Last Fling in the Pool

Greetings, gentle readers.
Well, this is it.  One more sleep, and I'm off to fly to Iceland, and then back to my old life in Canada.  Went to the viewing floor of the Radio City Tower in St. John's Market - the second tallest building in Liverpool - and looked down on all of my favourite places and things.  As we looked upon the panorama of the cityscape and I silently prayed that the Irish Sea would churn in the aftershocks of a Katla explosion, I was hit by memories of the wonderful, but little known wonders of the city.

Drax, I Demand You Grant Me Access... to the LIBRARY

The Liverpool Central Library is near St. John's Gardens, and is flanked on all sides by colossal tributes to classical architecture.  Vast Doric columns and bas-relief lintels and marble blocks are sprayed around this district like cat urine in an old lady's basement.  In fact, what used to be the main entrance is just such an imposing edifice.  However, it's no longer used, and the "new" entrance is a little side door with a walkway leading to it that is composed of black flagstones with white and red engraved letters that spell the names of films, books, plays, and musical albums.  I immediately spotted a puzzle, and thus I was ensnared.  My deciphering led me to the phrase "CYCLOPS THE WOOD."  Of course I had to talk to librarians about it.
The first thing that strikes you upon entering the library is that the central hall is arranged like Sir Francis Bacon's Panopticon, but canted at about a 35° angle to the vertical, and capped after the fifth floor with a teardrop-shaped skylight.  Looking up at the skylight gives you a view something like this:

The two librarians were stunned that I'd seen the puzzle at all, saying that it had been a competition for students when this part of the library opened four years ago.  They also said that if I'd figured out that much, finding the answer should be a piece of cake.
Most of the rooms filled with collections or rare books are named after benefactors, donors, or other sources of endowments.  Except one.  Its floors are made from blonde oak, and all of the wall panelling and cabinetry is done in dark oak, and was hence called The Oak Room.  It's the home to one of the rarest and most valuable books in existence:  the Audubon Society's "Birds of America."  Julie is studiously avoiding it in the following picture.

Obviously, this is the paperback edition in the display case. 
A quick glance around the Oak Room told me two things - it is not organized at all.  Not by subject, author, publisher, chronology.  Even when they get a publication in multiple volumes, the numbering sequences are often wrong.

The other thing that leapt out at me was this rather unique cover.

George Maw wrote a rather bland book about the plant genus crocus, and his imaginative cover designer decided to make a three-dimensional representation of the human eye, with a crocus in place where the iris of the eye should be, making a third rate horticultural textbook into a beautiful work of art.  In any event, I found the cyclops in the wood, although I was hoping for something creepier, like Doctor Who's assertion that all paper comes from trees, and therefore all libraries are forests of the dead.
On the way back down, there's a poem written by Liverpudlian-born Afro-Caribbean activist and poet Levi Tefari that is extraordinarily difficult to read at ground level, but is far easier to read from the first or second floors:

A Night at the (World) Museum

Found right next door to the library, the Museum has a ground floor and five floors of exhibits above it.  After two days of visiting, I still haven't seen all of them.  It really is an information overload.  Each floor really merits a full week's investigation, and I find myself guilty of skimming.  The enormous display of indigenous arts, crafts, textiles, weapons, and other artifacts was entirely overwhelming.
In terms of the anthropology aspect, the exhibit that really raised my eyebrows was the Tibetan exhibit.  Filled with robes, prayer bowls and bells, and all manner of pottery, textiles and precious jewelry, the artifacts themselves are gorgeous to behold.  What caught my eye was the quotation from the Dalai Lama that accompanied the display.  In it, he mentions that many of the items that have been collected in the museum were gifts from Tibetans to serving British diplomatic and military officers, and comments that he is proud to see that these beautiful, hand-crafted articles are demonstrable proof of the friendship and sympathy that the two countries share.
This is a very loaded statement. In mentioning his people and his country, is he asserting Tibet's independence from China?  Is he implying that Britain do the same, diplomatically?  Is this basically a very quiet and polite refutation of China's definition of Tibet as the Autonomous Region of Xizhang?  It sounds very soft and cuddly, but there are barbs beneath the surface of such a placid museum dedication.
Other than quasi-seditious niceties, there is much to suggest that humanity is more of a family that we have ever realized before.  Compare the totem poles of the Haida Indians of the British Colombian coast with those of the Yoruba people of West Africa.  Then compare their textile patterns.  There are things going on in our collective species subconscious than we may have ever suspected.  Except for the Javanese people of Oceania - they've got their own thing going on.

Considering that the Scarab is a member of Order Coleoptera, I think that we can safely assume that Bastet is a Beatles fan.
And it looks like I'm out of time.  Need to pack and make my final arrangements to catch the train to Manchester in the morning so that I can hop the flight to Reykjavik in the early afternoon.  So until next time, goodnight England and the colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS