Ambivalent Blogger

I've been trying to figure out what my discontent is with blogging. Mostly, I think the community it creates is wonderfully organic and unpredictable. I love the commenters, the sharing of information. But there's something about blogging that bugs me and I am trying to get to what that is.

I left a comment over at Pure Florida today and mentioned my ambivalence about this. More than half the time I want to quit blogging. I don't really like the pressure of coming up with something to say everyday. I just don't have that much to say. Observations about the daily, seasonal, yearly changes here on our little farm are all that I lay claim to. A photographic record of the birds that come to our feeder or have stopped and migrated. The change in light. The fruits of the garden. Sometimes I think yeah, yeah, yeah all of that-- so what?

Political bloggers have so much adrenaline. They are like doctors and nurses in emergency rooms huddled around a dying patient, only this patient is one they want to see die. To suffer and then die would really provide so much incendiary creativity. There is an ongoing drumbeat about the patient's vital signs-- the rovian brain, the cheney heartbeat, the rumsfeld blood pressure. Dips in the vitals, and there is excitement that echoes from one end of the bloggy spectrum to the other. While I am delighted by the decline in the arc of evangelical Republicanism, this moment by moment, blow by blow assessment of the minutiae is overwhelming to me.

I watch the arc of sun as it crosses the sky and notice how how far south it is already. I see how the trees on our southern border have grown so much taller this year; by winter solstice the sun will barely rise above their tallest limbs. My rhythms prefer geologic time. I've always been drawn to fossils. The slow yielding of flesh and bone to stone. The present day will be so much more interesting to read about in a hundred years, when all of the dramas have completely unfolded. Here's what I know--George W. Bush and I will both be dust, I am certain of that.

Yesterday a neighbor's son came by and asked if he could do some yard work because he's saving for a play station. We said sure. Come by tomorrow and we'll figure out what you can do. He's out there now weeding with his constant companion, Buddy. He asked me if I go to church. I said no, but I photograph birds.

Buddy and the weeding kid.

Is that enough to blog about? The irrelevance of the slow earth.