Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal

In response to the thesis brought forth in Reality is Broken by Jane McGonigal that using game mechanics in could better our everyday lives on a large scale I say that I agree, but not without reservations.

Game mechanics are important because they provide ongoing incentive for doing things that may seem rather drab without the playful elements added. Thinking about a world without oil, for example, is a deeply distressing and laborious task unless, like in the game “World without Oil” it is done with thousands of other people with whom to “play” the scenario. Play that makes you more creative because unlike thinking about the topic in a conference room with other experts, “World without Oil” gives you a believable alternate reality in which to live. Summed up, you’re playing a game with a bunch of other people who provide social incentive to engross yourself in a world you choose to inhabit for the ultimate purpose of creating real positive results. After you finish playing, you can turn around and say “Wow, that was fun,” but not feel bad because it has no effect on your real life.

Indeed, some game mechanics are already pervasive in many industries. Salesmen will often have a public leaderboard of bests so that success is a social boost in addition to actual rewards like vacations or tickets to sports games. These are basic motivators that work fairly well, but they lack a few elements of life-changing games: the believable alternate reality that makes gaming so engrossing, progressively more difficult challenges (unless promotions are involved, of course), and a system that provides players with intrinsic rewards. Though I’m sure some salesmen do believe that their product will make the world a better place, I think that this is a minority. The majority of game mechanics in the workplace, whatever the industry, involves extrinsic rewards like more money or a vacation. These things are nice, but they’re the reason people say that work doesn’t love you back; it’s because rarely does it provide the type of incentives that makes a whole life more rewarding; they are short-term motivation boosters and up to a point, they work. In a reality of business cycles, quarter after profitable quarter, I am fairly certain that most bosses do not consider the long-term, whole-life ramifications of their actions. Nor do they consider how their quarterly earnings (or tactical goals) influence society. Up until recently, social good was sometimes the occupation of entrepreneurs after work hours, today this is changing though not quickly enough. Too many corporations are still only giving lip service to social good. All-inclusive game mechanics, like other powerful conceptual tools, do not assign moral value – they are, as their name suggests, tools that can be manipulated by the game master.

For many years I have been curious about what makes Scientology so appealing to so many different kinds of people. I gained some insight by reading Dianetics and other readily-available Scientology literature as well as having a Scientologist co-worker who was nice enough to talk to me, albeit in a somewhat limited way, about his beliefs and take me on a tour of a Scientology building on Sunset Blvd. so I could get a sense of Scientology methods of instruction and generally how things work for rank-and-file Scientologists. To be sure, I was impressed by the things he showed me, Though I never harbored any serious thoughts of becoming one, I could see the appeal of the religion/technologies to so many people. And yet, it was not until I began to explore Jane McGonigal’s work and some basic game theory did it become clear. Scientologists are so drawn to the organization because it is rife with game mechanics!

To start, there is an all-encompassing cosmology that one finds more and more about as he goes up the org chart (Bridge). To find out about it, you have to take classes and get audited, and by getting those experiences you rise in rank. These levels are not merely a chart, they represent your development as a person; your first push is to become a “Clear,” then through many levels of work and a long time you become a Thetan. Many special abilities are attributed to a Thetan which makes working your way up to that level very appealing. Despite the money and hard work that you put into the organization, there are many people on the same path with similar aims. This social proof gives credence to your own goals and desires. Furthermore, ostensibly the mission of Scientology is, from the beginning, focused on the greater good; Scientology seeks to improve the world. That is why affiliations with organizations like Narconon (to help get people off drugs) and its equivalent for alcohol, the World Literacy Crusade, and the Citizen’s Commission on Human Rights (of “Psychiatry Kills!” fame) are not hidden. All of this is, of course, a simplification of Scientology, but I expect that no Scientologist reading this will disagree with my thesis.

Obviously, L. Ron Hubbard and the other inventors of the Scientology materials (the game masters, if you will) understood how game mechanics could motivate people. Though they probably would not be pleased to have their work being looked at through this lens, the connections are very clear. Despite the myriad faulty scientific and logical/philosophical claims in the writing of LRH, I must admit that there are also plenty beneficial teachings. So many intelligent people become and stay Scientologists because it is relatively easy to accept the fundamental ideas of LRH and once those are accepted, the game mechanics (and, I must add, the aesthetically-pleasing buildings, books, and learning materials) do a great job of keeping people plugged in.

