En bicyclette

I'm spending two weeks in Pasadena, or more properly San Marino, CA, doing research at the Huntington Library. Everyone loves this place. Mazillions of manuscripts and rare books, sunny days, 200 acres of botanical gardens. Friendships are made and strengthened. Intellect is set free. Tea and beer are drunk. Or so I'm told.

I got here last Thursday and was picked up at the airport by a friend from grad school who now lives in Pasadena and works as what he calls an "e-scrivener" in downtown L.A. He's good enough to let me spend the nights on his couch while he's off paralyzing legality or something. Also he has a black cat named Geoffrey, like Christopher Smart's cat. This is one of the few places in the L.A. area where one can walk to things, and there are good things to walk to, like museums and independent bookstores and the Huntington fricking Library. So I rented a bicycle from the library for an obscenely small amount of money, readied my research brain, and prepared. Hopes were high.

And then it rained. A lot. I still have trousers on the towel rack. Still, the library's a great place, and when it rains the desert garden is like an alien planet from a really improbable 1950s sci-fi flick. There are trees with big black spikes growing out of the side. The library has wood panelling and many many books and lots of smart people reading them. I like a library where readers check in instead of material checking out.

But I don't know what I'm doing. I don't mean with research, I mean I've never been here before and I don't know how the place works. You know how bad comics joke about how men won't ask for directions? That's me, but neurotically amplified. If I found myself in 1752 Algiers I would be kicking myself that I didn't know how to get to the mosque or order a coffee. If I woke up tomorrow in Kyoto, it would really irk me that I couldn't blend in. I like to be pre-acclimated to new places before I arrive, so that I can be James Bond cool and already know all the ropes. I know this is irrational.

But nevertheless, I always feel like an ignorant slapwad when I have to ask people, say, how to sign out reference books -- especially when I'm standing by the sign that explains it. I started off my stint here by requesting a 1632 Shakespeare second Folio, because that's the text I'm currently collating for my edition. It took a gentle-mannered man (the curator of the "bomb vault") escorting me from the reading room to have a word with me to demonstrate to me that of course I didn't really need to see that volume. I'm not examining watermarks or anything, and the text is available online as I must know since I am currently holding a photocopy of it. I slunk away in shame. Today when I asked if I could use my super new document camera the reader services people (we'll call them Catherine and Meredith, for those are their names) gave me a look that suggested I had asked to crap in the Ellesmere Chaucer.

And no one eats lunch with me, says howdy, or asks who I am, let alone pressing me for fascinating stories of textual collation over beer. I thought I would know people here, as I usually do when I pop in to libraries like this. But not this time. I've been feeling like the Latvian foreign exchange student at a Plano, TX junior high school.

This afternoon picked up a little. First of all, it was sunny for the first time. Then I managed to get most of the way through the Rowe edition of 1709 with a line-by-line collation. You really do get lots more work done when you're not doing anything else. Just like people always say. And at lunch I forced my way to someone else's table at the cafe and had a nice talk about 18th-century English stereotypes of Germans. And at quitting time someone I've actually met before said "We've met before, haven't we?" and we had a chat.

So clearly M was right and I have just been in a socially anxious funk for no reason. I'm looking forward to tomorrow.