Sndbox Summer Camp Writing - Task Two: Tips of The Stealing Books in Government Library

“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library.”

― Jorge Luis Borges

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I WRITE THIS ARTICLE after I've no longer steeped in stealing books activities since 2009. That is, seven years passed without retraining the existing skills, of course, make this article only limited to share the experience alone. In addition to me personally efficient just nostalgic. So let me say, the tips of stealing books in the government library are very very bad guidelines for you to do.

Before committing the theft of the book, I first made sure that I really wanted to have and read out the book. Once this certainty exists, I go on to the stage that I really do not have enough money to buy it. Apart from these two conditions, my duty to convince myself that this activity runs smoothly is that there is a sense of boredom to deal with bureaucracy. You know, the borrowing process of borrowing books in the government library is a truly boring process of bureaucracy. You're only given a week to spend an 887-page loan novel, for example, and after a week you'll have to go back to the library to connect to the lending permit again, and so on. That’s boring enough, isn’t it?

What I mentioned above are basic of three conditions I put into my heart before I stole the books in the government libraries. Remember government-owned libraries. I have never intended to steal books in bookstores or in someone's private library or libraries belonging to other private communities.

The only reason to target books in government libraries is in the procurement are uses state money, where I as one citizen also the right to get it. It is a form of corruption to steal something that belongs to the state, but the other justification I put in my heart to keep away all the worries and anxieties is that it just stole the book. Just steal one or two or three books, no more.

Three preliminary conditions before doing the theft of the book I mean, if summarized it would be like this: First, you have the will to have and read out books. Second, you do not have enough money to buy it, and third, you the have a sense of boredom that bores with all the bureaucratic process.

Once these three conditions are firmly established in heart. I just went to the government library. It may be a regional library, but most often it is a college library whose guard is not so tight. Pocketing an official libraries card is a mandatory cover. The initial step is of course by visiting libraries frequently and conducting small-scale surveys there. With a small survey, you will understand all the conditions and situation in the library. I would get acquainted with some of the officers by borrowing some rather controversial books. In the regional library, I borrowed a book called Sex Disease Types and Early Prevention Measures (Jenis-jenis Penyakit Kelamin dan Cara-cara Pencegahan Awal), while on my librarian card it was clear that my college study was in the Department of Mathematics Education.

Cause I'm a guy, I chose to deal with the girl clerk at the borrowing counter. Can you imagine yourself, the librarian girl would smile to herself when she saw the title of my lend book. And the smile becomes wider when I found the ins and outs of my college majors in the library card that I showed to her. I smile back at her, as much as possible with a shameless expression. As she handed me the book by saying enjoy the book to me, I swiftly replied, "It will be gone in three nights."

What I did was intentional to familiarize myself with the librarian. I instilled in her the first impression that would penetrate her subconscious when meeting me other times. As I told the librarian in the first lending process, three days later I went back and returned the book Sex Disease Types and Early Prevention Measures to the same librarian, the girl who in the beginning has a wide-smiled. When she found me returning a book that she might be amused to read the title herself, she had opened up a bit. She asked, "What kind of illness have you got?" I said, "It turns out that the wet dream is not a disease. I was a little scared."

The librarian girl chuckled. She was very impressed with my answer. She has started to mention my name on the sidelines of the statement, "If there is a wet dream again, do not hesitate to borrow it again, ok." I smiled as sweetly as possible.

The girl of the library, I later have known was named Devi. She was a civil servant at the provincial Archive Board who had just been deployed in the regional library. She is eight years old above me. That is, when I run this mission I was 20 years old, still 6th semester on campus, she was 28 years old, and on the phone conversation in the days following she admitted that she still single.

Acknowledged, or more blatantly, familiarizing herself with Devi the librarian was the smoothest path for me to carry out the initial mission of stealing a book. But because the intimacy also makes the initial mission is so downgraded in the future. I no longer have to struggle to find a way to steal a book of coveted walking smoothly, because I was able to take it as good as to request approval of Devi not to record it in the lending book.

With the help of Devi, I successfully took and had at least 11 titles of literary translation books. But unfortunately, living in my personal library today is only four titles. They are Istanbul by Orhan Pamuk, Islamic Activism: A Social Movement Theory Approach editor Quintan Wiktorowicz, the most phenomenal journalistic book entitled Hiroshima by John Hersey, and Politics and Student by Philip G Altbach, et al.