In the introductory chapter to Reality is Broken, Jane McGonigal writes “What if we decided to use everything we know about game design to fix what’s wrong with reality? What if we started to live our real lives like gamers, lead our real businesses and communities like game designers, and think about solving real-world problems like computer and video game theorists?” I like this mode of thinking, and it leads to a very persuasive argument posed as a question. Why not, McGonigal asks, since more and more people are transfixed by games that provide little real-world solutions, not work real-world problems into the back story of games and use the reflexive illusion of play (that is not really play, but is play, but is not really play, etc. etc.) in an “alternate” reality to then fold the “alternate” reality solutions into the real world?

My knee-jerk response is that games have creators and game runners and these people have identities that factor into the games they create. For Ender Wiggin, the game he didn’t know he was playing was set up so he would play it despite any pacifist tendencies he might have. Part of the controversy was that the deception that took place had real-world consequences; had Ender known he was playing at reality, perhaps his actions would have been different. Moving into a real-world scenario, the fun of many games is that we do not know what will happen next; if the game is spoiled for us, we won’t want to play. And here we have our moral dilemma: When using games to solve real-world problems, how can we be sure about the nature of the problems we are purported to be solving? The deeper one is in a game world, or an alternate reality, the more difficult it becomes to extricate oneself. Even more insidious is that the deeper we go, the more difficult it becomes to recognize that the problem we were solving is no longer the same – that the people we were once associated with are no longer the people we like.

Inherent in alternate realities is their exclusionary qualities; like having a secret, if everyone knows about it, it is no longer a secret. To accept an alternate reality is to be part of a special tribe, ascribing to oneself particular identities that require difference. There must be a spectrum of qualities unlike the entity you wish to become for that entity to exist. By itself there is nothing amiss about exclusivity, but when that exclusivity is an unknown factor to non-members, consensus on what is normative behavior becomes difficult. The slippery-slope argument goes like this: If everyone is playing an alternate reality game but no one knows who is playing what game, how do we agree on how to communicate? What secret mission is that person carrying out? Does it have to do with me? Does that person’s reality carry a back story that is detrimental to my own? Do that person’s assumptions about the meaning of words differ from my own? Do we both mean in the same way?

Though this is a slippery-slope argument that quickly jumps from the rise of real-life gaming to a world where society can only be seen through the lens of one’s fragmented consciousness, it is eerily real when it comes to tribes like Scientology, fundamentalist religion, and polarizing politics. The use of game mechanics can help alleviate the distress in the world, but it can also initiate the progress of the filter bubbles Eli Pariser describes in his book. Only the filter bubbles I’m talking about are not merely digital but in our minds. When game mechanics make it easy to join a “game” that makes us a part of something bigger than ourselves, the threshold to becoming an in-game representation of yourself (as opposed to your avatar being part of you) is real. Whereas online, no one can tell that you’re not really a [blank], they can tell in real life – it’s a scary proposition when because of the ubiquity of the games we play, no one – even in real life – will be able to tell who we are. It will be as if we are surrounded by sociopaths.

p.s. – A fellow librarian recommended the book Ready Player One by Ernest Cline in which the protagonist along with everyone else spend most of their time in a virtual world. Mayhem ensues.

10-29-2010

* spelled зонт in Russian, means umbrella

Certainly, like Mario, I can consult a bard
and whisper sweet palabras like manzana,
mariposa – all the metáforas you could wish
I’d slip into your palm except the one
I feel when you are in my arms, the operatic
thrashing of the sea, una pequeña muerte,
y el amor that carries on.

10-17-2010

* The opera Il Postino is in Spanish which led to the insertion of a few Spanish words into the poem. Palabras means words, manzana is apple, mariposa – my favorite Spanish word – means butterfly, metaphoras of course means metaphors, una pequeña muerte is a little death, y is and, and el amor is the love.

