Familiarity

Familiarity breeds comfort. I'm not sure that's how the saying goes though. Here is FFP looking at a work of art at MOMA. This piece had been drawn from their vast collection for a show. When we saw it, we were drawn to it and I wanted to take FFP's picture with it. Mostly because we had seen it before. It had also been on view in the summer of 2005. It really made us laugh then because of the globe motif on the mannequin's shirt. Because I was wearing my decades-old map shirt which I love but which is wearing thin.

But really. Don't you enjoy your routines and the places and people you are familiar with?

Not that I don't like to shake things up. Go some place new. Turn a corner and see an artwork never seen before and astounding.

But the familiar draws us.

This morning when I struggled to get up at 7:30 it was to execute a routine that, if possible, I like to do every day. I get coffee, I call my dad. I post a picture (and, usually, too many words) on Austin Daily Photo. Then I might write an entry here or bring up a computer file and write my personal journal.

I was thinking, "If I spent that time that I usually steal out of the day for coffee and self-indulgent stream-of-consciousness drivel in my blog or journal, then I could complete short stories, novels, plays, screenplays and, even, coherent memoirs." We went to a Austin Film Festival script reading last night and seeing that some people (actually twin brothers and their friend a short story writer) have completed a script and, no less, mounted a very polished reading with Jesse Plemons in the lead and the likes of Brad Leland, Ray Benson and John Merriman. (The title is "Out of the Woods" and the writers are Alex and Andrew Smith and Chris Offutt.)

But I know the shape and requirements of my blogging and my journaling. Which is to say: it doesn't have to go anywhere, it can be any size, it doesn't have to "get published" or "get noticed" or "get produced." What gets pushed to the public is under my constant editing control. I don't need an agent. I don't copyright.

It's familiar. It's comfortable. Of course, a little change now and then is nice.