Moreover, novels such as a Sultan in Palermo and The Stone Woman by Tariq Ali, One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, The Library of Babel by Jorge Luiz Borges, Mushashi by Eiji Yoshikawa, What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy, and another book I forgot the title and whose authors have disappeared are borrowed by several different friends who have not been returned yet.

It is my process of running a mission of stealing books in the regional library, whose building is located on Jalan Teuku Nyak Arif, Lam Nyong, Kota Banda Aceh. The range of theft (read: retrieval) of the books took place between 2004 and 2009. The period of five years I just stole 11 book titles only. It's none other than because from the beginning the condition I put in my heart when trying to steal the book is that I really want to have and read out the books, and 11 books that became my target during the commute to the regional libraries.

THE EXPERIENCE IN THE COLLEGE LIBRARY is what is worth mentioning by stealing books. There I found none of the librarians fit to smooth the mission. In addition, most of them are old-age and always put a curt expression. The college library when I was in college had a lot of loopholes to easily sneak up a book until it was free of the thick walls of the building. The library building is a two-floors building. Thousands of book titles are neatly displayed-neatly on large shelves on the second floor. The borrowing counter was also on the same floor, but it was right in the middle between two wings of the building.

That kind of condition makes monitoring officers do not get to the rear shelves. Again, this monitoring has actually been assigned to several cameras located at several strategic points. But my college days were the years when the country's electricians were fond of flickering, allowing the surveillance cameras do not perform their tasks as expected. To run a mission as good as the mission of stealing college library books, the reality has a gap.

I just have to learn the next gap, and it lay on the window in some of the back corners of the library's wing. It's a small window with a simple hook lock. You just open it, open the shutters, and the fresh air comes in, and you just throw the book you want to have it in the narrow alcoves of the outer wall.

So the mission finishes when you're out of the library, then turns around the building to pick up a book that has fallen on the ground in a state that may be miserable. And after a few stolen books in college, I found the art of throwing books from the second floor until the book I stole slipped free and survived after falling on the ground. A little about the art of throwing this book is that you must first figure out the weight of the book before you throw it out through the window.

Abandoning the books you already have is the same as abandoning the mind. Just as abandoning the spiritual treasure. And ignoring the book without reading it is a job of impoverishing the intellect you should have since you first read the writing on the first page.

What I have mentioned above is an experience that (I must repeat once again) is not followed by anyone. From that experience, I just want to emphasize that the question of morality must be thoroughly weighed when it comes to stealing books in government libraries. You can be determined to steal a book, and when that determination is actually traced in your heart, you will find certain ways according to your circumstances. But the heart of it all is that you'll get the books after you've stolen them. This is an important matter to be affirmed before carrying out the mission.
Because many of us have an excessive desire to collect the best books, expensive books, but in fact, the books are untouched again after being displayed on the shelf in the room. Books stolen just to fill the collection space without a single read is the worst theft ever seen in the history of book theft civilization. The sin that you gain becomes so against each other. In the beginning, you already have the sin of stealing, then increase with the sin of not reading, then the more sin to abandon the book that should be useful for others. Is not that a sin can undermine the intellectual value in our mind.

To escape from the intellectual sins I mentioned. I always convince myself to only reconcile with the sin of the theft process of his book only. That's why I'm going to read, if I can over and over, stolen books. I always try to get the hidden lessons contained in it. From the stolen books I learned to write, learn to build narratives, learn to think critically, learn to enrich the perspective of an object. That's why for about ten years (three years in high school plus six years in college) stealing books in government libraries the number never reaches over 30 titles. The reason is as I mentioned above because I do not want to suffer excess intellectual sin by wasting an unreadable stolen book.

But to be honest, stealing books is a job that makes you have to bear the intellectual burden for the rest of your life. This I guess is true until seconds I write this article. I once dreamed that the books I stole were anglers so I could also write a book. But until now this dream has not materialized at all. The dream is still struggling as a burden on the head, and in fact I still can not write perfectly.

So, warm greetings from former government library book thieves. Thanks and best regards to Devi, wherever you are now.[]

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Task One: I Learned To Write By Reading Stolen Books