Even if you work hard all day, pausing only to catch your breath, and are able to empty the carts that were full when you arrived, do not congratulate yourself. The patrons sure won’t, their only will is to swagger in, shove their books or DVDs into the clerk’s weary hands, and snatch more items from the stacks you’ve so lovingly straightened. The clerks, in turn, dump the returns back onto the carts and disrupt the peaceful emptiness you had worked so diligently to create. The good boss might praise your quick work, but don’t count on it; shelvers are the lowest caste in the library and thus mostly unseen. Only when the shelver’s work is left undone does the chief raise an eyebrow wondering which of the ragamuffins is in for a whipping. It’s a thankless job, shelving is, so one mustn’t expect to be thanked.

Yet, being the lowest of the low does have its advantages; when you’re feeling slow, you can be slow, and as long as your fast days balance it out no one will notice. Shelving books also gives you time to think. This was one of my favorite elements of being a shelver, that there were hours at a time when I could daydream without fear of interruption. Had a tool been invented to transcribe thoughts, I am certain my output of novels, short stories, and poems would have been phenomenal. Shunryu Suzuki wrote about how zen students should always be in the moment, focusing only on what they are doing – if one is washing dishes, wash dishes, if one is eating then eat – I could never do this. Oh, there were times when speed was the foremost and my only thoughts were where the next book was to go, but most of the time, I found it impossible not to lose myself. If I was shelving a book about sailing, I might sail away, if it was Ginsberg, I might howl (to myself, of course) – what, after all, was the point of spending hours among the books if not to dream?

To be sure, it is as much of a crime for shelvers to be caught reading as it would be if a banker was caught cuddling up to the lock boxes in the vault. Still, all experienced shelvers have their favorite nook where they can go to take a little break when the supervisor’s antics become tiresome. Most of the time, this is just an unpopular area of the library, sometimes though, it’s a special corner likely afforded by the architect for just the shelver’s purpose. One slow day, I read The Invention of Hugo Cabret by Brian Selznick while crouched behind a shelf in the children’s section, but this was uncommon. Other than the occasional snatch of text, I obediently observed the prohibition against reading because it made sense. For a shelver like me who adores reading (not all do), free reign of the library would have been disastrous. There were others, however, who were not quite so serious about this essential policy.

At the library where I worked, the philosophy was live and let live. Although everyone was aware of who shelved and who shirked, our staff was not in for high dramatics. During the six years I worked as a shelver (and the four or so I was a volunteer, etc.), no one ever got fired. Knowing that no one would get more than a stern talking-to, we learned to work around the folks who consistently under-achieved. For the staff members who did their jobs, the code of conduct was simple and honorable: If you called in for a “personal” sick day, the right move was to clear it with a fellow shelver by text message. No one wants to be left without support on a busy day so we avoided calling in directly after holidays and it was unheard of that both shelvers called in “sick” on the same day. The same rules applied during work hours; if a fellow shelver spent a long night enjoying life and wanted to nap in a dark place for a while, no problem. A supervisor’s attempts to locate said shelver would be met with shrugs. Their were two keys to the relationships among co-workers: First was reciprocity, whatever favor you did would eventually be returned and two, respect for the library, everything was kosher as long as the work got done. If the shelving began falling behind, however, conduct would have to be reevaluated. As long as we shelvers kept those two keys in mind, the light rule-breaking that occurred never interfered with our library work…Our moral integrity on the other hand, well that’s another story.

Speaking of integrity, the patrons who insisted on flirting, following, and/or slipping me their phone numbers certainly didn’t have much. More than anything, the job of the shelver is a public one; precious little time is spent behind-the-scenes since much of the magic takes place right there in the public area. The same public area where the slobs, quasi-Casanovas, and screamers rest their crazy bones. At some libraries, the shelvers need only avoid the aforementioned atrocities and shelve, not at my library. Being that we were always around, it was up to us to enforce the no-sleeping, no-cellphones, and no-eating rules. Reliving the hijinks I’ve experienced in policing the library could fill pages, so I will just say that it is not easy to awaken a couple of colorful coked-out trannies sprawled luxuriantly on our plush chairs, but it sure is fun.

