Of all the places to slip away to on a near-perfect fall day, I couldn’t escape the lure of the windowless library not far from our corporate offices. The place I sit daily within PlattForm’s labyrinth of hospital green walls felt a little more folded in on itself than usual Friday, so I slipped out the back door for my share of more dim, fluorescent lighting.

Sitting at a table across from my book bag, I wrote in my dime store notebook realizing there weren’t many days like this left before the sky turns gray and the bottom falls out on 70 degree afternoons. Temptation to do something else rather than practice my writing was strong on the short drive. How could it not be with light winds twisting up fall leaves in tiny tornadoes and not-even-jacket temperatures?

But I felt a call from the book shelves where titles written in elaborate fonts tip sideways on brightly colored spines. Faces stared back at me from book jackets: Allen Ginsberg, Malcolm X, people who might have hated or loved me, Barry Goldwater, people to disagree with, Kerouac and Annie Dillard, people to talk to on barstool swimming with a light head while struggling to answer life’s deepest questions.

I could sense a cynicism from my colleagues who didn’t know I was sitting among the carols and private reading rooms. They’d left for lunch – crossed the black-asphalted parking lot that’s scorching hot in the summer, the sun burning up an amusement park smell from the ground. The parking lot with its sensible, modular lines contrasting with the way my mind today. Conflicting with my urge to attain clearer thoughts, just to write, really, and be creative, which is what I do, whether clients are there or not.

In the smallness of Saturday mornings, I write. On rainy nights at the library, I write. On airplane flights when I put myself out on the wing and on the land and in the in-flight magazine with a fiery explosion on the cover (bad omen), one with everything, I’m writing it down somewhere. I write to be more comfortable with my mind.

By book stacks and signs that hang from the ceiling or glow – limited loan, New Large Print, Children’s, new cards, copier – the librarians put order to all the chaos. Controlling all the secrets to the world, fresh from the author’s minds but held back by these gatekeepers, accessible for three weeks – if it’s a book, assuming there are no fines on the card in the first place – the librarians really feel the world. I don’t know if there will ever be such a thing as world peace or even world domination, but if there is, I’m certain the path to each begins in the public library. And it’s there, on the shelves, whether the huge, billowing gray clouds have moved in to dump snow, or kids are tossing the football and diving into leaf piles at the street’s edge.