November 2. The thirty-first of October was a Sunday.
That day this room was locked. There were two gaps in the stacks and no box to hand out. Twelve days on, the register's fourth line stands as it was and there is no release under that date.
I wrote up the thirty-first as an instance and sent it to head office. The reply came in seven days and said it would be included in the end-of-November clearing guidance.
The index cards are at drawer eleven. Three days will finish it. The deadline is the end of November, so twenty-six days remain.
At ten I pulled the catalogue.
There were two materials with 'log' in the title.
The first is the copy. For eight months it has written after my log, always a day ahead, and on 5 October it landed on its own date.
The second is an archive log. Not a computer room log. Two years ago this room was the archive and the computer room was separate. In the winding-up after the merger the two were joined into the computer archive.
I opened both together.
The screen split in two.
The function exists. The notes for the corrected catalogue name a comparison display and say it is for picking two materials and seeing them side by side. I have never used it and I did not use it today. I opened the two together and it came in that shape.
The explanation is beside it again.
From half past ten until twelve I read the right side.
The form was the same. There is a page number and a date, morning work and afternoon work are divided, and it says continued. The form I write in now is the form of two years ago. In August, looking at the register, I wrote that the form has not changed, and the log is the same.
Inside the same form there was something different.
Sentences outside the form.
That one's hands are cold is not a thing to put in a log. There is no box for it. That person wrote outside the box. That one counted three times and all three came out different is the same. Where a count does not agree, the form is to enter the final value and whether it was re-measured, and all three came out different does not go into the form.
The seat beside me is empty is a thing about people.
Past twelve I was still holding one page. It is dated 5 December.
It begins per the form. Three releases at nine a.m., material numbers and recipient codes in order, quantities. Two requisitions received at eleven a.m. Microfilm transfer work continued at two p.m. To here it is inside the boxes.
Below it one line stands outside them. 'I moved less today than yesterday. It is not that my hand has slowed.'
I read that line some eight times.
There are several reasons why less gets moved. The material was thick, or the machine was slow, or the person was tired. That one wrote that it is not that the hand has slowed. The reason is not written. It reads not as not written but as could not be written.
Among the things I have written in this room in eight months there is a line like it. The one about the explanation going as far as nine and not going from the tenth. That was thinking and not the log; I did not put it in the log. That person put it in the log.
Turning to the next page there was nothing further about that line. The sixth of December is back inside the boxes. Having written the question once, it passes on without writing an answer.
One line like that every ten pages. Seventeen asked and none answered.
From one until two I picked those sentences out and counted them. Seventeen. The dates run from March 1997 to 16 December. About one in ten pages.
Counting them, I tried to write down what they show.
I have held that a machine cannot make a sentence outside the form. I have only held it. There are no grounds. Looking at what machines have done in this room over eight months, the copy came after my form and the board came after my posting format. What comes after is the format. Going outside the format I have not yet seen.
Not yet seen and cannot do are different. Telling those two apart is a thing I have not once managed in eight months.
Even so I was reading the right side as a person.
Difference comes to mean a person because sameness could be a machine.
Having written that, my hand stopped. From two until three I read the left side.
It is my log. A hundred and seventy-three pages from the first of January until today. Being a copy, it is as I wrote it.
I looked for sentences outside the form.
There were none.
For ten months I have written only inside the form. There were days my hands were cold. In February this room was cold and the heating went off at six in the evening. I did not write it. There were days a count came out different three times. I entered only the final value and whether it was re-measured. The seat beside me has been empty since January. I have never once written it.
There was no box, so I did not write it. I held that this was keeping the form.
Then whoever reads this log has no grounds to read me as a person.
Set the grounds I used on the right side against the left, and the left is not a person. I made the grounds and the grounds leave me out.
At ten past three I counted how many sets of records there are in this room.
My log is one. Its copy is two. The separate volume for the test machine is three. The 1997 log that came up on the right today is four.
Of the four, two were written by a person's hand. The main volume and the separate volume, both mine. The copy has no hand, and the 1997 one had a hand that is gone.
The recorders are two. Myself and the one on the right. The copy, having no hand, is not a recorder but a record. Set out that way it is tidy.
The tidiness is out of true in one place. For eight months the copy has written what I did not write. Write what was not written and it is written, and where something is written there is one who wrote it. Setting it down as not a recorder rests on its having no hand, and its having no hand is a thing I have not seen.
Today I offered grounds on the right and lost those grounds on the left. Set against the copy, another set of grounds goes. Offering three sets of grounds and having all three go is a thing I did for the first time today.
At half past three the third-floor man came down and took a signature. On his way out he said it has turned cold. It has, I said. He asked whether the heating here does not go off in the evening. At six, I said. He said he had better leave at six, then, laughed and went up.
After he went up I thought of writing it in the log and did not. There is no box for it.
At four I looked at the two screens side by side again.
One is written by a person who went outside the boxes and one by a person who wrote only inside them. For ten months I have held the latter to be right. The right one does not read as a person.
The right-hand person's log ends on 16 December. It is the same day as the register's last line. The seat of the one who wrote that the seat beside them was empty was empty that day.
At half past four I opened the last page on the right.
There was a page number.
Page one hundred and seventy-three.
It is the page I am writing today.
The last line broke off in the middle of a sentence.