Now that I am a librarian, I can safely say that being a shelver has prepared me for library work better than my time in library school ever could. After shelving for a few years, there is little that surprises me about serving the public; everything that could happen is a version of something that has either already happened to me or one of my fellow shelvers. That is not to say that I feel jaded because of my time shelving, absolutely not. Indeed, I’ve stayed with the library because I’ve enjoyed my adventures as a shelver so much. Yet, it is not the wild happenings that stand out when I reminisce about my time in the stacks, but that feeling I had as a library volunteer when I looked around and realized the urge to spend all of my time dreaming among the books. It was then that I shelved myself, remaining to this day, in the library.

Enjoy the poems:

1
Addiction took him
and the TV.

2
Our life
in the new house
smells like paint.

3
Life is already unfair
without your help.
Go away.

4
The crickets play
with virtuosity
on midsummer nights.

5
Life is okay
between faraway dogs
barking.

6
Before hanging my hat
and bed:
Homecoming.

7
Later and later
the lights go out;
teenaging.

8
Head on a wet pillow -
dead leaves
autumn.

9
3 bees -
summer party.

10
He arrives
like spring,
always on time.

11
Freedom
is being
a day early.

12
Sliding on
the pond’s surface:
waterbug flight.

13
Moss climbs
over the horizon;
life after…

14
Japanese garden stones
space
between her toes.

15
Wrinkled
classic rock shirt –
iron maiden.

16
White triangles
grazing blue;
sailboats.

17
Eating under trees,
my lunch
is garnished.

18
The sun shimmies
towards me
across the water

19
The scorching sun
followed me all day,
burning my ears

20
Regret is
the sun following you –
Driving too fast.

21
At the terminal
busses arriving -
waves slacking.

22
Bus station times table:
I wish the routes home
multiplied.

23
On the metro
people
have no eyes

24
I forgot
my bathing suit –
warm rain water.

25
Puddles
are potholes -
don’t fall in.

26
Puddles
on cobblestone -
haphazard tilejob.

27
The grass is greener
on the other side
of the storm.

28
Lost love and
fiery food:
heartburn.

29
Am I always warm
when you’re around?
Because you’re around.

30
Skillsaw and
skinny cat –
two whiners.

31
Do you see
an eyelash fall?
Hear it land?

32
Cat slips out
into the rain –
no forethought.

33
Late night, bleary morning.
Coffee?
How about cocaine.

34
Between glances:
Sun beams and
bamboo shoots.

35
Noticing an exit
sign flickering,
I pass.

38
Head thrown back
the boy laughs.

39
No paper towels?
Let’s dry our wings
like ducks.

40
She points to
the lizard
with no tail.

41
Children’s shouts,
neighbor’s TV:
Sorry afternoon nap.

42
Sheep asleep;
I count
tosses and turns.

43
Grandma’s final breaths –
driving from the ocean.

44
Staring at the sun
with closed eyes –
dark blue fish.

45
The statue says I win.
The great mime,
doesn’t blink.

46
The three-legged dog
greets me
on hind-leg.

47
All day
their toothbrushes
cuddled.

48
Hey Puget Sound:
What’s it like
to live in a Sound?

49
In the library
outside noises
are far away.

50
My father’s reading
light is on late
again.

51
War and Peace
is heavy,
are heavy.

52
My flip-flops are
older than us –
So?

53
A breeze
swings a leaf
on a gossamer strand.

54
In the distance,
a car alarm is
scaring away cats.

55
Emaciated hummingbird
will do anything
for nosecandy.

56
Ant
on cactus needle –
What’s so sharp?

57
I can’t count
every leaf
that rustles.

58
A breeze –
A leaf
rambles past.

59
It means people
were here before me –
food wrapper in bush.

60
Mango mochi,
mango mochi –
Ah life!

There was once a schizo named Jeter
or Joseph or Theodore or Skeeter
He had a nice wife
who said all of her life
“…All I long for is a nice Peter.”

I took a masked girl on a date
she wouldn’t let me up to the plate…
Well, last weekend this shrew
sat on a screw…
Now you’ll recognize her by her gait.

