On the Way to the Library

What this walk around the school brought you, understanding of life, wisdom, and a bit of the scents of, letting go, even???  Translated…

It was the springtime when the outbreaks started back up again, the stage three alert that’s taken over this city made everything quiet, and slower paced.  The dormitory that’s been listed as a cultural asset, fell silent, after the rain underneath the blue skies as well; after all, it’s a place you really wanted to go, you’d felt lighter in your, steps then.  Based off of the beliefs of the experts, “walking is the best form of defense against contraction”, as the alerts of the outbreak came on again, you’d come to the campus of this school to walk, using your status of an alumnus to enter the school’s libraries.

At that time, the tracks of the contracted gained widespread attention, seeing the messages of the groups of LINE: “I’d researched the tracks of the contracted, found, that none went to the bookstores, the libraries………so, the safest place during this outbreak is places with the books………”, I can’t help but grinned, am I glad, that these are, my most frequent hangouts?  Nope, but, being stuck in the boredoms of the outbreaks, I had, needed, that good laugh!  Borges stated, “I’d always imagined heaven to be some sort of a large library”, for you, heading into the libraries, it’s a temporary escape out of the nitty-gritties of the kitchen, the household chores that bogged you down, giving you that time alone you loved to enjoy on your own the most.

Resting in the libraries, you’d hoped to call out the various times, becoming someone else, it’s a sort of a cross between reality and fantasy.  The trees green after the rain, glowed that fresh new green of leaves, suddenly, Virginia Woolf’s word came, “the women needed the escort or the recommendation letters from the college researcher to enter into the libraries”, that was written back in 1920, showed of how sexist the British society was back then, today, it seemed, funny, and odd, but you’d, examined your own passages of growth, noted the tracks that remained on your life from the patriarchy too.  Here, you’d once, bumped into a group of outstanding young ladies, helping each other grow, in the enlightenment of learning, so youthful, the students mostly came to study here, due to their families’ expectations, “there will be fitting jobs for women after you graduate”, was the persuasions for you all.  Thirty years came and went quickly, once you were so obedient, so passively in accepting whatever handed to you, and now, do you, love yourselves, a little, more than those who came before?

illustration from UDN.com

My dear, as you say your prayers, who do you pray for first?  The freedom of thought in age, already returned our own brains back to us, but, in the unawareness, our spirits, still got bound by the social roles, the labels.  You’d walked up those heavy steps, the mirror in the grand hall was the first thing you saw, like it was the first time you ever saw it, but, that reflection, reminded you of just how hard time had left its tracks on you.  The gentle breezes brought the fresh scent of the grasses, before the ladies’ dorms, the yearly bloom of the gardenias, familiar, yet, quite, distant, the dreamy color of the eggs, felt distant, and like a dream to you, and, you were reminded of that older schoolmate who ws kind, and warm, she’d, stayed in her marriage, guarded by the laws, in actuality, she was left alone in a marriage with that cheating husband, raised up her children alone on her own, in the decades of time, the malignant tumor started taking over her, and, spread through the seasons, as she’d found the tumors last spring, in a few short months, she’d, gone, and you couldn’t say your proper farewell to her in the outbreaks.

The times pushed you forward, the gardenias covered in raindrops stay scented.  The days shadowed over by the outbreaks, how much the world had, changed, in the tempo and rhythm of nature, you can still find back that constant, that, calm, and so as you’d hummed “To Oneself at Fifty”: “We shall keep on trekking, keeping moving forward…………hearing those sounds that had been, etched deep in our, hearts………”, you’d found, that even with the mask on, tears falling down, you can still, smile, there are still something worth you expecting, something joyous in being, alive.

And so, this, is on the passages of our lives, we are all hit hard by the outbreaks, with the different lifepaths we travel on our own, and, some of us may have it easy, some, hard, but that’s just how life is, everybody is different, and yet, we’re, all the same.