Happy birthday, Jorge Luis Borges.

"I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library."

He slips out the backdoor of his office and into the movable stacks.  Most employees have but one way in and one way out of their offices.  His office, in the bowels of Bowen, has a second doorway out and directly into the literature section of the library–into a large room with the highest concentration of books of anywhere on campus.

Were he a poet there might be a metaphor to work here.  Sometimes he likes to shut the main door to his office and crack open the door into the library to let in its cooler air.  Perhaps in a magical realist story, more than just cool air would work its way into his modest, windowless office when he opens this door to another world. 

Libraries have always enchanted him.  He walks past a stack of books a hundred times without noticing, then the hundred and first time some book title captures his eye, and if he is not careful (and why should he be?), he finds himself standing for a half hour cracking open a book cover, inhaling its cooler air, transported to another world.

One day the library will likely claim the faculty offices in the northeast corner of its building, and the English department will be relocated elsewhere.  This will be a sad day for him–the day he loses his windowless office with its secret passageway into a world of worlds.