‘This is a safe space for people’

August 13, 2018 4:15 AM

One day in a Dublin library, by Patrick Freyne in the Irish Times (~3000 words)
posted by rollick (9 comments total)

It saved my ass when I was at a low point, and that it felt like a "safe space" was a lot of that. I could relax and think there, and take positive action in the direction of employment. I didn't even have a working computer at that time. I had a place to live but I was crippled by anxiety there, surrounded by the debris of my life.

He draws an equation in my notebook. “x – 1/x = o” “That is a statement of reality,” he says.

Well, x=1, I suppose.
posted by thelonius at 4:29 AM on August 13, 2018 [4 favorites]

This is lovely. Thank you for posting it.
posted by ALeaflikeStructure at 4:48 AM on August 13, 2018

Lovely piece, thanks for posting it. I recall the central library being pretty well-worn in its furniture and fixtures but a good refuge. It's surprisingly quiet for being tucked away in a shopping centre. Always seemed very well-used by a broad cross section of folks for all the reasons the article outlines. Last time I was there was just before leaving Dublin, to photocopy maps of my destination for a targeted CV handout. A good place to quietly realise that I was actually no joke leaving and dwell on that.
posted by ocular shenanigans at 5:06 AM on August 13, 2018

“It’s easy to be helpful,” says Ali.” People have just forgotten how.”
This is wonderful and heartbreaking at the same time.
posted by arcticseal at 5:10 AM on August 13, 2018 [8 favorites]

Beautiful story. Thank you. I want to be this library.
posted by kokaku at 5:14 AM on August 13, 2018

or -1. Anyway, repeating what the librarian said about libraries: Does he think libraries could ever disappear? “Not because of a decreasing need or desire for libraries, but because the world is going in that way and if something doesn’t turn a buck it’s endangered.”

It's too bad that's how a lot of voters see libraries - that they don't turn a buck, because they totally do, in the lives of the little people that need them, and in society as a whole. Not anyone here, obviously. I remember that thread about when that legislator said that Amazon should replace libraries.
posted by turkeybrain at 9:16 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

I grew up in my local library. I had my own library card when I was about 4 years old, I think. In the summertime as a child I used to check out a backpack of books and then walk home with my nose buried in one of them. (Early life training for texting and walking?) I don't truly feel like I have joined a community until I have a membership card from the local library. They have always felt like home.
posted by twilightlost at 11:46 AM on August 13, 2018 [1 favorite]

@thelonius I know what you mean - my last period of unemployment was in the UK in the early 1990s. There was a large library locally and pre-WWW it provided a place to be for as long as you wanted each day, to read, or to apply for jobs from the newspapers, or whatever.
posted by GallonOfAlan at 2:33 AM on August 14, 2018

Related: Zadie Smith's defense of libraries in the NY Review of Books

"Libraries are not failing “because they are libraries.” Neglected libraries get neglected, and this cycle, in time, provides the excuse to close them. Well-run libraries are filled with people because what a good library offers cannot be easily found elsewhere: an indoor public space in which you do not have to buy anything in order to stay."

That quote has been on my mind a lot lately.
posted by bl1nk at 9:55 AM on August 14, 2018 [1 favorite]