It can be dangerous.

Dangerous, because it makes you look at things from a particular perspective, and that can limit you from seeing things in other ways.

It makes me live like I’m in a movie. I zero in for a close up.

It makes me realize that, yes, the world is a movie, I’m in it, and sometimes I can film it, write it, direct it, share it by projection.

That’s not all bad, or necessarily bad, because it makes me, lets me seize the moment.

For example, the other day I was in the Kensington library. I always like going there because there are books and people. I look around and say to myself, this would make a good movie. People bring their individual lives and meet in common cause. The camera can move around and see everything at all the tables and chairs and children playing on the floor and reading and mothers overseeing and I realize it is a movie and I’m in it and if I had a camera I could make the movie and show it to everybody, to the world, because it’s absolutely worth sharing, to see things as I see them, and be as happy about life as I am.

For example.

I was standing by the check-out desk, quietly, patiently, waiting my turn when I would probably babble and gush about how wonderful the library is. I tend to do that too often, get carried away, and probably try people’s patience, but this time I was just standing there like a camera and I saw a little girl, smart as a whip, come up to the desk to ask a question.

The young library woman on duty leaned over and listened and the interaction began as a perfect lesson in teaching and learning.

The girl was asking about something, how to get the computer to do what she wanted. The librarian had her spell it out on a little piece of paper available at the counter, using a pencil also available.

With infinite patience, the librarian pointed with her own pencil, singling out individual letters, pointing to where the words should break.

It was a back and forth of mutual respect, at just the right unhurried speed to take long enough.

Questions were asked and answered. Already I could see the girl knew more about computers than I do.

It was the individual attention of teacher pupil, and almost brought tears to my eyes, because that was the way I always tried to teach, even with a full class of students, when I could take one by one at my desk and we could talk without pressure or hierarchy, and I wished there could be more time enough to get to every student the same way, and here was a librarian doing it, and I was a camera zooming in to the little piece of paper, the young pencil writing, the guidance pencil pointing out.

I wanted to say, and probably did, what a joy it is to see what I’ve always said, that teachers and librarians working together with the same children students, colleagues of the words, and together we can save the world.

I may have said again how proud I am of the librarians of the nation. Some years ago, when The Government tried to force the librarians to turn over their circulation statistics to determine who was reading what, the librarians said, “No.”

The Government, surprised, drew back, retrenched, and tried again. “You have to, we made a new law.”

The librarians said, “No.”

The Government backed off in frustration and still doesn’t know what to do.

And there I was, like a camera, in a library, witnessing in detail the hope of the future.