An Agender Autistic Crip Limps Into a Library...

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The following post is part of a Seed Pod collaboration about libraries. Seed Pods are a SmallStack community project designed to help smaller publications lift each other up by publishing and cross-promoting around a common theme. We’re helping each other plant the seeds for growth!

Libraries. I thought this subject would be easy for me, because I’ve always loved libraries, and I have a fondness for the image I hold of them in my interpretation of the world. It’s been so long that I don’t know whether it’s been ten years or twenty since I’ve been in a brick and mortar library (I love that I can check out ebooks online), so I don’t know how accurate my abstract image of “a library” is. I do cherish it, whether accurate or not. My personal imagi-memory of a library is a place where my Autistic neurology can sigh in relief. It is a sanctuary of quiet, contemplative, space, where curiosity is the norm and nobody else finds it strange or off-putting that I don’t make eye contact or eagerly engage in small talk with them. It is a place where there might be a clock, and there might not, but if there is, it slows down to match my tempo rather than urging me to speed up. If the whole world were like the library, I would not be disabled. I would thrive if I could live there.

But this subject is not easy for me to write about. I don’t know why. I want it to be. Perhaps it is because what is most present in my vision of “library” is the physical environment of it, and I haven’t been immersed in that for so long. I’ve struggled long enough trying to engage myself on this subject. I will go to the library. I will sit in the library to write, and that will surely inspire me.

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I looked so forward to coming home to that fondly remembered sanctuary that I got up early and drove my wife to work so that I could have the car today. I spent money I don’t really have on parking. But score! I found a disabled parking spot right outside the door. Then I walked. And walked. And walked down a hall long enough to fit right in at an airport. Then I took an elevator up one floor.

I’m at the library now. I walk some more. And some more. And some more, slowing down, my limp becoming increasingly pronounced. Everything hurts, my breath is labored. Why is this place so fucking big, and why aren’t there any chairs or benches? A person pushing a cart of books just looked at me with what I think was maybe concern for a second, then re-focused and went about their business. And finally I find a place to sit, close enough to the windows that the impact of the florescents overhead is blunted to some degree. I did my ritual pulling of everything out of my pockets before I sat down; if anything falls out onto the floor, I will have a hellish time picking it up.

I’m out of breath. My head and my back hurt. My stomach feels queasy. But I’m here, sitting at a table, using free and freely available wifi. That’s something, right? I still can’t dislodge any of my ideas about “library” from the muddled ball of “things about libraries” that squats like an abandoned cat toy in a shadowed corner of my brain. I can’t leave because I’m too fatigued to get up, so I might as well wait patiently, and maybe the ideas will come to me.

I’m looking around, trying to find something inspiring to spark my imagination. This trip is meant to renew my fascination, but this isn’t like The Library as I remembered it. I am lost in unfamiliar territory, and feel the panic and despair of watching the world leave my ancient ass in the dust. This place is not recognizable to me as a library. It’s not quiet. There is nothing about it that feels reverential or sacred. It reminds me of a museum in a tourist-y town, where the relics are still there to see, but capitalism has overpowered culture and dictated the formal element. I feel like I should be Doing Something — that there is some compulsory performative exploration that I am expected to complete. That’s not what I want. I want to just be; to be curious, without any expectation of having accomplished some preconceived agenda for what my exploration will entail. I have a semi-glossy flyer outlining all the things I can see here. It is useless to me. I can’t move right now. I’m too tired. If I weren’t so exhausted some of these things might be interesting to me but it’s pointless to try to ponder that at this time.

The industrial-grade carpeting is kicking up my allergies, and I can feel the congestion getting heavy behind my eyes. The fluorescent lights are poking at my eyeballs and brain. The stacks are off to the side, and seem like an afterthought. There’s a cafe here, complete with clanging dishes and other cafe-type hubbub. Broad expanses of open space unmercilessly amplify the echo of even tiny sounds, and most of the sounds aren’t tiny. Someone is watching a video on their computer, with the volume up. People are talking, some using their outside voices. I’m hearing way more than I care to about FOIA requests. Don’t lawyers have their own offices? Why are they using their loud, belligerent, lawyerly voices here? Someone wandering the stacks is listening to music, and now they’re walking past me, singing to the song blasting from their phone. There’s someone a few table over watching something, who keeps exclaiming “Oh, Wow!” every minute or so. I’ve heard two different ring-tones since I sat down just a few minutes ago. This is not what I expected. It’s hurting my brain. I can’t think here. My imagination is nowhere to be found, shoved aside by my disappointment, physical pain, and tension-riddled effort just to remain here and now. I’m dangerously close to meltdown or shutdown; I’m desperate to regulate. I was so caught up in my nostalgic assumptions about “library” that I didn’t even bring my noise-cancelling headphones. Stupid, stupid mistake! What the hell was I thinking?

