Waiting for the boy, a pleasantly rainy day turned into an annoying hot and sunny oven, Cafe Beano, Calgary's own haven for hipsters, surrounded on all sides by men and women writing in their journals.
These journals, some are big affairs, some are smaller, more pocket notebook, always they are spread out upon the table, the handwriting of each author and authoress an indication (I presume) of the quality of prose within, the lady beside me at the moment, schoolgirl writing, large journal, dollar store, half filled already, odd, I notice, she manages to justify in her cursive script both the left and the right margins....
...and the gentleman to the right of me, his a smaller affair, but almost done, dense, cribbed staccato writing in a small notebook, everyone, at this moment, has a notebook in front of them that their vigorously writing in, and a paperback or hardcover novel displayed on the table as an invitation to conversation or debate, me, I'm reading my novel, my journal is closed, the most I ever make are laundry or shopping lists...
But I have an idea. Actually, a couple of ideas, one broached by my left neighbors abandonment of her journal (and curiosity overwhelms me, she's so diligent, meticulous, thorough, how long will she be in the bathroom? I'm nothing if not curious....)
So I conceive the grand thought of photographing her journal, easy enough to replace (dollarama, $3 art sketch book), making a font out of her handwriting, and using a computer and one of those handwriting machines to reproduce it in it's every detail, except in lieu of her own entries (whatever they are, voluminous as they are...) with first person short stories from the Olympia reader....
Gaslighting extraordinaire, so that when they review their notes they discover another person, a new person, completely different than the characters or plots they were working upon, but in their own hand, in their own journal...and I'm charmed at the possibilities...
The boy, he simply tells me he's glad I didn't pursue my studies in Psychology, my defenses as to: "It's research, experimental..." fall largely on deaf ears...
And so I have another idea, a little more feasible, practicable. The Beano Anthology. Somebody, presumably a great deal more charming and persuasive than myself, persuades each of the writers in Beano, (hundreds, if not thousands), to offer a sample of their script and writing to be compiled into a volume that will be known as The Beano Anthology. Copies will be for sale at the counter with your Chai latte or Vietnamese iced coffee. Those writers that actually make a living at it will be charmed into including a short work to help their struggling brethren, vanity being a huge motivating force, I've noticed, and those unpublished will be grateful enough to bare their innermost souls and hopes for the possibility of understanding and recognition. Hmmm...
The script, or handwriting samples, they're provided to merely correlate the quality of handwriting with the quality of prose, my own theories debunked or validated...