I'm starting work at the library again, starting today. I came in at 10 a.m. or, well, actually more like 10:02. There was a light drizzle, and the radio spoke of New Mexico getting precipitation from Hurricane Dolly in Texas. The sky was and still is clear and white, like a gigantic projector screen with a blank slide.

I parked in Security's parking space in front of the library (ha ha), because all the other spots were taken. Come to think of it, I should check if another spot's cleared up by now so I can move my car to safety. I have been given a temporary parking permit instead of a staff sticker, because the Human Resources office decided that the positions they've incorrectly labeled "temporary" are the employment equivalent of flight risks, and god forbid they should take a job just to get a staff sticker.

So I parked and jogged inside, ready with my key to let in the summer worker, Charlotte. To my surprise, the doors were already unlocked. Jennifer had opened the library early for a meeting of the Board of Prison Guards and Dubliners. So early that the sun was just a hope. She did this so that the prancing morons (currently occupied in making the library as loud as possible, with a few high achievers reaching the decibel levels of an airplane cockpit) could be fed their special breakfasts with their special dribble bibs. Did I mention that I hate these people? I wonder if the reason they're being so loud is because they actually don't recognize the shelves and studying people as a library. Perhaps they think it's an elegant set that the college prepared for their amusement, so that they would have the little thrill of schmoozing at the top of their lungs in an authentic, Grade A Academic Setting.

Anyway, Jennifer was waiting behind the desk, all the lights were on, the computers were active, and all the library was already humming. She introduced me to a project I could do to start out, and then she went home to take a nap.

I logged on to my library desktop for the first time in a year, and opened my email just to see if I had any messages from Laura. I found that IT had simply never closed my email account. I had messages dating back to last October, when I left Switchboard. The system had even saved three messages that I'd never deleted from 2007.

So I scrolled down to the bottom, the earliest emails in the box, which was a little like an archaeological dig. I uncovered all the meaningless little notes that the St. John's offices had sent to each other to let themselves know that time was passing (reminders about birthdays, tips for winter car maintenance, a message about ergonomic work stations). I picked away at the dirt covering each weekly emailed Ephemera, the college newsletter. I marveled at Mr. Pesic's ancient purple prose describing his concerts and lectures of days gone by. As I went through, deleting a page's worth of messages each time after making sure there wasn't anything important in them, I found one of the big things I'd been missing since I left here: tradition. In those trivial emails I rediscovered the jovial, lumbering form of St. John's traditions. I remembered how charming it was to be forever exchanging one season for another, one week for another, one day for another, and to pass from newly arrived freshmen to cider in the coffee shop, from lit fireplaces over winter break to the self-aware somberness of senior writing period, from students lounging outside as the days started getting longer again to the riotous stupidity of the party season; and through it all, at least in my own mind, to be fixed on the unchanging project I thought I took up when I first signed the roster, the project of self-improvement through study of great works. Perhaps I never really had that as a goal in the first place, but if it was a delusion, at least it was a cheery delusion. Just being here, I feel better than I have in a long time in the grey world of office work, where I had nothing to look forward to, no stimulus, no people all around me having new ideas, no challenge, and no people sharing my cheery delusion.

Now here I am again, the roar of the fiends in business suits has finally subsided, and in front of me is a list of subject headings that the Library of Congress has declared canceled, with an accompanying list of their replacements. I have a lot of fine nonsense to get to in the endless renewal of the library's minutiae. It's time to get to work.