Silence, it is read

Forsake all hope, you who enter , read the inscription Dante found on the gates of hell. A version of that warning should read on the doors of Catalonia's 435 public libraries and the 16 bookmobiles for municipalities with fewer than 3,000 inhabitants. Something like this: Abandon all sexuality, ye who enter here . And the fact is that upon entering, you don't feel like a better person or struck by some epiphany, but all desire for fornication, reproductive inclination, or mere carnal pleasure is annulled. You take two steps inside and you are no longer a plaything of sexual desire. In reality, you almost forget what it was like to have pleasure in your own body and in others. Because all that is behind you, and now you are something else: a Public Library User.

This effect is temporary, as it only lasts while you're inside a public library. As soon as you return to the noise and the street, your sexuality returns, and so does your sex life (good, bad, or nonexistent). There are many similarities to diving to the bottom of the sea. Silence, for example, is more necessary than ever in these times of constant shouting and chatter.

Having to set an example and the absence of courtship causes the routine of dealing with others to be abandoned.

It is silence that differentiates a public library from a bookstore, and it is this silence, elevated to the level of revealed truth, that makes books in a bookstore seem like opportunities for endless celebration, and in a public library, like tombstones in a cemetery where only the miracle of reading resurrects the copy you choose, pick up, and begin to read. Understand me, public libraries are wonderful achievements of our society and have allowed and continue to allow culture to reach everyone free of charge. There are books of all kinds, movies, games, comics, records, and it has also served to show that those who pirate books steal out of laziness and narcissism. They are, therefore, the achievement of collectivization, of sharing things, of allowing others to benefit from them, so that no one is left behind. Finding, by chance, in your house a photography book that you should have returned on April 6, 1998, reminds you that you are also a moral being. Moral and forgetful.

All the benefits in the world for the 435 public libraries and their 16 mobile libraries. With their air conditioning in the summer, their free computer screens, purring for whoever needs it, their soundproof play area. And their own native wildlife. Now, as I write these notes, a woman with a stroller has come in looking for her husband.

There are many lonely men, because their loneliness is normalized here; also eccentric people.

He's already circled the tables and shelves twice and can't find him. An affair? Is he at the bar, having a beer and watching TV? Or at the entrance to the library itself, where the newspapers are, savoring the macho pleasure of reading a paper newspaper if you haven't paid two euros for it? A strange pleasure that can also be found in bars and on trains. There are many lonely men because their solitude is normalized here. Also eccentric people who are admitted without problem between the sections dedicated to Nazism and the one dedicated to Lions, Tigers, and Other Ferocious Beasts. And conventional people looking for novels and poetry books, of course, and student colonies, more or less numerous depending on the station. Solitary or in groups. Most with music playing on headphones brought from outside to alleviate the silence that asexualizes them.

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The silence of a church, of a sarcophagus. Even more extreme. At any noise (conversation, cell phone ringing, laughter, etc.), Medusa heads rise from their reading and try to destroy the offenders with their gaze. There's no flexibility in this regard. Silence is silence. The troublemaker, the rude person, the shouter can be reprimanded by anyone and, who knows, maybe even hung by their feet from a shelf after being punished by reading a sitcom. Punishment can come from the users and also from the librarians, selfless men and women who you always imagine, upon leaving work, go down to the sea and, like Camarón, begin to sing against the waves. One assumes they must joke with each other, explain things, perhaps laugh, but I haven't witnessed it.

Having to set an example and the lack of courtship leads to the abandonment of the routine of interacting with peers. In their defense, it must be said that users can be peculiar, that they don't know how to look up references and don't have the desire to learn. Perhaps it's the silence or the sexual kryptonite at their doors, but spending so much time in libraries and bookmobiles, one can forget that one reads out of desire, that one continues reading to fall in love with a book again, and that there is no one sexier than someone reading.