We all know the ride of Revere,
yet the history of it it is queer;
Longfellow’s the cause
that William Dawes
remains to this day in the rear.

I met an old wizard who was very confused
he forgot all his spells, yet still seemed enthused
I managed to ask,
“Sir, how do you cast?”
I don’t fish much, he answered, amused.

Being not much in the physical could
put a scholarly ghost in a clinical mood
“That girl that just passed me,
she brings up the past, see”
In death I’m invisible too.

Higgeldy-Piggeldy
one’s concentration is
forthwith required for
hours on end…
Still I continue on –
monolomaniacally –
till to my will will these
syllables bend.

Higgeldy-Piggeldy
Sir Thomas Malory
wrote about Lancelot’s
Guinevere thing.
He did behave oh so
melodramatically
when he was told of her
specialty swing.

Higgeldy-Piggeldy
bellowed her ladyship
I want my champagne while
I’m in the nude.
Madam, sighed Jeeves as he,
half-unabashedly,
poured half the bubbly down
between her boobs.

p.s. – Apologies for the reversed feet in a few of those dactyls. Meter and I haven’t danced in a while.

     On the drive there, I can’t say I wasn’t excited – what if Mojo turned out to be a pie-baking pirate, or a dwarf! And how I longed for a delicious pie to make my morning whole. We parked and walked the block to Mojo’s exchanging goofy grins the whole way. We mounted the wooden stairs, burst inside, and froze.

     In front of us was no counter, no scrumptious pie, but a lady dressed in business casual sitting behind a desk. Surrounding her, and the whole room, were boxes of stones. I stood dumbfounded for a moment, but it wasn’t sinking in.

     “Where are the pies?” I blurted out.

     “Oh,” she said with a practiced smile, “they went out of business…”

     “But the sign!?” I countered.

     “We just haven’t taken it down yet.” She said.

     “Oh.” I sighed.

     “Sorry,” she said.

     As Ashley and I walked back to the car, I wondered about whether the two groups, the pie people and the rock people, would get along since they’d be running into each other often. An even greater mystery, however, was how the rock people would find this place, what with there being nary a “rocks sold here” sign in the vicinity. My conclusion was that they were probably advertising through word-of-mouth – landscapers have a tight-knit community, I hear. Ashley countered that she thought something fishy was going on – criminals, after all, have a tight-knit community, too.

     Later I thought about the incident through a holiday-time lens and it disconcerted me; had I really been so bad this year that instead of pie, Santa left me rocks? Then I became philosophical, things change, I mused, it’s natural, just look at the neighborhood where I grew up: the old Russian stores are being replaced by trendy boutiques and restaurants with one-word names. If the Russian grandmas didn’t know before that West Hollywood’s nickname is “The Creative City,” they know now. A year or two ago, during an evening stroll through the neighborhood I was giving my friend Jaime an impromptu tour of what used to be and what is now. In the midst of our walk, I had to pause to admire the Tomcat theater. That movie-house and it’s raunchy marquees had been around since I was a wee-tot and yet I’d never seen anybody enter the place. Of course, I thought, the type of clientèle that enjoy the Tomcat likely prefer the back door.

     Cities do change – even South Pasadena is in the midst of tearing down the former pharmacy building across the street from the malt shop – but is it true when cynics declare that people don’t? It’s a complex question to take on, but I know one thing: I’ve been waking up close to six in the morning for the past few weeks and I think it has changed me; whereas before my personality remained constant till two/three in the morning, now I become a totally different person around 11:30 or 12. Yet, that’s an individual case – from a conceptual standpoint, it’s inviting to draw parallels between the change in architecture and humanity as a whole though I suspect its a fallacy; the thought is grand, and yet many would merely find it offensive if it was decided that the shape of our society was expressed by the Walt Disney Concert Hall, even after being told that the acoustics are great.

