As fond as I am of walking through this city, my keenness
wanes when I contemplate walking back to my flat, and then back to George
Square in between classes. It’s
only about a fifteen-minute walk either way, but the turnaround is too short
for the trip to a cup of tea and an afternoon snack to be appealing. I’m too frugal to make a habit of
spending money on coffee just to spend the time, and so for the first few weeks
I would circumvent the cue spilling out of the library café door to find an
empty table where I could fiddle with my notes and tell myself I was being
productive. I could, I suppose,
bring my laptop with me and work on course-related readings, and so I do when
deadlines are pressing. It’s not
as though they don’t give me enough to keep me busy. It’s a heavy little bugger though, to drag along for just
forty minutes of reading. There
are plenty of computers in the library complex, but I am generally idling there
in the early afternoon, when most study spaces are filled to max capacity. All of this is really an elaborate
excuse for my new favorite spot to waste time.
It started when an essay I was reading on the technicalities
of visual reference and biological mechanisms for the identification of
animation, and it referenced a scene in the Epic of Gilgamesh. I spent the rest of the hour humming “Palaces of Montezuma*,”
and when I finished my reading a little early, I ducked into the library on a
whim to see if I could find a copy of the Babylonian epic. I’ve never read it before, you see, and
despite the previous claims on my time, something told me that I ought to. I found where the book was supposed to
be, on the third level of the library and a shelf up from some tomes on the
history of Hebrew names, but the first volume had been taken out. Once I found myself in the ancient
history section, however, I couldn’t simply walk away. My inner Daniel Jackson** took hold of
the situation, and I pulled out several books on the materials used by the
Assyrians in religious practice.
Nearly all of the nooks on that floor are reserved spaces, but I didn’t
want to roam far, as I was short on time.
Several rows over, I found a sort of cubby in the wall, where I could
sit on the floor and read while not being underfoot for anyone hoping to get past. When I got settled, I realized that I
was sitting, staring at a rack of nothing but excerpts, analyses, and
translations of Homer. I’ve been
returning to the third floor and that same cubby every since.
As I’ve said, there’s plenty of reading I could be doing for
my classes, but this is different.
There is something so enthusing about learning something that you didn’t
anticipate. It reminds me of my
childhood, when I’d aimlessly dig through our World book encyclopedias, roaming
from entry to entry, finding things that I would have never thought to go
looking for. I love that I have
the opportunity to go to university, and my classes are thoroughly interesting,
but there is something special about clandestine knowledge – about picking up a
book on Assyrian tablet translations, or the history of hieroglyphs, or Ancient
Semitic attitudes towards the ocean.
Ancient languages and history are certainly not my only interests, but
like I say, I’ve been camping in the classics section as of late. I’m a horrible procrastinator, always
have been, and I can think of few more enjoyable and enriching ways to waste my
time. Learn how to read Coptic? I don't see why not.
**For those of you that weren’t watching sci-fi in the early
2000’s, Daniel Jackson was the archeologist/ linguist in the elite
intergalactic exploration team on Stargate: SG-1. He starts out as a typical headstrong bleeding-heart
academic, and gets consistently more badass as the series progresses.
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