When I zoom out of a library section to get an overview, I sometimes think there's a faint gleam to them. However, they don't have an appearance other than that they invariably occupy a very clearly defined space. Some stories are three-dimensional, others just cover a patch of ground. There are linear ones, like Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex, which perfectly divides the garage at my parents' house in two halves.
Some stories float in the air. Sometimes I find the faintest of traces of a novel I've almost forgotten. When I zoom into a particular story it turns into my actual memory of it, projected onto the childhood memory to which it has been mysteriously allocated. It becomes a holographic image that can be anything from a lightly coloured haze if I don't remember the content too well to a high-resolution cinematic representation of the smallest detail if it’s a story I’ve read several times.
The matrix
William Gibson novels are a good example. The Neuromancer trilogy and the cyberpunk short stories occupy a small area next to the football pitch where I watched my dad play on Sundays. They overlap and interpenetrate in all kinds of ways in a volume about ten metres high. There’s an almost fractal density to them. In fact, Gibson's account of the matrix probably isn't such a far cry from my library's design. I even called it the matrix for a while but then those films ruined the term and I reverted to not calling it anything for a while.
I first read Neuromancer in the eighties, about five years before I discovered the library. With hindsight I suspect my boundless excitement at the time could be to do with the fact that I felt there was something not entirely dissimilar in my head. Or maybe my brain decided to create a library after the matrix as conceived by Gibson. I don't expect I'll ever know.
I don't have a say what goes in my library and what doesn't - or where, for that matter. Some of my favourite novels are unavailable. Of course, I tried to force them in by repeatedly reading them but it doesn't work. I once tried for an ‘adult’ section, too, but it wouldn’t stick. Of course, there's always the possibility I just haven't gained access to the room these things are shelved in.
When I discover a new section I often find it surprisingly packed with content. When I read Anna Kavan's Ice, it went to an adventure playground I had not previously identified as part of the library. When I walked into the playground in my mind, I saw there was already tons of stuff on medieval castles, a Wikipedia list of Christian demons, a book that questions the benefits of alternative medicine and a TV documentary on the Isenheim altar piece. Once a story has been given a place, I will never be able to read it again without that childhood memory as a backdrop. There will always be the playground under Ice and I will forever find Ice on the playground.
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