I want to believe I need to return to some of the things I used to do, but I’m running into some deep-seated ambivalence that is nearly impossible to define. Being home is different, meals are different, shopping is different, traveling is different, most everything seems different. I went to the dentist this morning; that was different. Being here at my favorite coffee shop, other than the masks, is possibly not different enough. I’m feeling as though I’m trying to shove something I used to know into the present by being in the familiar.

As I searched for an environment conducive to writing creatively, it dawned on me somewhere along the way that, no matter where I ended up, I was still with myself and that just because my location changed, the inside of my mind hadn’t. Of course, I can trick myself when out in the world, as writing about a place creates in me an illusion of something else influencing me, but it’s still my filter from whatever inner dialog I’m working with. Maybe the inspiration when visiting a cathedral, a canyon, a forest, an ocean, or a monument is that I have a moment of focus without the trappings of the familiar, but how this works in allowing me to convey anything of interest must fall back on what I bring to the exercise.

So, when I’m struggling to find words and ideas that paint a picture of where I think I’d like to be, I try to figure out what might be the impediment. Here at the coffee shop I’ve visited countless other times, it could be that I cannot return to the familiar. It might be that I’m struggling with only 3 of us ten people wearing masks in this small environment. Or could it be writer’s block? I’m gonna say that I seriously doubt it is the latter because when I give myself the challenge to capture something of my thoughts, I’m usually pretty good at noting something just as I’m doing this very moment. But this is not what I want to write about, or so I think.

Well then, what do I want when I go out to write? I want the same thing all writers who sit down to write are looking to do: I want to discover. Maybe what I’m trying to explore cannot be found in the past, and this particular place represents a time in my life when things were seen differently. Like so many other aspects of life that required adjustments as I’ve grown older, is my ability to discover being stymied by the overly familiar?

The dawn is familiar; my wife is too. I know our apartment quite well and many items in our diet, and yet these things do not represent the same kind of conflict. Let’s look at that as the dawn is always different; it’s forever shifting with the play of clouds and hues delighting my senses every time I witness it. My wife is like the dawn over the ocean, never quite the same with her fluctuating interests; subtle changes are found in her smile, and she possesses a horizon I find to be infinite, at least in its potential. Our apartment is some ways, like the Grand Canyon; depending on where you look, you might find something you’ve never seen before. Not to imply disorder and chaos, though there is an element of that, between our evolving hobbies the view has the potential to show us new things, just as searching for new foods brings us into different ethnic culinary adventures.

Is the larger problem then that I have a low tolerance for the familiar? Has it always been this way? The quick answer is certainly a resounding yes. The common and familiar is the fodder for the masses gorged on the cultural gruel of conformity, and I’ve known this for a very long time. But today is different, as though the plague has cut the final thread between me and the blind, obedient herd that best represents the status quo.

In this sense, I feel that I’ve been shoved deeper into a nomadic intellectual existence. Where our ancestors were on the constant search for that which sustained life, I require the sustenance of that which sustains the imagination. In an age where the hunt for food and shelter has been mitigated for those with access to adequate capital, and my preoccupation with media and entertainment is either gone or in hibernation, I’m now on the lookout for horizons that illuminate where humanity is headed.

Star Trek’s intro spoke of space as the final frontier; I would reboot that into “awareness is the real final frontier.” Knowledge of hyperbolic absurdity found in entertainers and politicians hardly suffices to satisfy the deeper quest of humans to find meaning, even if the unsophisticated might believe differently. This pattern recognition machine of senses evolved in the form of memories and imagination, offering people the opportunity to discover things such as art, music, technology, and the mind to examine the hows and whys of what it all means. Yet we squander our most valuable resource, time, on the petty and believe in convenient expediencies in order to not challenge our nature to change.

Just how much of the familiar is really your friend?