Finegan Family Roadtrip from L.A. to N.Y

So, into the year 2012 and so far it's gone really badly.
What path are we on I wonder? Do we ever get to move off and change onto another less difficult one?
Interesting perspectives on the net about having to reach melting point before we truly become something new.
I think that's very much like my life at the moment.
Reaching downwards into the lift being lowered into the hot water until I turn into another form.
May not be such a bad thing. This new changing road.
Perhaps it will be less bumpy without sickness and challenges.
Why is it that God gives us hit after hit and then expects us to carry that and forge on with ordinary things?
God is perhaps not the traveller we all imagine we would like to meet in life.
Pausing on the path, the question is where will the crossroads take us? Do all roads lead to the same journey?

So Christmas, here it is, can you see it yet? I can see a very quiet Christmas, less frantic moving from one place to the other, and hopefully a bit of peace inbetween eating and drinking.
If you are inclined then pass some time on http://writespace-bea.blogspot.com
And please - leave a comment in the tin. Have a Merry one!

Today took a turn for the better in the long winding road that is the continous Finegan Family Roadtrip. While we might not be on US soil with the tarmac under our bellies, we are in a much longed for comfort zone with a little bit of growing to do out of it again. For everything negative there is a positive. People do appear who help when they are needed.
What do you think of the following?
"But all things that are reproved are made manifest by the light; for whatsoever doth make manifest is light." Eph 5:13
Raynor Gleeson had been standing up on the brow of the only turreted hill in Walsh Island, looking out across the Pennsylvanian peaked landscape at the corncrakes taking flight with every stone he threw.
The last traces of the unexpected Indian summer heat wave were dissipating in the new days ahead. In the abundance of the summer day with its reds and greys of the noon-days' week watered sun, he felt the jolt, the sharpness, before he recognised the sound. He heard the motorbike hum, brazing up the road out of the county. It became an echo in his thoughts as he listened more intentely as it forced its way lounder along, until his own eyes focused into the limpid blue sky and it was then he heard the rumbling, followed by the enormous crash like an exploding piece of fat bursting under the heat of an intense oven.
He watched as the rdiges in the land rose up to meet him, the peaks of the furrowed browns and greens of slintered grasses facing him, and as he tried to move, he knew the only thing in motion was his mind." (c) Brenda Woods
(Just a sketch I made from one US place to another.)

So what if we were to live over in the US - permanently - or semi-permanent? Two years on in Ireland and things have not improved mostly with other peole's attitude to things. Reality checks are not coming in the door. We need to open our eyes and act. The deflated spirit of the recession is draining all movement out of us. Attie is home from LA for a few days and has moved out of her convent in St. Cyprian's and into a new duplex further down the road. Time feels like it is changing for us. It always is, but there is an unease you bring home from a travel across a continent. It's a kind of itch you cannot scratch, like a feeling you cannot express. Possibly a nomad feeling of being here, but not there, and trying to fit in somewhere inbetween. Fitting in is difficult unless you respect your environment and culture, and that is not in evidence any more. So two years on...further down the personal road and further back in my longing for a new Ireland, which will never come. Yesterday my daughter told me she was going to live in the U.S. and it didn't take a flinch out of her. I didn't think it would be any less. I wonder what we are educating them for? For what and where? Do we want them to live here? Our president could be a TV presenter? Our former Taoisigh could be racing pundits? Our thirst for the truth could be eaten up in ganglands? Our children cannot walk alone on the streets? Our savings are fermenting in pots of quicksand? This roadtrip business does make you think.

Hi again -
It's been a while since I last posted onto our travel blog. It's only hit me recently that the LA to NY family trip was the beginning of something much more deeper and wider than I could ever have envisaged. The memories of the US are tiny patches of warmth that I tend to when I need that longed for solitude and comfort. They have become escape portholes into a past that I ressurect into my present and future. Writing has become a way of life for me, and I am inspired by the past in the various American states, where time was not an option and the road was the measurement of our lives. The feeling of being constrained into a small country, with oppressive mouthing offs and firey rages heating up like volcanos, are now almost past. Seeing beyond the horizon has become a way of life not just for me, but for many of my friends. I have watched the blinkers drop and the imagination soaring to work out just what they want to do and where they intend to go. The time for tolerance is gone, and once again our own personal roads are being mapped out. The unity in the family has solidified even further, to the point that I feel at times part of a swell of gained experiences and caught shared moments in time. While most still live in the magnetic earth of day to dayness, others are pushing on for creative stars and hoping to touch them. Looking up is all well and good, but reaching out and catching them is much more important.