The Library is a palace. We just forget that sometimes.
I have worked in a palace for almost 30 years. How has that affected, or even effected me? Look at the scale of everything, the soaring ceilings, the dizzying wells of light, the classical proportions based on the human body. How different than the usual office building.
The ordered ornament (these two words share a root,) with which we have mostly ceased to adorn and adore learning, remains powerful here.
I'm glad this has been my environment. Even the grit and shoddy patches that time has heaped on it cannot lessen it's truth -- that libraries are magic. By that I mean the real magic, not tricks, nor sleights, nor conditionings, nor distorting mirrors (and all our mirrors distort,) nor exploitations, but the harmonic workings tween the wonder at the root of the soul and the magnanimity at the apex of the spirit.
We all work in a palace. Some of us just have a grand building around us. But all of us work in a palace.