     It would be nice if that’s what it was all about: what’s inside. I was talking with a friend once and was informed that the reason I never get bored waiting in lines is because I have great internal architecture. I’ve pondered that many times since then – mostly when waiting in line – and haven’t reached any defensible conclusion. I’m fond of some modern architecture, but I’m not sure my insides are as smooth as Lautner or ravishing as Gehry. I like turn-of-the-century craftsmen styles of Greene & Greene, and find a certain pleasure in art deco but my lines just aren’t that long or upstanding. I suppose I do find something of myself in mid-to-late-19th-century American style of Frank Sullivan, but Sullivan didn’t put on airs, I do. We can go back and back, but I’m not baroque, not its opposite (an igloo), not a tent, not a Neanderthals cave, not even a tree that offers shade to a stranded man on a desert island (that guy better have great internal architecture, methinks). If everyone was like me then I could tell you positively that people change like cities do because what real city, while it’s still alive says, “that’s it, I’m done”? Everything is ongoing and never finished; designs change, materials change, minds change but existence continues; maybe not every individual person or building is infinite, but the fact of people and buildings, that’ll keep on, I hope.

     Back in my internal city, I’ve decided to construct a building. It’s a house facing the street with a sign that has big black letters, all caps, and inside there’s one room. In that room sits a lady, she’s surrounded by stones kind of like Mojo’s only near her desk is a trap door which leads to a basement. In that basement, there’s a bell choir serenading a pirate and a dwarf who serve never-ending pies to landscapers, dessert-lovers, poets, architects, communists, the Japanese, glass-blowers, surfers, door-jamb installers, Zamboni drivers, accountants, candle-stick makers, me and you.

Note: Since I wrote this, the rock shop replaced Mojo’s sign with one that says Exotic Pebbles. Oh boy.

     What took seven-and-a-half hours to extinguish with the aid of three-hundred fire fighters, eight rescue ambulances, and three helicopters? I am talking, of course, about the greatest structural fire in Los Angeles history, the 1986 Central Library Fire.

     It started innocently enough when a fire alarm was triggered at 10:52am on a bright Tuesday morning. Joyce Elliot who worked at one of the branches far away from the Central Library remembers getting a call on the morning of her return from a four-week vacation. “I felt as if I had been hit in the stomach,” she recalls, “I kept saying over and over in my mind, ‘Please, God, let everyone get out!” Over at the Central Library, employees and patrons were quickly shuffling out of the building muttering about those darned fire drills. To be sure, it was a well-known fact that the building, which was designed in 1926 by Bertram Goodhue, was a firetrap, and yet the staff had grown accustomed to the risk their workplace posed to the upwards of a million volumes housed there. It was not until firefighters rushed into the building and began breaking windows and hooking up hoses that everyone realized this was no drill.

     Soon, billows of smoke were visible from the outside where staff stood dumbfounded. “…as the day wore on the reports grew ever more terrible to hear. The firefighters were challenged by molten steel, narrow and unknown corridors and stairways, and in great abundance was fire’s favorite fuel,” Roy Stone, then of the Cypress Park branch, reported afterwards. Indeed, by noon the fire was still spreading, so much so that firefighters had to be “…rotated every 15 to 20 minutes due to the heat and smoke they were experiencing…Whenever a fire attack team open[ed] a nozzle, they [were] driven back by super heated steam.”

     The biggest problem was ventilation; since there was no way for the heat created by the fire deep inside the building to escape, the building was turning into a giant furnace. At two o’clock, temperatures inside parts of the building were estimated to be between 2000 and 2500 degrees Fahrenheit – that was when stacks began to collapse. As more and more water was poured into the building, a new issue arose: preservation of materials; water was rising inside the building, especially on the lower levels, so while the firefighters above were pumping in heavy streams, others were attempting to “de-water” the bottom floors.

     At three o’clock, after five hours of burning, the fire was no longer spreading, but getting to its seat was proving impossible; the heat that had been retained by the walls and the layout of the building made it so that every time firefighters approached with water, they were flung back by deadly steam. But a new scheme was about to get underway because for the past half-hour, Heavy Utility 27 led by Chief Lucarelli had been preparing to jackhammer holes in the floors above the fire. As each hole was opened, “…large volumes of heat and smoke [were] released under pressure…blowers [were] used for cross ventilation to help keep smoke and heat away from jackhammer crews.” Slowly, with each new hole, the firefighters below made headway in fighting the blaze. At five-thirty, the fire was 90% contained. An hour later, the firefighters were victorious. Yet, things were far from over, there remained the mammoth task of rescuing the libraries’ collection; what wasn’t ravaged by flames was soaked by the unavoidable water that was almost knee-deep in some parts of the library.

