wanderlust

[quotidians]

There's nothing like the sensory experience of getting lost in a city. Entirely invigorating. I'm mad for it. I've fallen in love with so many places that I've never lived in; in Boston I drove my folks mad visiting every art gallery and science museum, running up and down piers lined with sailboats and into churches despite being incapable of faith, even loitering around university bookstores for hours without buying anything. I don't know how they put up with me.

I'm sorely missing that feeling, so tell me about someplace, sometime and how it felt to be there. It doesn't have to be a city at all--tell me about soccer fields and national parks and public pools and the interstate highway. That sort of thing.

Comments

[michaelboy]

We used to hang out under the interstate (I-70) overpass which crossed over the railroad tracks.

The tracks were our way to escape town, parents, and structure: balancing on each rail, jumping from one to the other, finding railroad spikes as treasure, or making torches by soaking catails in kerosene but finding out the stems burned too quickly, dreaming of making a rail-runner cart but never actually doing it.

[quotidians]

A rail-runner cart sounds like it would've been awesome. I used to dream about hopping on a freight train and speeding off to god-knows-where. Thanks for sharing.

chavez lib, phx arizona

[comix64]

my local library. it has sliding doors. i always notice that the floor below the doors isnt unlike at an airport, the gap between the plane and the weird collapsible hallway thing they use to bridge the plane and building. i always look down at it. unlike at an airport, there is no visible gap. you cant see the floor a few feet away. anyway, you walk in, the doors're always tardy to open, so i always slow down a little when i walk into them since i have a default speed some consider a little on the fast side. now, i dont often describe spaces, so the following may be a little incoherent:

there's a wide open space in front of you. this is what we niche hobbyists call a "Library". i note this because if you walk forward until you're just inside the area, and then sidestep to the right, and then turn 180, you will be in front of a very small hallway w/ bathrooms, water and some books on sale (as opposed to available to borrow). ive never really taken a look at the area for books for sale. i suppose i might want to do that. books are pretty expensive at barnes & noble, and i seem to remember a cardboard sign at the sale area saying some single digit price. i think it was $8 or so (vs. like $20 for a thick fiction novel @ the Barnes). anyway, the hallway has books on the right and bathrooms on the left, but the books area is the entire partition between the entrance and hall, whereas the bathrooms have a few smaller partitions, between the wider wall that stops people in the very closest mini-hallway of books from seeing people in the bathroom stalls, and between the opposite bathroom entrance and the dead-end of the main hallway. but enough not-library area, back to the wide open space. there are racks of cds on the right, and there's some big easel with an ad on it i never look at, something like "Join our public event on January 1st, 1969 where we celebrate the UNIX epoch or some other boring thing i dont care about", but ive sort of trained myself to never look at those. anyway, if you were to just walk forward, the right side of your lower torso would hit the front desk (which is shaped like a square, with attendants on all sides, and a big open space for them to mingle or exchange cards or whatever the hell they do) and then get you some weird looks from the like 2 or so people who're stationed there at any given time. if you excuse yourself a little to the left, you then walk forward some more and come to the computer cafe, w/ ~4 computers running i assume windows 10 or so, which have software that kick you out and delete everything once you spend like 5 minutes on them. ive never touched these since if they have time limits i assume theyre locked down in terms of everything else too so i dont really care about them unless i can get them to boot linux off a thumbdisk which i assume they would refuse. after all, they have no power buttons on the log-in menu. anyway, if you thoroughly exercise your rightways neck muscles you will come across another few computers hoisted onto bookracks and some bookracks which are the general book area with category-printed papers on their ends above the computers if they're present, which out of the ~18 racks there are ~4 computers hoisted in the area, but each rack has a category paper nonetheless. these are useful since they by default or at least via courtesy always display the homescreen of the webpage of the local library synchronized effort site, which has the same logo that's on my library card, which i am capable of using at any library in the area, as well as the site, since my card is a local area card rather than just the one library i registered it at (the one im describing), though i never use it elsewhere since this one's in walking distance and the next is like 30min's drive and though it has a beautiful transparent-walled elevator and water decor and a replica borg cube from star trek that i dont really care for and a massive window on the fifth maybe fourth floor, i dont journey there often. this library has one floor, the one in walking distance. if you rotate yourself to the left, there's the kids' area, with kids' books and a little bit of color in its design, the walls being orange instead of white. if you then divide your rotation in half and then use this number to rotate to the right again, you'll see at the back area of the kids' area a giant few letters that i can't seem to remember what spells, but i know definitely include a C which has a couch in it and a G which has its entrance closed off (the space between the top and the shelf of the G). i used to spend basically all of my time in the library there and saw the normal bookracks w/ their plain white instead of the local's thickened wood racks as scary, but recently i feel the kids' area is alienating and the plain white racks are where i go now. the kids' area has books on top of the shelves, splayed open maybe 75°, freely up to be taken from their displays but i never did such. the kids' area has a few couches the wall right-angled from the giant letters, for the leisure of the overworked parents to sit in. i sat in them maybe thrice, ever. anyway, if you take the entrance as a point and the front desk as an anti-point and the kids' area as a point, you'll get a sort of elevated point if you assume the front desk repels your hypothetical string and if you follow this string to the midpoint-and-a-little-to-a-direction-i-know-not-the-name-of, you'll arrive at a lounge with some tables and chairs, and a nice view through a window that you can get closer to if you walk away from the lounge and then to a ramp in the next area and then back up it to a small area with couches (3 of them) some magazines and, of course, the giant window. and then if you walk the direction opposite the bookracks that contains the ramp, you'll see some dvds which have some films i enjoy but mostly i look there to see what recent stuff has been inexplicably published on dvd which nobody seems to use but me. i saw like zootopia 2 on there which was weird. they've also got citizen kane and free guy, which i took home free guy once but that movie kind of sucks and i'd already seen it anyway, i only got it because i had gotten a dvd player w/ xmb installed on it set up to my tv which was just a power-cable and hdmi-cable plugging, but i decided i needed a dvd other than the ones i had so i borrowed that disk and then put it in and then took it out and then went to return it. anyway, a little in the same direction and past the area and you'll see some cds, which have no experimental music nor classic rave or dnb, so i never really care for them. the closest i saw to an album i like was that imagine dragons album w/ the guy floating up to a rainbow beacon. and let me tell you i do not like imagine dragons so that area isnt for me. there're also audiobooks abound, but i dont want to listen to some guy speak about what i could read much faster, and i definitely dont want that in cd format. this area comes to a close as it's against the wall used for the bathrooms. you then sidestep rightways, come to face a hallway which has books for sale and bathrooms and water fountains, a little more and you face a glass sliding door ~10ft away from you. the track i've described is like a sort of misshapen balloon, kind of a two-legged circle thing. hopefully this is a good descriptor, if you really want more or you want to see the space as it is and clear up any architectural literacy failings of mine, i can take some photos the next time i go and give links.

