Life Notes: Those Days I Lost Myself in the Library

I remember it was around age sixteen or seventeen when I first witnessed what a genuine library truly was.

Before that, my impression of the word 「library」 swung between two bleak extremes. In junior high school, the library occupied the gloomiest subterranean recess of the campus; windows were permanently shuttered, and the stagnant air reeked of damp mold and decaying wooden cabinetry. It felt eerie and oppressive, as if lingering an extra minute might cause you to be swallowed by yellowed curriculum kits and brittle newsprint. Meanwhile, the rural library of my childhood was squeezed beside a neighborhood community center, perpetually echoing with squealing children playing tag across scattered chairs, resembling a chaotic indoor playground.

Not until I turned sixteen and stepped across the threshold of that soaring, sunlit hall — with light cascading through floor-to-ceiling windows and endless rows of steel bookshelves extending into infinity — did I freeze in genuine awe.

Here stood a sanctuary operating under genuine cataloging systems, impeccable order, and the pristine scent of wood pulp and printing ink. The moment I pushed through the revolving glass door, all the din and tumult of the outside world were instantaneously repelled by an invisible force field.

From that hour onward, I fell hopelessly in love with this 「alternate dimension」.

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Between Tennis Courts and Bookshelves: The Fourth Dimension of Campus

I could put it this way: during my student years, if I wasn’t in class taking notes, battling laboratory equipment, or sweating profusely swinging a racket on tennis courts under the scorching sun, I was guaranteed to be in the library.

Those four spots formed the spiritual coordinates of my youth, and the library was indisputably the most calming and intoxicating harbor among them. Roaming between towering tiers of bookshelves held far more magic than sitting through classroom lectures. It resembled an expedition across a boundless treasury, where every spine served as an uncharted map whispering for your fingers to draw it out.

Even during lunch breaks, I would dash straight to the library clutching a steaming bento box.

The instant the noon bell rang, I grabbed my lunch and sprinted along corridors. In the designated study room separate from the stacks, I wolfed down the food at battlefield velocity, wiped my mouth, and plunged straight into the labyrinth of books with immense contentment¹.

Within that silent sanctuary cooled by gentle breezes and punctuated by the crisp rustle of turned pages, time moved at half speed. Outside, cicadas screamed beneath blinding sunlight; inside, tucked deep in the corner of an expansive wooden desk, I claimed an entire lunch hour of absolute peace.

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Hide-and-Seek Amid the Stacks During Free Periods

I adored strolling the campus library without aim. It wasn’t merely about hunting down assigned references, but an unhurried sensory drift.

During open gaps between scheduled lectures, or when occasionally skipping a suffocating study hall, I would enthusiastically steer a handful of classmates into the library. Ostensibly, we gathered to 「study diligently」; yet minutes after penetrating the stacks, our gang invariably launched into games of hide-and-seek among the towering maze of shelves.

Dozens of high metal tiers stood aligned, with convex safety mirrors hanging quietly at aisle corners. We tiptoed across the carpet holding our breath, gauging each other’s whereabouts through light filtering between book gaps. Whenever an elbow accidentally clattered a metal bookend, we caught each other’s eyes and muffled our giggles, dreading the stern scrutiny of the librarians.

In the seams of those absurd, restless games of youth, I frequently pulled an enigmatic volume from the shelves on a whim, slid down against the steel rack, and sat right on the carpet.

Those books might be a yellowed chronicle of maritime explorations, an atlas detailing global topography and waterways, or the tattered field journal of an explorer deep in South American rainforests. While companions whispered low calls on the far end of the aisle, my mind had already plunged beneath the swelling surf of a distant ocean.

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From 「Finished Booklists」 to Knowledge Mapping

Lingering in libraries long enough inevitably breeds a curious collecting obsession.

Back then, I began carrying a little black notebook dedicated to logging my 「Finished Reading List」. Every time I completed a fascinating title, I neatly penned its title, author, publisher, and call number. Watching those cataloged entries multiply page by page yielded a thrill rivaling unlocking unmapped territories in an RPG.

Soaking across multi-story collections over years, I began decoding the underlying system architecture that sustained this vast ocean of knowledge.

From index drawers filled with stamped paper cards to archaic green-screen text-based OPAC terminals; from the decimal structure of generalities, philosophy, religion, science, and technology in Asian classification systems to Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) and the Library of Congress Classification. Gradually, I realized that a library is never an accidental heap of dead paper, but a masterwork of cognitive engineering logically indexing the entirety of human intellect and collective memory.

This spatial and architectural intuition honed in adolescence evolved into one of my most formidable survival faculties when wandering the globe.

Later in life, whenever I walked into major university libraries across Taiwan, municipal archives in metropolises, or wandered into the British Library, rural Japanese municipal libraries, and European university depositories, a single glance at classification placards and range codes enabled me to locate target wings within minutes, navigating them as effortlessly as my own backyard.

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The Youthful Gift of an Alternate Dimension

Looking back, my keen sensitivity toward vast data structures, information categorization, and structuring frameworks on the fly was likely an instinctive habit cultivated naturally back at age sixteen or seventeen.

The world is vast as an ocean, and information is dense as a jungle. Without an index and synthesis logic, one easily drowns in infinite fragmented noise. The library, through its mute rigor, taught me how to forge order out of tumult, and how to unspool the thread of truth from endless text to anchor the soul.

Those midday dashes gripping bento boxes, the breathless laughter stifled in shelf corridors, and the tranquil afternoons melting amid yellowed leaves and angled sunlight — looking back, those were not merely green years surrendered to books, but the earliest and most profound voyages of my intellect.

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Footnotes

1. Note: Because the study hall back then was physically separated from the stack collections, designed for study and rest, eating was not strictly prohibited. That faint mingling of homecooked food and paper scent remains the signature aroma of my youth. ↩