59/100: Puzzle Feature
This vignette is one of 100 in a series that explores the libraries of New York City.
On the ground level, one of the first things you see when you walk into the SNFL building is a puzzle station. Where Jefferson Market offered daily crosswords, here there are four 500-piece jigsaw puzzles. Also on the table is a sign that reads:
I’ve always been a big fan of puzzles; I love solving riddles and making pieces fit. Maybe because I don’t get to do all that much of this in real life. Or maybe just because it feels good when things come together and fall into place.
Anyways, I unsurprisingly love the idea of a community puzzle; it fits (see what I did there) perfectly into the community-library-ideas-community-oasis-la-la-land I’m so fixated on these days. There are three of them in total, one completed, one with about halfway to go, and one that looks impossible and crazy-making, but also futuristic and shiny and cool.
Of the three, the cat is my favorite, partly because I love cats and partly because, while fun to look at, the glass puzzle has already seen a few casualties; I picked up a few pieces with broken tabs (this is what the protruding bit on a puzzle piece is called, the indented part is called a slot) while attempting to place something. I did not manage to place a single piece, them all being glass and void of any visual cues besides their fragmented tabs. I did, it’s worth mentioning, get a few of the pieces in the other one: the bottom three pieces of brown, yellow and red are mine, so well done me.
It’s the perfect activity to feature here: much like libraries themselves, puzzles promote both critical thinking and creativity, and invite any and all to be part of these endeavors. It’s also something you can do with your hands that’s not typing or scrolling or making notes; another hack for slowing down time, being present. And finally, perhaps most poetically, is the mosaic aspect a communal puzzle venture carries — that we ourselves are one big puzzle, made up of different shapes and colors and — well maybe not sizes, puzzles are pretty uniform on this — who come together to create the eclectic and vibrant masterpiece that is New York.
Thanks for reading!