Collected wisdom

Saturday 10:30 a.m .: Emily returns from the art store with a small notebook for me. Aside from cheques, credit card receipts and the occasional bathroom graffito, it’s been a long time since I’ve actually written by hand. Typing on a computer feels like work; but writing in an old-fashioned notepad reminds one of creative possibility and play. As a kid, I’d walk through the pharmacy stationary aisle with butterflies of happiness in my stomach, thinking about all the blankness waiting to be filled.

“This book hearkens back to the days when I was a young man who cared only for his art,” I say. “I was only too content to sup upon the cheap cheddar from under my fingernails — scraped from the mammoth Cheshire cheese wheel I used as a writer’s desk in my mousehole-sized garrett.”

“All right, then,” Emily says. “Enjoy.”

10:40 a.m .: I set out for a walk during which I will collect bits of wisdom and fill my book.

At the park, a couple passes by my bench and I catch a snippet of their conversation.

“When you’re abroad, and it doesn’t matter where, the first person you meet is always Australian.”

I jot it down in my notebook.

11:10 a.m .: A security guard and a woman lean on a railing and stare silently at the goldfish in the park’s Japanese pond.

“I hate fish,” the woman says.

“Why are you looking at them, then?” the security guard asks.

“I like looking at them,” she says. “I don’t like eating them.”

I jot it down feeling like I’ve discovered a new line of dialogue from a lost Samuel Beckett play.

11:30 a.m .: At the edge of the park, someone is selling fidget spinners.

“They’ ll relieve your stress,” he says.

I wonder if it comes with a money-back guarantee.

I pick it up. Trepidatiously. I have an addictive personality so want to be careful. As a child I couldn’t stop yo-yo-ing, Rubik’s Cubetwisting, Bolo- batting and cat’s-cradling.

I spin it and wonder: Why is the sensation of spinning this thing between my thumb and index finger more satisfying than all of my personal relationships and career goals combined?

I can just see it now. Stepping out of an underground fidget den in the backroom of a Chinatown foot massage parlour and into the cruel noontime sun, I’ ll realize that I’ve spun away my entire life. I decide not to buy it. I’d only end up worrying so much about addiction that the stress relief would be entirely counteracted. I place the spinner back in the box.

Even though my notebook is still all blankness, I’ve enough fidgety energy to keep trying to fill it. With that, an idea occurs to me.

“If we could combine our excess fidgety energy,” I write, “it could power fidget spinners the size of ferris wheels.”

My fidgety energy alone could power factories. Fidget spinner factories.

Sadly, this is the closest I come to an actual bit of wisdom all morning. But it doesn’t stop me from continuing to try.