Spring Break fun

[brigdh]

Today I had to go to the Institute of Fine Arts, which is, among other things, a library of the sort that has copies of ancient, first-edition-but-never-republished, obscure scholarly texts. And thus the reason I had to visit it, as it is apparently the only place in the city which had a copy of a book I needed for research (though not an old one, but instead one barely in English; a sentence from the 'Introductory': In conclusion, I hope that you will find the opportunity to acquaint yourselves with this book since it is a record fraught with the entire required information about Eridu and since it contains the answers of so much inquiries). Because of this, you cannot check books out of the IFA; you simply go and visit them during the few hours a day the place is open. You come in the massive front doors, made of glass and wrought black iron, and show the appropriate identification to a guard sitting at a desk just inside. You sign a timesheet, and the guard gives you a new ID tag to wear; you take this across a black-and-white marble tile floor and up a wide, curving staircase to another office and another desk, where you tell the people what book you want.

The IFA is not the sort of place where one fetches one's own books from the shelves, you see. They find what you need, and sit you in one of the many rooms to study your find.

The IFA is on the Upper East Side, and is surrounded by other, equally impressive buildings. Most of them have marble columns guarding their doors and windows, or copper gratings gone green with age; what brick there is has long since faded to a respectable, dull brown. They generally look like the sort of hotels wealthy adventures would have stayed in before the first World War, or maybe the sort of place an unusually wealthy pop star might live in, when they happen to be in New York. Directly across the street is Central Park, so if you tire of looking at the pale marble and dark metals you can turn and admire the green hills and trees stretching away. Someone was painting a portrait on the top of one of these hills when I walked by today.

The IFA itself apparently was once a house or, more accurately, mansion. Instead of the big, open spaces more typical of libraries, it has multiple hallways and small rooms, which were presumably once bedrooms and parlors and so on, stuffed with bookcases and plain wooden tables and chairs. These rooms still have their wide windows and false balconies, fireplaces, paintings, molding around the ceiling and floorboards; certain corners hide statues or exquisite furniture. It has the silence and creakiness appropriate to both libraries and old homes. It makes me feel particularly young and awkward; I don't think I own the right kind of clothes to be there.

I have to go back tomorrow, because I wasn't finished with my work when they closed at 5. Of course, it would help if I ever managed to make it to the place before 2 or 3 in the afternoon. Tomorrow- or sometime soon- I also have to go to Chinatown, which is in the opposite direction, to buy a chicken, or a duck, or a goose; whatever happens to be available and which I feel like eating. Why Chinatown and not whichever grocery store happens to be nearest? Because I need a whole fowl, with the feet and head and bill attached, so that I can use its skeleton for a different class. After I've, you know, boiled the flesh from its bones, a process which will surely make my roommate wish she'd gone somewhere for Spring Break.

The juxtaposition of these two things makes me think I have the strangest life.

Comments

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee. I think it's pretty neat too, if very intimidating.

Thanks! (Not as odd as having to do it.)