Crashing into the Library

It's the sense of touch. In any real city, you walk, you know? You brush past people, people bump into you. In L.A., nobody touches you. We're always behind this metal and glass. I think we miss that touch so much, that we crash into each other, just so we can feel something.

--Crash

This morning Tolkien Boy, S-Boogie, and I caught the bus to the Seattle Central Library. We only made it there because TB's sharp eye noticed that the bus we needed to transfer to stops ON THE FREEWAY. I've never heard of such a thing, nor could I hear anything at all while we waited at the stop on the side of the freeway.

The downtown library is rather overwhelming. For a building whose architect was thinking so far outside the box, the inside feels very boxy. TB put it best when he observed that the library feels more like an airport than a library. It's very big and metallic and cavernous. That said, I really like how the sixth through tenth floors, which house the nonfiction collections, are built on an alternating slope that allows you to walk in a circle from 000 to 999--five floors--without walking up a single step. I'm also wowed by their automated book return and sorting system, which uses machines not only to check books in but also to file and sort them on carts.

After an uneventful busride home and a Veggietales episode about robots taking the place of humans (well, actually vegetables), S-Boogie went to her room to feign napping while TB and I watched Crash, which he had checked out from the library. I had wanted to see the movie since it won three Oscars, but I was also hesitant because I had heard that it basically showcases the worst of humanity, and who needs a movie to tell you that people suck? As the movie began, my suspicion seemed to be confirmed--thirty minutes into it, there didn't seem to be a single likeable character. Then, once a truly good character was established, TB and I agreed that he would be dead by the end of the movie--either him or his five-year-old daughter, anyway. I dreaded watching that scene, and then when it came it really was painful, but then the movie throws in a twist and suddenly the overall tone becomes a lot more hopeful. By the end of the film, just about every character comes across sympathetically, even the sickeningly racist cop who at one point felt up another man's wife in front of him, just because he could. Ultimately, the moral of the movie--or rather the moral I'm imposing on it because this is the conclusion I came to while watching it--is that even people who do horrible things are people. And people, really, aren't all that bad.

That, and that I should thank God every single day that I moved to Seattle and not L.A. People shoot each other in L.A.

Between spending the day with Tolkien Boy and S-Boogie, having dinner with the neighbors (who turn out to be rather cool people), and talking to my mom for an hour when we got home, today was a much better day than yesterday. And tomorrow night Foxy J and Little Dude come home. Life is good.