Blah Blah Blogging - Bricolage From the Outer Edge

     I am not, and never will be, an expert on the subject of blogging. In this blogosphere that I circumnavigate I am like Neptune: more than a non-planet such as Pluto but still orbiting along its outer edges.

     Even so, I’ve learned a few things about my blogging self since I began posting three years ago. I would not describe myself as a lifestyle blogger because I don’t regularly show you photos of the lovely cushions on my sofa or write about my children or chickens. I am not a cooking, crafting, decorating, fashion, art or travel blog even though I have posted about most of those things at one time or another. I have nothing to sell unless I work up the gumption to get one of those books I’ve written published. And this is, most likely, the closest I will ever get to social media.

     So, what am I?

     It seems to me that the mishmash I write about here at Nib’s End could be labeled bricolage. I create my posts from the scraps I have lying close to hand: a snowy day, a photograph, a book I read, a cake I make, a memory, a dream, a joy, a sunset or a loose thought that escapes. Many of you who blog, do the same. I love the whole idea of bricolage—the idea of creating something artistic out of a stash of little nothings. The artistry of the everyday fascinates me. I didn’t know there were so many interesting and creative people out there until I was introduced to them through blogging.

     So, even though I am akin to that big blue gasbag of a planet in the outer limits of our solar system, I am delighted to be even a small part of the bricolage bloggers that make up my world.

The Passenger's Photo Album - Arctic Circle

Window Seat in the Arctic Circle

     My husband's career takes him all over the world. He spends so much time traveling that I have hashtagged him #ThePassenger. He isn't on Facebook or Twitter, and he doesn't blog or keep a journal, but he enjoys documenting his travels with snapshots. I am constantly editing the photos I store on my computer, but he saves every single one of his. I seldom go with him, but I share in his experiences through his photographs. Over the years he has recorded some interesting shots.

     May I share some of them with you?

Liquid Gold

     Despite the best efforts of the United States Postal Service, the jar of honey from Cedar Pond arrived unscathed. I will not horde my honey, but I will need to keep an eye on it: my live-in daughter prefers this annual windfall above anything I can buy in the store. My brother, the Beekeeper, produces a singular product with a floral nose and a delicate finish.

     “Well," said Pooh, "what I like best," and then he had to stop and think. Because although Eating Honey was a very good thing to do, there was a moment just before you began to eat it which was better than when you were, but he didn't know what it was called.”
   

All Good Things Must Come to an End...

     We felt a twinge of sadness as we pulled down our Christmas tree and heaved it onto the rubbish heap. Up and down the street our neighbors had done the same, and the parking strip was littered with them. This year, we enjoyed it for as long as we could - just over five weeks. It kept its needles and its scent and was, indeed, "a thing of beauty...full of sweet dreams and quiet breathing." But despite Mr. Keats poetic assertions that a thing of beauty is a joy forever, even the memory of our tree will pass into nothingness and be forgotten.

     What I will remember and enjoy are the days we spent together shopping leisurely because the Christmas gifts were already wrapped, eating out, eating in, watching movies, piecing together the annual jigsaw puzzle, playing the new board games with family, candlelight...and even though these good things must also come to an end, the beauty of them will last a good long while.

Ringing in the New Year

     My children gave me a wind chime for Christmas. The ash wood clapper gives it a gentle voice, yet inside the house, when the furnace pauses to catch its breath, I can hear it even above the ticking of the clocks. The sail is shaped like an alder or birch leaf. I sat in my reading chair on the last day of the year watching leaf shadow flutter over the window blinds and listening to my chime speak softly to the wind. 

     For decades I have welcomed each new year with clanging bells, banging pots, blowing horns and shouts of jubilation, but when the hullabaloo is over, this gentle timbre of wind-tuned ringing is how I mean to go on.