Okay, so...
Feb. 21st, 2005 09:43 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sabotabbyI've been reading old entries. What an intensely depressing thing to do, by the way -- I wouldn't recommend it. Some time ago, (okay, November 26, 2003, if you must know) I'd turned off IP logging and asked people to tell me an interesting lie. Anonymously, of course.
Someone wrote me a really good one. I suspect I know who it is, but there's not really a way to confirm or deny.
This is what it is. Whoever wrote it brought a teeny smile to my face tonight, so thank you.
If you're reading this, and you're the one who wrote it, care to pipe up? (You can do so anonymously, if you must.) IP logging is off again. That also means that if you've wanted to say something to me anonymously for whatever reason, now is a good time.
The Reading Room
(Anonymous)
2003-11-26 21:29 (link) Select
I've found it under a number of large public and university libraries. "Under" is relative -- it's hard to speak of it having a location since it's always the same room. A few long tables in the middle, and newspaper racks along the walls.
The papers are all today's New York Times, only different editions. Very different editions. As in, Dubya is only president in 2/3 of them. In most of the rest, it's Gore, though there is one where Dole is into his second term. With such slight variations, you would think that the worlds described in the various editions would possess an identical history until quite recently. But this is not so. For instance, in one edition where Gore is in office, he isn't president, but rather prime minister. It took me some months to figure it out, but I finally established that the presidency was in this version reduced to a ceremonial post in 1867, when the House tried and the Senate convicted Andrew Johnson. You would think that something like that would make a huge difference in both US and world history, but it ultimately doesn't. Slight variations over time tend to converge, rather than branch out.
One result of this covergence is that in every edition, a great crisis dominates the headlines. 9/11 is rather infrequent, most common (around one fourth) is a civil war in Mexico, in which the US is to a greater or lesser extent involved. And there is a sense among those of us who use the reading room that something more, and worse, is coming.
Yes, there are several dozens of us. I have made no real effort to count. We cannot talk to each other, we certainly can't leave with any of the papers, we can only take notes. We take each other in during moments of distraction; with short, furtive glances.
It's strange to talk about what we can or cannot do, as if there were posted rules. But a caution that sprung from the new and strange situation we found ourselves in, grew into a habit, one that it would be deeply embarassing to break. The closest thing to a transgression I have encountered was when I came in one day to find one of the business sections halfway crumpled on one of the tables. Another patron was already there, a middle-aged woman who stood at the edge of the table, as though unsure of what to do. I remember she had a pearl necklace, seemed overly made up, and was wearing a still-damp raincoat. (I was in shirtsleeves, having come from the central pubic library in San Antonio on a blistering day in August.) By fits and starts, we straightened and smoothed the broadsheet; then returned it to the pole from which it had been removed. We communicated by pointing, nodding and head-shaking. We did not touch once, but the experience was uncomfortably familiar; although it would have been more uncomfortable to have left the business section where it was.
As I said, we take notes. What drives me, and I suppose the others, is a hope that a pattern can be found, in the events of both my world and the slightly different ones, that would allow me to understand the approaching disaster, and to take measures against it. We take notes, but we don’t share them. Here, what inhibits isn’t a sense of what’s proper, but of what’s possible. We all face the same general problem, but the resolution, we know, will in each case be so particular that each of us is very much on his or her own, and owes the other patrons only courtesy and silence.
But I can’t just write all the time I’m there. I daydream, my mind wanders, and I do notice at least some of what the others are doing. Some copy out whole articles in longhand. Some move an index finger through paragraph after paragraph, holding a square of random letters, like you have in bingo, in the other hand. Some add up long columns of numbers, from the baseball scores or the stock listings. I just summarize and quote from stories I find interesting, and leave the notes in a stack on top of my dresser at home. I haven’t found a pattern, but I am sure it is there.
Someone wrote me a really good one. I suspect I know who it is, but there's not really a way to confirm or deny.
This is what it is. Whoever wrote it brought a teeny smile to my face tonight, so thank you.
If you're reading this, and you're the one who wrote it, care to pipe up? (You can do so anonymously, if you must.) IP logging is off again. That also means that if you've wanted to say something to me anonymously for whatever reason, now is a good time.
The Reading Room
(Anonymous)
2003-11-26 21:29 (link) Select
I've found it under a number of large public and university libraries. "Under" is relative -- it's hard to speak of it having a location since it's always the same room. A few long tables in the middle, and newspaper racks along the walls.
The papers are all today's New York Times, only different editions. Very different editions. As in, Dubya is only president in 2/3 of them. In most of the rest, it's Gore, though there is one where Dole is into his second term. With such slight variations, you would think that the worlds described in the various editions would possess an identical history until quite recently. But this is not so. For instance, in one edition where Gore is in office, he isn't president, but rather prime minister. It took me some months to figure it out, but I finally established that the presidency was in this version reduced to a ceremonial post in 1867, when the House tried and the Senate convicted Andrew Johnson. You would think that something like that would make a huge difference in both US and world history, but it ultimately doesn't. Slight variations over time tend to converge, rather than branch out.
One result of this covergence is that in every edition, a great crisis dominates the headlines. 9/11 is rather infrequent, most common (around one fourth) is a civil war in Mexico, in which the US is to a greater or lesser extent involved. And there is a sense among those of us who use the reading room that something more, and worse, is coming.
Yes, there are several dozens of us. I have made no real effort to count. We cannot talk to each other, we certainly can't leave with any of the papers, we can only take notes. We take each other in during moments of distraction; with short, furtive glances.
It's strange to talk about what we can or cannot do, as if there were posted rules. But a caution that sprung from the new and strange situation we found ourselves in, grew into a habit, one that it would be deeply embarassing to break. The closest thing to a transgression I have encountered was when I came in one day to find one of the business sections halfway crumpled on one of the tables. Another patron was already there, a middle-aged woman who stood at the edge of the table, as though unsure of what to do. I remember she had a pearl necklace, seemed overly made up, and was wearing a still-damp raincoat. (I was in shirtsleeves, having come from the central pubic library in San Antonio on a blistering day in August.) By fits and starts, we straightened and smoothed the broadsheet; then returned it to the pole from which it had been removed. We communicated by pointing, nodding and head-shaking. We did not touch once, but the experience was uncomfortably familiar; although it would have been more uncomfortable to have left the business section where it was.
As I said, we take notes. What drives me, and I suppose the others, is a hope that a pattern can be found, in the events of both my world and the slightly different ones, that would allow me to understand the approaching disaster, and to take measures against it. We take notes, but we don’t share them. Here, what inhibits isn’t a sense of what’s proper, but of what’s possible. We all face the same general problem, but the resolution, we know, will in each case be so particular that each of us is very much on his or her own, and owes the other patrons only courtesy and silence.
But I can’t just write all the time I’m there. I daydream, my mind wanders, and I do notice at least some of what the others are doing. Some copy out whole articles in longhand. Some move an index finger through paragraph after paragraph, holding a square of random letters, like you have in bingo, in the other hand. Some add up long columns of numbers, from the baseball scores or the stock listings. I just summarize and quote from stories I find interesting, and leave the notes in a stack on top of my dresser at home. I haven’t found a pattern, but I am sure it is there.
