Library Tang

I have tentatively begun studying in the library. Several things about it bother me to no end, namely, actually, just one thing: the lighting. But during partly cloudy days, it's not impossible to concentrate in the place. Still, I like to keep the affair as informal as possible, choosing to study not at tables... (or shudder... cubicles), but rather in large, low lying chairs that are almost like loveseats in width. I was minding my own assignments, attentively listening to the absolute silence that is graduate school students studying, when a shuffling of feet, not two, not three, but six, six feet! caught my easy to displace attention.

So there I was, staring at three people I did not know, moving at erratic paces, but all together, in the same general direction, through book shelves and behind desks, and they seemed to me very much like any one of the many species of Tang that move along coral reefs. This simile is only mildly appropriate once you realize that Tang are a part of an even larger subclass of fishes called Surgeonfish. Regardless, I wonder if over time the library will remind me of other wonderful places I have been.