“Not a note.”

“Can you design buildings?”

“Afraid not.”

“Well, something will come to you. In fact, I think you already know.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

“Really, I don’t.”

“You know you do. Now hurry up. Get out of here. I’m sure you’re in a hurry to get started.”

“No, I’m not because I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

I left the prison all dazed and emptied out, on the verge of either a shocking fit or a wonderful discovery. Create, the man said.

Create what?

I needed to think. I needed an idea. Feeling heavy, I trudged into town and walked up and down our five measly streets. When I reached the end of one and almost continued into the bush, I spun around and walked the streets again. Why wouldn’t I venture into the bush that surrounded our town on all sides? Well, I wished I could draw my inspiration from Mother Nature’s well, but to tell you the truth, the bitch leaves me dry. Always has, always will. I just don’t get any great ideas looking at trees or at possums fucking. Sure, the sleeping angel in my breast stirs just like everyone else’s when confronted by a breathtaking sunset or a bubbling brook, but it doesn’t lead me anywhere. A shivering blade of grass is lovely, but it leaves me with a big mental blank. Socrates must have thought the same when he said, “The trees in the countryside can teach me nothing.” Instinctively I knew that I could draw inspiration only from man and manmade things. It’s unromantic, but that’s just how I’m built.

I stood at the crossroads and watched the people drag themselves about their business. I looked at the cinema. I looked at the general store. I looked at the barbershop. I looked at the Chinese restaurant. That all of this had sprouted from the primordial soup was a profound and impossible mystery. There’s nothing perplexing to me about a leafy shrub evolving out of the big bang, but that a post office exists because carbon exploded out of a supernova is a phenomenon so outrageous it makes my head twitch.

Then I had it.

They call it inspiration: sudden ideas that explode into your brain just when you are convinced you’re a moron.

I had my idea, and it was a biggie. I ran home thinking Harry was instructing both of us, Terry and me, in different lessons, but to be honest, I don’t think Terry got anything out of Harry at all. Oh, a few practical pointers, sure, but none of the philosophy, none of the juice!

First Project

I’m not a handyman by nature. The objects constructed by me that exist in the world are few; scattered in garbage pits across the country lie a misshapen ashtray, an unfinished scarf, a crooked crucifix just big enough for a cat to sacrifice his life for all the future sins of unborn kittens, a deformed vase, and the object I made the night after visiting Harry in his stinking prison: a suggestion box.

I built it optimistically; it was a real cavern, 50 centimeters across, 30 centimeters in depth, enough space inside to fit literally thousands of suggestions. The box looked like an enormous square head, and after I gave it a varnish I took the handsaw and widened the mouth farther, opening up the corners a couple of centimeters on either side so the mouth was smiling. First thing I considered was attaching it to a stick and pounding it into the earth somewhere in the town, but when you’re building something for public access, you have to take vandals into account; every place on earth has them, and beyond too.

Consider the layout of our town: one wide, tree-lined main street with four smaller streets running off in the middle. At this crossroads was the epicenter- the town hall. No one could go about his business without passing it. Yes, it had to be the town hall to give the suggestion box an official air. But to achieve permanence, so no one could remove it easily, it had to become part of the structure, part of the town hall itself. It had to be welded, that was obvious, but just try welding wood to concrete! Or to brick!

I scavenged around the backyard for scraps of corrugated iron that hadn’t made it onto the roof of my father’s shed. With his grinder I cut them into four pieces and with his welding torch I entombed the top, back, and sides of the box. I put a padlock on it, and at three in the morning, when every last person in the town was sleeping and the lights in the houses were off, I welded it to the bottom of the handrail that ran up the steps to the door of the town hall.

I placed the key to the padlock in an envelope and laid it on the front-door step of Patrick Ackerman, our lackluster town councilman. On the outside of the envelope I wrote his name and inside the following words:

I am entrusting you with the key to unlocking the potential of our town. You are the key master. Do not abuse your privilege. Do not be slow or lazy or neglectful. Your town is counting on you.

I thought it was an elegant little note. As dawn rose over the hills and the prison was backlit by a sinister orange glow, I sat on the steps and composed the inaugural suggestions. They needed to be beauties; they needed to inspire, to excite, and they needed to be within reason. So I refrained from putting in some of my more outlandish and unworkable suggestions, such as that we should move the whole town out of this dismal valley and closer to some water- a good idea, but beyond the jurisdiction of our three-man council, one of whom no one had seen since the last big rain. No, the first suggestions needed to set the tone and encourage the populace to follow suit. They were:

1. Turn to our advantage that desultory tag “ Least Desirable Place to Live in New South Wales.” We should boast about it. Put up signs. Maybe even exaggerate it in order to turn it into a unique tourist attraction.

2. For Jack Hill, the town barber. While it is admirable that you continue to cut our hair despite the crippling arthritis afflicting you, the result is that this town has more bad, uneven, and downright mysterious haircuts than any town in the world. You are turning us into freaks. Please- retire your vibrating scissors and hire an apprentice.

3. For Tom Russell, proprietor of our general store, Russell and Sons. First off, Tom, you don’t have a son. And not only that, you don’t have a wife, and now that you’re getting on in years, it looks like you will never have a son. True, you have a father and it’s possible you yourself are the son your shop refers to, but as I understand it, your father died long ago, decades before you moved to this town, so the title is a misnomer. Secondly, Tom, who is doing your inventory? I was in your shop just yesterday and there exist items that no human being could possibly have any use for. Empty barrels, oversized pewter mugs, thong-shaped fly swatters, and by God your souvenirs are curious: one normally buys a model of the Eiffel Tower in France, at the Eiffel Tower, not in small Australian towns. I know it is a general store, but you have gone beyond that. Your store is more vague than general.

4. For Kate Milton, manager of the Paramount, our beloved local cinema. Once a film has been running for eight months, Kate, you can pretty much take it for granted that we’ve all seen it. Order some new films, for Chrissakes. Once a month would be nice.

I reread my suggestions and decided I needed one more. A big one. It’s impossible to articulate what I thought was wrong with the people of my town on a level deeper than bad haircuts and vague supermarkets- deeper problems, existence problems. I couldn’t think of a suggestion that addressed these directly. It was simply impossible to point to the bedrock of existence, show the crack, and hope that we could all ponder its significance without everyone acting all sensitive about it. Instead I thought of an idea to address it indirectly. I guessed that their problems had something to do with priorities that needed shifting, and if so, the underlying cause of that must be linked with vision, with what parts of the world they were taking in and what they were leaving out.