The Flypaper Notebook

This is a pretty nice city, Chicago. It's big, and because it's so big, you never see the same person twice. I sometimes curse that reality when I'm working on my latest project. Actually, it's less of a project and more of an investigation. An investigation of a peculiar thing that happens in the city library.

Let me start from the beginning...

About eight months ago, I'd say mid-November, I had been assigned a bit of a weird duty by my teachers. They requested that I start my research now for a paper that I was to turn in at the beginning of the next fall semester. I'm working on my PhD in Modern American Anthropology at Depaul University. They wanted a paper from me, to find the profile for the most average American possible, using statistics, culture, language, etc. It was an odd project, but I figured I could do it. I had the internet, and the library, and I had a list of volunteer interviewees that volunteered to be questioned for the human sciences majors, should I want to do a survey.

I haven't worked on that project for weeks.

Let me explain.

Mid-November came around, and the school library had yielded as much information as it could give, which was not enough unfortunately. I decided to migrate all of my studies over to the much older, but much larger, city library. I packed up my laptop, wrote down the names of all of the larger reference books that I used, and began the trek to the train station to head over to the right side of town. I arrived at the library about 10:00 AM. As soon I walked into the main lobby, I was marauded by the screams and giggles of a visiting elementary school class. I tried to smile and push my way through the sea of tiny faces and brightly colored T-shirts over to the main staircase.

I trekked up the stairs to about the third floor before I left the staircase and headed over to the computer to look up the location of the books about which my paper was centered.

"Floor Nine - West Wing"

"Great...." I thought to myself sarcastically. "Six more floors to climb before I can begin. I'll be in great shape by the time I'm done with this paper." So I climbed and climbed and climbed...

Finally I reached my destination and took out four or five books, fired up my computer and began working.

I worked through about 3:30 PM before I began to get hungry. I leaned back from my chair, stretched my arms into the air, and then pushed my glasses up my nose. It was only then that I realized that there was another person in on the silent library floor along with me. A young girl, maybe 18 or 19 years old, was browsing through the books on the shelves across from me and the other work tables. I remember remarking to myself that either I was working very hard to not have noticed another human being enter the room, or she was just incredibly quiet, or more likely a mixture of the two. I thought nothing of it at the time and began packing up my things. As I was packing my things up, I noticed the girl come to a table and sit down with a peculiar looking book. I did not see where she got it from exactly, though I just assumed one of the shelves. It did not look like a book that is printed and bound and published in mass, but more like a simple notebook with lined pages and a flimsy paper back, like you would get at office depot or Staples. She was reading it very intently. I could see somthing written on the books front cover, but it was written in black and was hard to read against the dark blue paper cover. I decided not to intrude and continued packing and she continued to rip through the words on the pages with her eyes.

As I lifted the strap of my computer bag over my shoulder, the girl dropped the book onto the floor with a soft flapping of paper. Her eyes were fixed onto the opposite wall in a glazed over awe. I looked across the room to where she was looking, but saw nothing except more bookshelves. I could tell immediately that it was something that she had read that caused her to suddenly be dumbstruck. She slowly rose from her seat, and silently moved across the room towards the stairs down to the main floor. I followed, with caution and a bit of curiosity. I looked back over my shoulder and saw the small notebook still lying on the ground. I was hungry and my bag was heavy, so I did not involve myself in preserving the libraries belongings and followed the girl down the stairs.

She did not make a sound through all nine floors of stairs. She walked slowly and silently, looking half-focused on the stairs, and half in deep thought about whatever it was the book had revealed to her. She went out the front door of the lobby and made a left. That was the last time I saw that girl, and the first time I wondered what was in that notebook.

Four and a half weeks later, there I sat, still pushing myself throught the preliminary stages of the paper. Dr.Elich 20:30, January 24, 2012 (UTC)