Everything is surreal at first. Drive a
baby under the track lighting of a freeway tunnel with the sunroof open and
watch his face transform as if seeing God. Forty years later, he’ll do a
dead-eyed daily commute along that same stretch, unmoved as a Pac-Man frog, because
each experience has a perceptual contour of spike and decay. Otherwise,
honeymoons would last forever, the first hit wouldn’t be free, and the latest
fashion would still be Cro-Magnon chic.
We thrive on the right kinds of change.
Discovering punk rock in high school was a glorious, exploding gift from an
alternate dimension after years of enduring the pedestrian sedation of Top 40. These
days my favorite reality shifts occur through travel, where a foreign landscape
becomes home over time, and home feels foreign upon returning. Then reality
reestablishes itself, and I begin planning my next departure.
Long before our body collapses, our
soul withers when starved of novelty. The agony of solitary confinement hinges
on indefinite sameness, but the unincarcerated also cage themselves by uncritically
settling into mind-numbing routines, slow boiling in the gradual cook of their rerun
days until retirement hits with scarce time and energy for a spiritual recovery.
Now is the time for new. For getting a
better job. For taking a different way home, at least. For catching a buzz or
trying sobriety. Time to paint with the other hand. To be on the bottom or in front
during the act. Time for a strange conversation with an unusual stranger. Today
is the day to act on curiosity and inject some life into our lives.
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