As the pen — a poker stirring coals — drags its sooty trail across the page, sparks are sent up; you want to grab them, tuck them away in an asbestos box until you can spare a breath to fan them to a fuller flame. And so a specific day sparked at me from long ago…

I was probably as restless as most other boys my age: a body often busy with unlikely projects and crackpot schemes. I knew nothing of Einstein then, nothing of the sudden energies that mass contained. But I’d noticed that time seemed to pass more slowly when I was still.

In one of my rare stationary moments, pondering imponderables on our top porch step one afternoon, it came suddenly to me: I, unaided, could   s l o w,   t i m e,   d  o  w  n . . .  by simply sitting on the back porch top step and doing nothing much at all: solitary; idle; bored.

I knew, then, with a sudden, illuminating blaze (and truly believed it for a spendid moment) that if I simply sat there: if I completely dedicated myself to this one small act of pure inaction, then my day would be (intolerably) interminable.

But the insight that accompanied this flash — oh, the galvanic brilliance of it! why had no-one thought of this before! — was that this could be my gift to others…

Such largess! My heart swelled with a mournful, yet pleasant resignation. I would be a willing martyr to this selfless scheme: my one day of droning boredom would mean a longer day shared with the world! My friends could play (while missing me, of course) without fear of interruption, could build tree forts of incalculable size. They could ride their bikes twice around the planet if they liked, and not be called for dinner by their parents, who would themselves putter happily in gardens all that endless afternoon.

And who knows: I might be sitting on that top step, still — a 10-year-old Rip Van Winkle in my knee-length beard — if the world had but been ready to listen to my scheme…