Libraries and Sometimes Books

This is my first favourite spot in Hamilton. I anticipate a long list of such places, each with a unique perspective for observing this ever-changing reality we call our home. My current perch, though flooded with more light than I usually select for a place to think and write, is a splendidly active corner of the Hamilton Public Library. It's on the first floor, in a corner where all the walls are made of glass. I'm overlooking the indoor farmer's market and have the pleasure of seeing into the picnic-like selection of baked good, fresh produce, friendly laughing conversations as the customers pick through the leeks and apples, the pottery merchants, the ambitious florists, the wanderers, the samplers, the penny-counters, the wrist-watch-watching-foot-tappers, the cheese... It's a perfect beginning for a million stories, all in the pantomime of distance and thick glass. From this place, too near the children's centre for hard-thinking and much grown-up work, I can hear the chanting songs of a sing-along Dora the Explorer video (with many four-year-old sing-along-ers). "Do you need to go potty? Did you finish your apple juice?" There are two or three tales to tell from that phrase alone. Just to my right there is a bank of individual desks. Right now, each is filled up with a sprawl of somebody's life: coffee, muffin, laptop, notebook or perhaps a day timer, backpack, cell phone, person. He's a young guy with a go-tee and a cool hat. Who is he, though? What is he reading, thinking, planning, hoping, forgetting? These are the sparks of truth that my imagination is so excited to fan, to encourage, until a story catches fire. This... this is a good spot.