Non

I will not be a captain of industry. My stepfather reduced man's end to reproduce. That, too, I believe I'm rejecting. I don't believe it made him happy. That, this is my work. How, then, do I go about it? Every time a puzzle is solved, each time I see something better and more completely, when I feel something new as a man, my brain gives me a little satisfaction. Still, though, I reel from it back to some stasis afterwards. Rare is the night I go to bed with a smile with something true. Whatever my work is, it is not just this. Words and ideas can be filed and documented, an index card made for each one, neatly stacked and slotted but this will not be the end, this is not whole satisfaction.

To breathe life into that system, in a sense, does give a fountain of that satisfaction. Some fountainlike youth. A regeneration each time it is used, the protocol is followed. Am I a bureaucrat? Only on my constructive days. The rest are tempted with a streak to test the limits, to stretch, strain, and reach for the better. Without this mean streak, I'm not sure the work could be done as well. Will you find me twitching and spitting on the fluorescent cement floor of some cold library? I can't tell you. I'm just a man, nothing more. What will you expect?

When I am allowed around great arrays of books, long shelves of numbers and all the ink spun and slung I begin to click and whirr. Never have I let myself collapse in the library. There's too much; I can't sleep. The last time I was not careful I found trouble that way. It would be safer to stay in the library I know, but I begin to lose the forest for the trees and therein lay the folletti and other metaphoric creatures of legend. Also in the darkness deep and steeped in restless searching is a magic and an inspiration. I can live with some limitation, but to close certain doors I am unwilling. Perhaps among my weaknesses this could represent me. That, and my intolerance for ticks and bedbugs. I'm now neither safe in the country nor the city; where faute de mieux.