     That evening, when experts deemed the building safe to enter, firefighters took groups of staff members into the injured building with flashlights to ascertain the extent of the damage and plan the salvage operation. What they found was worse than expected; quick and decisive action would have to be taken in order to save the collection from disintegrating. Though every minute was crucial, experts spent a large part of the next day making sure the building was safe for what was to follow. Wednesday night, twenty four hours after the fire was put down, the call to action went out through word-of-mouth and media: “Please come…The library must be saved!”

     Many today doubt the necessity of public libraries in our society, and this was probably also the case in 1986, and yet thousands of people heard the libraries’ call and came running. It became known as the hard-hat brigade and its mission was to retrieve the books from the library, pack and load them onto trucks to be taken to donated warehouse space where they would undergo a restoration process. Thousands of people, young and old, from all over California signed-in, were given hard hats, and boldly entered the building again and again emerging loaded down with piles of wet books.

     For four days and four nights, there were lines of staff members, community groups, and other library lovers hauling books out of the library. Restaurants donated food, non-profits and other City Departments pitched tents and laid out beds for exhausted volunteers. The effort was herculean but the job was done and by Sunday, 70% of the libraries’ collection – everything that could be saved – was saved.

     All that was left after the flurry of activity was a crippled building, floating ash, mold, knee-high debris, and Central Library staff like mice returning to their poor holes. Glen Creason, a librarian at Central library describes his experience a few weeks after the fire: “Now as I am climbing through empty stacks where the wisdom of ages once rested, I can hear the music of transistor radios keeping the workers company as they inventory the losses. Can they be as sad as I am? We all lost a lot in those damned flames and it still hurts, a heartache that won’t go away.” Soon, even the melancholy sound of radios in the stacks were silenced as staff were moved to the temporary – for the next several years – Central Library location or reassigned to branches.

     While that ends the story of the Central Library Fire, Los Angeles could not stand still at the loss of its beloved library. It was Mayor Bradley and a cadre of community members along with the administration of the Los Angeles Public Library that organized a nationwide “Save the Books” campaign that ultimately resulted in the construction of a new Central Library – a beautiful building that combines Bertram Goodhue’s timeless design with an awesome expansion appropriately called the Bradley Wing. The new library opened in 1993, and remains as beautiful today as it was when it opened 16 years ago. While the fire was certainly a tragedy, from it rose a better place – for that we can be grateful.

Sources:

Los Angeles Fire Department Historical Archive: Report on Fire Suppression

Central Library Issue. LG Communicator. Volume 19, Nos. 3-6, March-June 1986.

Also, check out this catalog of gifts from the “Save the Books” campaign I found in the excellent California Index of the Los Angeles Public Library.

…Or is there? I’ve been sleeping all night long
and ninjas creeping in would mean I’m toast.
The rain is tapping out its morning song,

I’ll listen and relax, and groove along
to Fred Astaire rehearsing as a ghost.
I’m saying there is nothing wrong, and yet

I joke as if I’m trying to belong
to funny-people clubs that like to boast
that rain is tapping out their morning song.

And how do raindrops feel among the throng
that skydives every roof from post to post?
I’m not so sure they feel there’s nothing wrong.

Suspicious coda rousing me at dawn -
a time when one could use assurance most -
the rain is tapping out its morning song,
a whisper: nothing wrong, there’s nothing wrong…

     Here we see two of the flock approach the bar. They’re sloppy with their lob-sided skullcaps, dirty sneakers, and torn undershirts peeking like neighbors from under their oversized sweaters. And yet they squeak when they walk like kittens and their eyes touch-and-go, touch-and-go darting after something lost. They need nourishment so they order, pay, and receive a little receipt slip from the bartender. In this diner, you get a number; there’s no table service. The man behind the counter doesn’t need to explain to anyone, not even the Queen of England, that when your number is up, so are you, straggling to the counter for your rations. Having done their part, our sensitive heroes take their unforgiving seats and wait.