Maybe I shouldn’t remain here right now, but I don’t really have a choice, because my legs will not hold me up. Besides, there’s that insistent, hopeful part of me that believes that if I sit here long enough to catch my breath, to cool down from my walk, let my stomach settle, acclimate to my surroundings, maybe it will start to feel more welcoming and comfortable. I just need to be calm. Focus on my breath. Feel my feet on the floor. I need to feel just a little bit comfortable.

Comfortable. Comfort-able. Interesting word. I wonder if “comfortdisable” is a word? I just googled it. No, it is not a word. The closest I got was a link to a Xitter post from 2020 that says “Things that create comfort disable you.” I have no idea what that means. I’m not going to follow it and find out, because my experience is that statements like that aren’t likely to lead anywhere that I am… comfortable. My disability-activist soul wants to find out, just in case there’s something I should say or do to either push back or support, depending on the meaning, but I’m just not up to that right now. I’m too tired and on edge to have any confidence in my ability in this moment to withstand that which wants to judge, ridicule, or invisibilize me. So I’m not going to find out. I have such a tendency to digress. I realize I write the words “I digress” in a lot of my posts. So anyway…

What did I think I would find here? I thought I would find the sanctuary I remember, where quiet contemplation is the cultural norm. A place that embodies, much more than any other public space, respect for the need to get a break from the sensory assaults of modern life. My autistic brain revels in that memory of libraries as safe havens where time slows down; where the clock, the productivity, the interactivity, and the hustle, are not what’s most worthy of attention. I remember rooms where the light is bright but soft. Where there is an understanding that quiet and solitude is a priority. Where the goal of slowing down, being curious about even small details, and quiet, reverent curiosity and exploration are commonplace, rather than cause for disdain or ridicule. I thought I would feel safe here. I don’t.

And now, my cherished assumption that libraries would still be as I remember is lost to me. That wonderful, calming, vision of a place where my neurology is in no way disabled is tarnished and torn.

Someone walks by and tries to start a conversation with me about my computer. I don’t want to talk to anybody, but in this agitated state of mind, I don’t trust myself to set any kind of boundary without being a jerk. So we chat for a minute about my System76 computer and the merits of various Linux distros. Here I am, in a library, having a standard-volume conversation. I am doing exactly what is frustrating me about other people here. I am making noise. It’s time to leave, I think. Thankfully, the computer enthusiast moves on. The level of relief and gratitude I feel, that my new acquaintance isn’t too talkative, is immense. I live in fear of strangers who will talk to me for as long as they want to, because I don’t know how to end a conversation. I am at their mercy.

I gather my things and start the long trek back to my car. This one will be way more brutal than the walk in, because I didn’t get the rest of the day to recover before starting off.

I didn’t want this post to be a downer. I wanted it to be celebratory. Is there any way to salvage it? I think about this as I drive home. My level of relief when I finally settle into my favorite chair in my own home is just a little bit more than the relief I felt when the conversation in the library ended without my intervention.

I settle in. Oh. Wow. This is it. This is the salvaging I need. This is the space I need. This is how I navigate my way through one more day in a world that is mostly inaccessible to me. I look around the room, feeling my breath, feeling my feet on the floor. Here is my library. This is it. In this moment, I am so grateful that I have this space. So many disabled people don’t have a space they can call their own, where they feel safe, and comfortable, and un-assaulted by the general inaccessibility and sensory overload of modern culture. I do have that space, and acknowledging that, feeling that, fits exactly with that long-cherished vision of “library.”

This is an invitation to me: to focus on what I have here, and to resist the near-constant urging by well-meaning others that in order to feel more connected, more engaged, more a part of the world, I need to go out into the world. I need to leave home, and “touch grass” or some such shit. No. That is great for whoever it is great for. It is not a good idea for me. One baby step towards liberation is finding the library where it suits me, rather than trying to force myself to fit in to whatever cherished vision of lofty, revered places of cultural significance I’ve been taught I should aspire to syncing in to.

This is my home and this is my library, and I like it here. I am safe here. I can rest when I need to, and I am as comfortable as is possible for me. And I am grateful for that. Sometimes it takes sacrificing an erroneous and outdated vision to notice that what I have is worthy of that gratitude. I offer thanks, to my wife, to Wilma and Percy (my kitty friends), and to myself for making this place my sanctuary. My library.

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Alas, this is not like the library I found myself in this week. This cute little video depicts an updated version of the library of my memory <sigh>.

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