Re: chavez lib, phx arizona

[quotidians]

I've always liked public libraries, though it's been a long while since I visited the local ones. More than anything, I enjoy the idea of a physical space dedicated to information storage that I can get lost in organically. In my experience, the closest digital equivalent would be looking through collections on the internet archive. They're similar in that the objects (films, books, images, sound bites, et cetera) loosely fit into a theme, but many are so personalized that you've got no idea what you'll find. On the other hand if you know exactly what you're looking for it's easier to download a PDF off Anna's Archive nowadays than get on a waitlist for a library book, so I guess that's why I haven't gone to my local library.

Your description of the computer cafe kills me. Someone must have felt it was imperative that it provide the least utility and worst consumer experience possible. In five minutes you could, what, make a handful of Google searches? Play a round of blitz chess? You couldn't even go down a satisfying rabbit hole on Wikipedia. I really enjoyed how you described the interior with points and strings. Reminds me of Flatland a bit, if you've ever read that.

I've filled in the blanks with a strange amalgam of every library I've ever been in, so that I'm honestly unsure if I want to see the space as it is now. I would like to see the Borg cube though. I know it's likely 3D printed or made of some generic hard plastic but somehow I keep imagining it as a ridiculous papier-mâché art project. Thanks for sharing :-)

Re: chavez lib, phx arizona

[comix64]

the secondary library w/ cube i was describing was the burton barr in downtown az. the cube in the entrance looks like this, and despite it being directly in the entrance, and some fanciful Exact Replica i dont watch star trek so it doesnt mean much to me. i still think of it almost every time im thinking about the place, except where im thinking about its fancy elevator or giant window. these 3 things are basically the library's defining characteristics for me.

Re: chavez lib, phx arizona

[quotidians]

That is significantly larger and more detailed than what I was imagining. Here in Vancouver the branches of our municipal library are typically only adorned with standees and paper cutouts. I've been to NYC's, which has fancy displays of Audubon paintings and Gutenberg bibles as well as a deluge of tourists (which included me at the time). It's interesting seeing what's in libraries besides the shelves. I think it tells you a little about the character of the city/town wherein it's located.