proximity

When I stroll from the back door of my apartment, across the yard and driveway, down the street and around the corner to the front door of the library it takes 3 minutes and 54 seconds. I know this because I timed it when I went to get books out of the gigantic U of T library this evening.

My apartment is in a pretty amazing location anyway: this morning I met Jason for coffee at Kensginton Market which is a ten minute stroll away... I then walked home through Chinatown which is right next door to KM and is also ten minutes from my place. I'm across the road from a streetcar stop, a couple of blocks from a subway station, and crazily close to so many other places as well. My bank is across the road from my house, as it a beer store, two pizza parlours and a convenience store (AKA a dairy). I've never lived 'inner city' before and I can see how it can get addictive... and also how it can feel misleadingly complete, as if there is no reason to ever leave the city blocks surrounding my house.

Anyway, back to the library. (In the time it took me to write the previous paragraph I could have walked there again. Amazing.

The library is massive (famously - it's one of the top libraries in the world) and it took me a while to figure out how to get to the stacks (the floors of the library with actual books on the shelves. Now, finding your way to the stacks is not always as easy as it sounds; I spent the first two weeks at Cornell unable to figure out how to get into the 'books' part of the library and far too embarassed to ask anyone for help.

Once I worked out where I should go and showed my new spunky U of T ID card to security to gain access, I then couldn't work out how to get the lift. As in, I couldn't figure out whether to swipe or wave my card in front of a little reader thing on the wall or if there was a button I couldn't see. Yes, it turns out that a PhD and position as Senior Lecturer is not guarantee of ability to use a library! Well, not the first time anyway :) During my first trip to the U of T library while I'm a lecturer on sabbatical, then, I was reminded of the my first trip to the library as a PhD student... suddenly I felt that my 25 year old self was in close proximity: I remembered what she was like and how her transition to the US had gone...

With the exception of one book from Indigenous Australia, the books I got out tonite were all Maori focussed... it seems that now I am so far away from home I finally find myself with the opportunity to read books from home about home. This evening I'm going to read about Maori people and places and histories before I go to bed.

Distance - from my 25 year old self, and from home - in this case has produced proximity.