College Hill Library

I sat there in stunned silence. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. Is that a daycare? Are those cellphones I hear ringing? Is that guy really talking at the top of his lungs about how smashed he's going to get this weekend? A murder of women sit down at the table adjacent to mine and promptly begin cackling on about their grandchildren and their latest knitting project. Absolutely surreal. Dali lives.

You may be asking yourself what's so out of the ordinary about any of this. People are arrogant, and generally overestimate their importance. So what's so unusual about someone not turning off their cellphones, or, at least, turning it to vibrate. What's so unusual about screaming and joyous kids running amok in the summertime? It's summer, after all. And what about five elderly women discussing their grandchildren and knitting projects strikes me with the intense irrational reality normally reserved for dreams?

Well, nothing, if those cellphones and attending annoying conversations occurred in the grocery store, department store, mall, or restaurant. I love kids and look forward to having some of my own one day, so I don't begrudge the wide-eyed exuberance of children. In fact, it's fun to watch. Elderly women sitting around and talking about their lives, what they've seen, and where they've been is at once charming and fascinating--most often. Sometimes it's just painfully cliched.

But, you see, what makes this scene so Dalian is that it occurred in a library. That's right; a library. That place characterized by its obsessive devotion to silence. That thing that I seek out when trying to memorize the Rule of Perpetuity. That stillness that, somehow, almost magically, allows you to recall a professor's lecture regarding intended beneficiaries, delegations and assignments. Shattered. Dropped from the third story to the awaiting concrete below. The terminal deceleration of silence.

I'm probably being a bit melodramatic. But I wouldn't know where to begin giving a shit. I'm studying for the bar, which will be administered in about nine days, and I'm going to start stuffing bodies in my trunk if I don't get some silence tomorrow.

You know, in case you care, I have just formed the requisite intent to kill element of murder. So, if I really did kill someone tomorrow, and wasn't just saying that as an expression of my frustration and anxiety(which I am), I would get the death penalty, in most states. Now you sit there and pretend I give a fuck.