Oracle of the Library
by
Julie Jones
Oxygen deprivation is a standard job requirement for library oracles, as are cardigans.
My pet python, Myrtle, spirals around my chest, flattening my lungs into slips of pink paper. She is muscle without end, heavy as all the universe's dark matter. I am the black hole at the center of her galaxy.
But she, at least, is silent, unlike the throngs of humanity that clamor each day to sacrifice their fears upon the altar of the reference desk.
Books, they think, hold all answers, but books are mere atoms of knowledge: singular and tiny. I worship taxonomy: the annihilation of ignorance through classification and shelving order. If we name the world, we can organize it. If we organize it, we can control it.
If we control it, we need no longer be afraid.
Every question is different. Who? What? Where? When?
Every answer is the same: Look here. I point to a page in a book on a shelf. Now, do you understand?
They all say they do, yes, and thank you, but no one does. No one understands anything, least of all me.
One day, a small girl approaches my altar with sadness in her eyes and asks but one word. Why?
Myrtle strangles me into a dreamscape, her galaxy spiraling tight around my nothing. With my hands as guides, I navigate the maze between shelves. I separate two books like labia and slip like paper into the black between spines. Down into the labyrinth, I float. I walk the maze and fear the minotaur, but where we meet at the center, Myrtle's muscles round his horns and squeeze till his skull cracks open and his brain falls to my feet, a sacrifice. I shrink into a small red ant and walk the maze of his brain until I get to the center, and I eat his thalamus. Feeding through my mandibles, it tastes like feta, but I spit it back up because I lack the enzymes to digest mystery. With my red antennae, I sift through my spit, spreading the wet like gossamer web, seeking answers but seeing only her question: birth and death, creation and decay, ecstasy and anguish, transcendence and atrocity: the cycle the same for an ant, a python, a minotaur, a librarian, a nation, a star, a galaxy, a girl – the difference only the organization of atoms and the scope of time.
A galaxy swirls around a small red ant wearing a tiny black cardigan.
Look here: I point to the nothingness between spines. Now, do you understand?
No, she says, nodding her head.
My pet python, Myrtle, spirals around my chest, flattening my lungs into slips of pink paper. She is muscle without end, heavy as all the universe's dark matter. I am the black hole at the center of her galaxy.
But she, at least, is silent, unlike the throngs of humanity that clamor each day to sacrifice their fears upon the altar of the reference desk.
Books, they think, hold all answers, but books are mere atoms of knowledge: singular and tiny. I worship taxonomy: the annihilation of ignorance through classification and shelving order. If we name the world, we can organize it. If we organize it, we can control it.
If we control it, we need no longer be afraid.
Every question is different. Who? What? Where? When?
Every answer is the same: Look here. I point to a page in a book on a shelf. Now, do you understand?
They all say they do, yes, and thank you, but no one does. No one understands anything, least of all me.
One day, a small girl approaches my altar with sadness in her eyes and asks but one word. Why?
Myrtle strangles me into a dreamscape, her galaxy spiraling tight around my nothing. With my hands as guides, I navigate the maze between shelves. I separate two books like labia and slip like paper into the black between spines. Down into the labyrinth, I float. I walk the maze and fear the minotaur, but where we meet at the center, Myrtle's muscles round his horns and squeeze till his skull cracks open and his brain falls to my feet, a sacrifice. I shrink into a small red ant and walk the maze of his brain until I get to the center, and I eat his thalamus. Feeding through my mandibles, it tastes like feta, but I spit it back up because I lack the enzymes to digest mystery. With my red antennae, I sift through my spit, spreading the wet like gossamer web, seeking answers but seeing only her question: birth and death, creation and decay, ecstasy and anguish, transcendence and atrocity: the cycle the same for an ant, a python, a minotaur, a librarian, a nation, a star, a galaxy, a girl – the difference only the organization of atoms and the scope of time.
A galaxy swirls around a small red ant wearing a tiny black cardigan.
Look here: I point to the nothingness between spines. Now, do you understand?
No, she says, nodding her head.