system are also essentially harmless. Once you get to that realisation, then you start to appreciate the character of the system; the diversity appears colourful rather than threatening, and the deterioration is quaint rather than dangerous.
I am repeatedly struck by how the sounds of the subway get at me. The tinny service announcements in the carriages, the echoing clanking as the train passes through the tunnels, the screaming of metal on metal that can penetrate through layers of concrete right up to the sidewalk; and I daresay there is no sound that quite has the quality of anticipation and seduction as the building rumble of a far-off train approaching in the tunnel. And then, there are the sights as well: the barely-made-out graffiti on the tunnel walls, the lights and coloured signals flashing past as the train speeds along the tracks, the spectacle of a car full of people, and other people on the platform trying to cram their way in. It is a veritable circus; it is a subterranean society thathas its own rules, its own conventions, a society that is ephemeral and transient in nature, but which leaves an indelible and persistent mark on the rest of the city.
And it strikes me how elegant the system really is. The key is to realise that the trains operate like buses, so there can be more than one train line on one train track. Once that is realised, then all one really needs besides that is a practical level of literacy. The principles of the system are easily deduced from there: express trains only stop at stations with four platforms, local trains open their doors on the right when stopping at a local stop, and above all, follow the signs when unsure. And once these principles are deduced, the system is easily navigated, and the principles prove to be reliable even when one needs to extrapolate a response to a novel scenario (for example, a service stoppage between stations). The subway is thus like a complex logic problem, and its solution delivers the amount of satisfaction appropriate to the solution of a good riddle.
Anyway, I digress - so, I went to the Public Library today. And it is an amazing building. The entrance hall itself is breathtaking, a room clad entirely in marble. All the hallways are lined with marble as well, and they are high-ceilinged and wide, and lined with portraits or sculptures, and echo pleasantly as one heads purposefully down them. There are elaborate ceilings worked with heartwrenching intricacy. There are antique water fonts set into the walls that are no longer functioning. The stacks of books on the open shelves extend impressively the length of two city blocks, and I am told that seven storeys of bookstacks are hidden in the bowels of the library. There is a particular alcove with a particularly stunning sculpture of a young girl balanced on a log crossing a stream, entitled "Water Nymph"; its beauty and purity seizes you as you walk by. And there is the breathtaking Rose Reading Room, which is what is pictured above. An enormous room filled with long, solid wooden tables, reading lamps and lined with shelves of books, and topped with a plaster ceiling made to look like wood, and framing three massive murals of a sunset sky. That room is my new favourite place in New York.
Halfway through the afternoon, broke my reading to join a free guided tour of the library, and learnt a bit about its workings. About how some collections are meant to be accessed by special permission from an approving board only. About how to request a book from among the endless stacks, and how the Library has the fastest book retrieval system in a reference library. There were interesting histories of the various benefactors who donated to the Library's trust, biographies of philantrophists who donated impressive collections to the Library, and a short summary of the unimaginable range of materials available to the public.
And that is what you immediately realise, after you spend enough time in the building to get over the initial shock at how splendid it looks. You realise that this is a real working library, a real valuable resource to people looking for information; in other words, it is not merely a nice architectural gem, but a social environment, a venue for activity. Sitting in the Rose Reading Room engrossed in my own book, I am particularly moved by the notion that I am sitting on the tip of an iceberg of knowledge, of incredible volumes of things to know just waiting for me to ask for them. And then I look up around me, and watch other people read for a while. Someone will occasionally make notes on a notepad, type something into a laptop, flip a page, get up to find another book, or simply stare off into the distance. Everyone is engrossed in what he is doing, and no one talks to another person, and yet, there is a certain sense of camaraderie, a sense of community even, in being in this place together, and being here with a purpose that is common in that it is a quest to know more.
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