What's the word for it when there's a post on a blog that's too long? Hm, "antidisestablishmentarianiblahblahblah," is that it? Oh yeah...

The Reading Room at the New York Public Library

As ever, verbal dust, verbal dust, verbal dust; door opens, dumpy woman comes through; magnet catches with a tap, door locks. Into some tourists, she walks. The paint is peeled on the ceiling, but they won't see that—you must come a lot. People eye and take photographs from the ground. A curly-maned man finesses down one side of his moustache. The guy next to him has a prodigious amount of change in his pocket. This man moseys.

The lights here are stately in the dark, but depressing in the presence of too much natural light. Yes, sometimes the sun will blaze in all the high-up windows on one side, dust motes will fly around in the yellow shafts, and the lamps will eke out some light only under their brass shades. Wild-haired grey ladies sit and munch their puckered lips and tightly read a book. Old men with rubber bands on their dusty glasses spread out crinkly bags full of paper. For whatever reason they get a stack of enormous books and hunt carefully for something therein. With knotty finger and ready pen, they mumble A-ha. Then they slowly write. Blonde ladies with sunglasses pushed up onto their heads walk slowly the perimeter. With a pamphlet, looking vaguely up. A fast-plodding guy with a stretched-full backpack makes downlooking for a chair, holding out a closed book by the spine, pages pointing up. Yes, like the book is a cantaloupe. And when he sits down, he goes diligently to work on something—sounds like he's unfolding sheets of tracing paper. A muscled little intense guy yanks a chair from under the table and it echoes. (The arms get wedged under the table and it sticks.) Some camera man uncaringly picks out a chair all his own and sets it around by the wall and takes a bunch of pictures of it. Big dangly ID hangs around his neck. That settles it. For each man a humble purpose for being, even a pointless one. Would you check out a crinkly book of cartoons every day and copy them out? No, but he will. Remember the old guy with the rubber bands on his glasses?—what is he looking for in those dusty big things? Whatever it is, he certainly keeps a record of it. And now I hear electric guitar from someone's headphones.

Hm, define pointless please, sir: The fat cop walks the aisle and clicks his little metal hand-counter. And he seems to do that every hour. People highlight; or people sit and read. Many have the helpful genes of paranoia and look up every minute. People check their neighbors. Check out the blonde guy, skinny face, hawk nose—he likes the girl on down from him. She's splendid, and of course he noticed. Nice pants, nice shirt, nice nose—for this he looks up extra-often, the nervous man of the century, perhaps she'll get up for something and he'll see her behind. Very curly hair, serious eyelashes, she is probably very smart, correct? She, she the one right there, perhaps with her help, her gentle approval, he might grow to love himself and do good work. Mademoiselle savior there at the table, what a nice light from the brass lamp on her face. But he's silly, of course. What's her book? It becomes very important. What a disappointment were she reading The Handbook of Nursing—better it were something in a foreign language. Oh yes. Could one look so serious yet from reading The Handbook of Nursing? No, no. Her wonderful hands shift. She looks at him. Discovered, is he staring? He plunges back into his book—seriously—for God's sake where was he, what half of what page, right or left—yes yes, he remembers reading that line there—but what is this about?—pointless, pointless, it's just pointless.

Something else, two people are talking suddenly. Do they know each other, or are they about to fight? An Arab tourist struts by with a water bottle, staring. They know each other. She's a black girl with a hair band. With an armload of folders and books, she barely aspirates, "They don't have it."

The smallest-breasted, straightest-shouldered girl alive is standing at the far end, gazing pixilated into the glass door, the one locked by the magnet. For access to that room, one must act as if one knows what one is doing. Confidence, and perhaps the secretary will punch you in. Stand there confused, oh small-breasted one, and you can pull the handle all you want—forever will the top-right quadrant of said door resist you, as that is the location of the magnet.

You don't mean a thing to me.

An inauspicious beginning? On second thought? I believe the radio spoke those words just as this thing demanded I type something. Dramatic, but it's a beginning, of one kind or another.