I knew it would dawn on me eventually – the existential crisis of some sort. I knew that after working for more than one year in the field of Latvian libraries network, I would start to question the Sea Library being a library and me being a librarian. Don’t worry, I was ready for such a period of doubt. Armed with driftwood and seashells.
A very good friend of mine once said that he likes that we, the Sea Library and I, are tidal. Highs and lows, public and private. Breathing in and out. Pushing and pulling.
From the very first days I’ve felt that the Sea Library is a living being, a beast with a soul and maybe even a mind of its own. All I can do is take care of it, feed it, love it, let it grow and let it glow, but I can’t plan ahead and if I would calculate anything, it would die.
Now I have learned a tremendous amount of knowledge about how libraries work and what incredible job librarians are doing for their communities. Behind the scenes, professional literature and visiting so many libraries in Latvia since 2022, has filled me with even more love for this field. It even ignited a spark in me to become one of them because I admire them. The real librarians in real libraries.
But the scaled glistening beast breathing under the roof of our house is turning pages with its golden nostrils and pulling me back like the moon pulls the sea. The Sea Library will never be a classic library and it was never meant to be like that. And as much as I admire librarians, I’ll never be a librarian who is organising events and talks, cataloguing books the right way (ah but I need to do at least this). I’ll never move to proper premises for a library and I’ll never organise residencies etc. It’s not who I am. Like a hermit crab I cover my head and think. What AM I doing? Spending more time by the water than with visitors.
But then I let all this nonsense go and watch how the Sea Library is doing its own thing. How the world around it responds, how the dotted lines on imaginary maps connect the coasts, how the sea washes ashore one amazing reader after another, how the books unite minds, how the books about the sea unite such a variety of water loving human beings.
Even if I would stand aside, sit in the sand and just observe, the Sea Library would continue to be, and maybe even at those very moments it IS the most powerful lighthouse in the darkness of the lost and the confused, in the inspiring fog of the curious searchers. There’s something incredibly strong and beautiful at the bottom of its heart. The Sea Library is a utopia in a hundred years old room, as open and spirited as it can be. Sealed and leaky all at once. A cabinet of curiosities, a bottomless bookshelf, a sea of stories. It is perfect as a pearl.
The Sea Library and sea once healed my anxiety. It was long time ago and most days I don’t even remember that once I read books “to not to die” or escape the feeling of fainting. It’s a distant past now. But the Sea Library continues to free me from myself like an off-leash dog.
A weird letter from February. But a happy one.
Yours,
Anna xxx
Sea Library 