ABSTRACT
I glance around at my fellow citizens as I deposit the books in my sack, and I feel a surge of love for the arbitrariness of our arrangements, that we should be assembled here together in this particular compartment of time, sharing public space, at one with each other in our need for retreat and the printed word. There’s Mrs Greenaway, with her impossibly narrow nose bridge, smiling perpetually, an intelligent woman with no place to stow her brand of originality. Mr Atkinson, retired teacher, his tie sunk into the fat of his neck, the Britannica opened on the table before him, to a map of some sort. There’s a bearded man whose name I don’t know but who seems to be scribbling a novel or a memoir into a series of spiral notebooks. There’s Hal (Swiftfoot) Scott, who pumps gas and plays hockey, or at least he did before he got caught in a drug bust last year. He’s reading Macleans, probably the sports section. This is a familiar yet unique scene. The precise patterns will occur only once – us, here, this moment engraved in a layer of memory – a thought that stirs me to wonderment.