     Across from them is a weedy man making a park bench out of two rigid chairs; we’re seeing his day bed, though in truth, anywhere he sprawls can be so-called. Don’t you see? He feels at home in the world. Aren’t you jealous? He sometimes startles strangers with shouted greetings. The lounger knows everybody because as he reposes, hands clasped behind his head, humanity in all its glory parades before him, and by essence of being a part of the panorama, no man can be a mystery. All that’s left of this Whitman’s daily bread is two plates, a crowd of salt packets and crumpled napkins overseen by a large coffee cup, still half full. He doesn’t attend to the blokes who had just fallen into the seats across from him because in the prison of the mind there could be no amity between them. The old television hanging from the wall buzzes with the morning news. Later, it’ll be changed to Telemundo so the lunching migrants can get their fútbol fix.

     Just then a black Paul Bunyon steps in, long legs ahead of his body, a Daddy Longlegs wearing sunglasses and a field cap. Before anything, he looks in on his lounging compatriot and there it is: Bunyon’s bellowed greeting is a match being struck; the former’s morning malaise vanishes and he gets back his ghost. Eyes flashing open he returns the greeting using his newfound outdoor-indoor voice. We needn’t understand any words – it is the tones of voice, the quick shuffle, the slap of palms, that paint a soundscape assuring us that everything is right with the world. It’s like when the mailman finally arrives; though he bears no mail for you, his mere appearance balances the axes. The sunglasses stay on Paul Bunyon as he orders the same thing he ordered the day before and will likely order tomorrow.

     Outside, sitting on the chairs chilled by night is the only women around. Her disheveled hair, shorts, and purple shirt recollect Madonna’s 1980s couture unchanged but for twenty years of weather. Most of our Madonna’s features are chiseled, but her eyes, nose, and speech retain a sly liquidity. It’s impossible to hear what she’s saying from inside the restaurant – maybe it was a good night for a change; the discussion with her bulging, curly-haired friend, is civil. They don’t eat, just drink in the warmth of the bare morning. The traffic behind them hums. Finally, her legs are under her again.

     A dirty car hurtles into the parking lot. Out steps a younger guy, skinny like a stiletto, with a crease in his slacks and a wrinkled shirt. He takes a few headlong steps towards the restaurant, realizes that he has forgotten something, returns to the car, grabs his cell phone and in the next instant stares, dazed, at the menu. His long night is betrayed by glazed eyes and the plunges of his gait. Still, fatigue doesn’t hide the noble quality of a man who may have been, hours before, the smartest guy in the room. Having decided, he begins to tell the proprietor his wishes only to forget his compound order midway through delivery. Embarrassment is unnecessary however, because a capable bartender soothes a tired man with a quiet word. “Is your bathroom open?” the boy asks, motioning to the “Employees Only” sign hanging from the door. “Go ahead, it’s open,” answers the kindly father.

     Before the workday begins, a man with a red tie and fat bald head will swaddle in the door, already perspiring. Already ready to go, to make the world over with a booming baritone, in which he lives; he eats while repeating his successful sales mantra – today is the day, today is the day, today is the day I will close, drumming through every bite of his steaming hot American breakfast.

     Later, the police on break from fighting crime, will step inside and banter with everyone’s friend, still recumbent on the hard plastic while his tall buddy gets nervous behind his sunglasses.

     This is the place where all men are equal because all men who need to eat can, at least, appreciate the screw in a day full of work ahead or night-time of trouble left behind. Especially a man who wakes up every morning while his wife sleeps, combs his hair, puts on his pants (one leg at a time), undershirt, white buttons, apron and goes to the diner. When the lights go on at the restaurant, it is a world beginning afresh every single morning of our lives whether we know it or not. At the little diner where we used to go when my father would ask my brother and I, “Are you guys hungry?” and we would burst with smiles and nods because eating out was still a holiday. There, I would order the Shrimp Special – still on the menu – dig into the side of sweet coleslaw and see myself, years later, writing ideas on a napkin.