I am currently in the library attempting to get work done. Across from me are two people discussing which pornos they watched last night while they watch videos on their laptop (volume up). Next to me is a very enthusiastic young lady repeating what was apparently taught in a course on religion. Normally I am distracted in libraries due to the sheer number of books available at my fingertips that I have not yet read. Not today. I'm not even sure I could manage to fall asleep in here, which is the other thing I do in libraries besides distract myself.

For some reason, someone decided (wrongly, I think) that American libraries ought to be as aesthetically unpleasing as possible. This library is, as usual, concrete, windowless, and odd-smelling. The bookshelves are the distinct yellow/gold color of the 1970s. (Porno boy across the way is now practicing singing lines from pop songs and cursing about math). There is a young man near the shelves in a purple shirt asleep in a chair on top of his green backpack. What with the colors, the music, and the profanity, I feel the urge to throw beads and moonpies. But alas. I have not moonpies, only granola bars. If I were a more extroverted person, I would in fact tear off my shirt, flash people, and fling granola bars at them in protest over current library conditions. I would even arrange a parade that would follow the path of the large green exit stickers stuck on the bookshelves.

I could, in fact, just be spoiled, or my standards are unreasonably high for an American library. I felt quite at home at the large, industrial steel-and-concrete library in the former DDR. It had windows. Yes, it was all one color: dark gray. However, you could sit at the desks next to the windows and stare out the German winter landscape (which is light gray) and feel at peace. You were there to study, or not study by distracting yourself with German books, German landscape, or innate German Grayness (I had a gray winter coat and also a gray wool sweater). Perhaps I assume that if former Soviet-bloc countries can produce an aesthetically pleasing library in which one can function, and which was also environmentally firiendly, using only aesthetically unpleasing materials, wealthy American universities (which happen to be in a country that is not swathed in gray and doesn't give a damn about the environment) can produce something similar, or even better.  Perhaps we could have a library that isn't windowless. Perhaps offensively bright ugly colors would be regulated to what the students are wearing while in the library. Perhaps the library would even be quiet. Libraries ought to feel like a second home. After all, as students, we spend too much time in libraries anyways. They ought to be a place we want to be, that inspires us to work and learn!

But alas. I must flee before I am blinded by yellow and suffocated by book dust.