Letter from October

Dear friend,

How are you? A murmuration of starlings with stars on their bodies has landed outside our dark red wooden house in search of food. It is a cold and grey Sunday morning. I am sitting on the couch at the Sea Library with a laptop in my lap, sipping coffee, listening to the gentle breathing of everyone else asleep, and writing a letter to you.

After a summer-like September, October arrived with storms, floods, rain, hail, and colorful leaves of birch and maple trees. The tourist season at our seaside resort town has come to an end, and the beach (where no dogs are legally allowed) belongs to us. I have always loved the ghost town season here in Jūrmala – with an empty coast, enveloped by fog, with winds that move things around. And I love it even more right now, as this is our first Autumn with Nemo.

October has been a month of taking long walks in all kinds of weather and a month of writing down long sentences while learning more about libraries, oceans, and dogs:

• I have one more week left to finish a course at the National Library of Latvia – I am studying the ways to create a library that is even more useful for the community it serves. In my case – the sea-loving community all around the world. As Steve Mentz writes in his new book: “Maritime communities construct themselves through reading as well as swimming.”

• I have also started a semester at the TBA-21 Academy (where contemporary art and ocean meet in the most wonderful ways) – this year it is dedicated to the deep sea. The introductory talk by Susan Reid, an environmental philosopher, writer, artist, and ocean lawyer from Australia, was poetic and dramatic, lulling and thought-provoking all at the same time. I have written down in my notebook “to reimagine who we are and how we are” and the word “allkind” instead of “mankind”. The seabed mining comes with a huge price. I look at my sleek laptop and remember what Susan Reid said: “All batteries and computers come to us with their watery worlds”.

• And there are four more Saturdays left for Nemo and me to learn basic tricks so we could move on to the next leg of the journey and explore canistherapy at the libraries.

I am on an exciting path now, the one of learning to make the Sea Library an even better place. It is nice to have journalists and tourists coming here from all over the world, and yet, it can become like a closed circle after a while, so I have embarked into the unknown to find ways to serve the sea readers even better, not just to bask in the sun of the super cool Sea Library (yes, it is super cool and one of the best things that has happened to me).

I am reading a heartwarming novel by Japanese writer Michiko Aoyama – “What you are looking for is in the library.” It was published in English this summer. There are five life stories showing how a librarian gently changes the course of each person’s life by asking the most important question: “What are you looking for?” suggesting the right books, and always including a classic for kids that inspires in the most peculiar ways. It’s a down-to-earth yet magical book about power of books, libraries and of finding ways of becoming you.

This book reminded me to check out new releases of sea books for kids. I will have to save some money to buy them all for the young (and old!) readers here at the Sea Library. Yet here they are for you to know:

And there’s another one, not so much about the sea, but with my own dog I can’t resist. It has been published this month and is a story about a Stardog, a lonely protector of stars in the pursuit of finding others of her kind, but along the way learns to redefine her dreams.

This morning I was reading a superb article about Pando, one of the largest life forms on the planet, and about an artist, who has recorded, how it sounds. I loved what he said at the end of the article: “We have to keep in mind,” says Oditt, “that it’s been changing shape and form for like 9000 years. I call it the David Bowie problem. It’s constantly reinventing itself!”

Now tell me about your October!

And check sea-library.com for books.

Anna x