Bloggopraxis ...or Focus Pocus

There are so many things I want to do here, and I end up not being able to do them.

I would like to write really focused social commentary, but I never seem able to. I find myself sputtering in the midst of my passions.

I would like to write densely analytical theological discourse, but I stall. I admire the bloggers who can do this -- and I am not one of them.

I would like to take on one issue and write it into the ground as an authority, but I get distracted. Life seems to be going in so many directions; stories seem calling to me from each one.

I'd like this blog to have a theme. "Oh yes, Mata H's blog on String Theory....or 5 minute casseroles....or 1,0001 things to do with yarn and popsicle sticks....or...or...

I'd love to write wry social commentary so I could really be an effete liberal. I'd love to link people to some Hot Shot E-zine that has quoted me.

But try as I might, I just end up with a kind of mish mash of spiritual wanderlust. It is at moments like this I know that it is true that 5 generations back, I am part gypsy. I feel the love for a good wander in almost every aspect of my life.

If I am behind the wheel of my car, I just want to keep on driving. Anywhere. Last year I arranged to do just that and stayed on the road for 3 months in what was only a vaguely planned out journey. In fact to call it "planned out" is almost silly. I knew I was going to SC, NM, AZ and MT. That was the plan. Did I yearn for home after 3 months? Nope. My checkbook yearned for income, but that is about the sum of my need to return.

I found out that travel like that -- pointing the car and just going, is part of an unspoken American Dream. Almost everyone who hears about my long drives ( and there have been two of such duration in the past 3 or 4 years) anyway, almost everyone who hears about them expresses some desire to do the same. It really is an American urge, I think -- in the 1950's the car ads told us to "See the USA -- In your Chevrolet!"

In the 1950's and 60's we as a nation packed picnic baskets and overnight bags and coolers into the family car with the family dog and drove off to discover America -- staying at Mom and Pop motels along the way - dining at family run restaurants, taking pictures of everything from the Grand Canyon to the World's Largest Frying Pan.

Oh dear oh dear here I am wandering again. I started out trying to mutter out a half-hearted apology for all this blog is not -- and I end up even wandering away from that.

I suppose writing takes us to what we love in a particular moment. And what I love most dearly (in addition to the dear people in my life) is the ordinariness of living. Things like long drives, or the sweet symmetry of slicing onions or the smell of wind in a freshly dried-outside bedsheet. I love the sound of a familiar poem, the strains of music half heard in the night from a memory of days gone by. I love the sweetness of remembered love. The sound of gently flowing water over stones. The taste of a strawberry. Laughter. Those moments when God asserts His delicate magnificence, whether he chooses to do that bluntly or with subtlety.

There is just so much to love in this world, that when I try to write about one thing, I lose my focus and have no choice but to surrender it over to a state of wonder.