Top Blogs : Me & Orla {Geeky}

The list of top blogs in my notebook is growing exponentially and I am starting to believe that a lifetime won’t be enough to feature them all. This is just fine, I'll have to come back in my next life and enjoy the remaining bits. 

Let's talk of the present with the next blog up on the Top Blogs series. I want to introduce you to a delicate, accurate space superbly curated by witty Sara Tasker: Me & Orla. Yes, you have read her name around here before. Yes, I admire her photographs, her written words and the universe she has created around her blog and family life. Yes, I am an admirer. 

When I think about comfort, I think about Me & Orla. Let’s take the thought further: the comfort the blog provides is a thought-provoking one - laziness and passivity are not on the agenda. From Instagram professional tips thourgh her mentoring program to thoughtful conversations with her daughter Orla and rich and fragrant recipes, her soulful words wrap me up in a cosy blanket and spur us to look at every detail, every little ray of sunlight and flower blown away under the English skies. 

The blog look and feel reflects the mindfulness she writes about: the page is sober, the colors are subdued and lively reminders of the surrounding nature and the necessity to focus on the essential elements in life.

There’s a lot to learn through Sara’s words, and learning is essential to living a fulfilling life and passing gems of knowledge and experience on to the next generations. Me and Orla also fosters that feeling of community that I cherish so much - I even decided to make it my word of the year 2016; reading her prose has helped me discover other blogs, Instagram accounts of rare beauty and books (yes, books!) among others. Every time I head for her blog, a new world opens its doors to me and a lovely woman hushes me in… Every blog post is a short story - and I secretly hope Sara will publish a collection of them one day. The blog is a balanced novel infused with practical topics (slow life, minimalism, comfort food…) and dreamy thoughts.

Happy reading in Sara Tasker’s company, dear friends. Oh, and before I leave you, be sure to grab a pencil and a notebook to write down all the lovely bits and pieces that will grab your imagination and heart.

This is a (very short) list of some of my favorite posts on her blog - and my reactions to them:

Protecting Christmas Morning

This is something I have been trying to implement quite fiercely ever since the birth of my two daughters. I can only relate to Sara’s words and feelings towards the safe haven of a quiet and exciting Christmas morning that needs to be preserved.

Recipe: Rainforest Alliance Chocolate Cake

Chocolate and nature together? Pure bliss if you ask me. The way Sara has used leaves as stencils is a delight, just as the conscious food choices she makes. Have you ever heard of Rainforest Alliance? 

Bump in The Night

Do the walls of your apartment or house speak at night? Do you believe in houses having a life of their own. I do. 

A Book For Me, A Book for Orla

I have mentioned this blog post before. It encouraged me to read H is for Hawk - a life-changing read for me at this specific moment in my life, when I am recovering from my father’s loss. Somewhat this book helped be able to voice my discomfort and write down the words.

The Genius of Chambord {Look Around}

Among magic post-Christmas scenes delightfully set up in the castle of Chambord, in France, we walk and run and sing trying to guess what the next staged fairy tale will be. 

The venue is bathed in wintry sunlight: through the high windows dancing rays of light bring the characters to life. The scene is reminiscent of other castles we have visited. Life is back in the old stones. And Chambord is no exception. As far away as possible from static museums and oldish exhibitions, the Renaissance castle has decided to bring together its history and all artistic fields of expression to invite visitors into its “world of genius”; during our visit, some of the most famous fairy tales were recreated with exquisite details: lace garments and piled up plates, flickering lights and bowing characters. La Fontaine surely appreciates and probably also King Francis I who dreamed about the castle and launched its construction in 1519, taking care that his symbol, the salamander, appeared wherever possible.

Chambord has taken the dream one step further by staging at the same time the misty world of photographer Bae Bien U in “D’une forêt l’autre”. Suddenly, we leave the fairy tales of old to step right into the fairy tales of modern times, including the France-Korea year: through the dark woods, behind every tree we imagine the owl, the wolf, the eagle. Not a men’s gathering. No Dead Poets’ Society whispering. Just nature. The mysterious images are repetitive, yet different: the angles shift, the perspectives too and even though there are numerous pictures they all look like one single living forest made of multiple textures: wood, fog, wind, water... The outside world has found its way inside the castle walls: the haunting black and white photographs strongly echo the surrounding natural environment, a national forestal domain that ranks as the largest enclosed park in Europe. 

I stop, listen and look. In silence. Until the bursting laughter of my kids running wild from one spacious room to the other reverberates from the walls, is amplified and finally brings the light back in and drags me away, into the sun again.

Twitter: @domainechambord

Instagram: @chateaudechambord (great feed!)

Credits: TheDaydreamer

H is for Hawk {Page-Turner}

“H is For Hawk”. The book title is reminiscent of children’s books. My mind even thinks it would be great for one of the Montessori books, go figure. There is something of a child’s frailty in Helen McDonald’s memoir as she recalls her fall and laborious rise after her father’s death - the urgency of finding someone to hold on to, to rely on and give you the stability you are achingly missing.

Books in my life seem to have a destiny of their own and it is no surprise in the end that, after having read about “H is For Hawk” on Sara Tasker’s "simple lifestyle blog", it finally made it on my Kindle. It took me some time to download it, but somewhat it had never left my mind. The book has found its way to me in a timely manner, almost a year after my dad’s death.

Helen McDonald painfully misses her dad too: he had been an active photojournalist and actor in her life and passion for birds of prey. From the day of his sudden disappearance, she drowns in a world of confusion, insecurity, troubled sleep and foggy days: “I was in ruins. Some deep part of me was trying to rebuild itself, and its model was right there on my fist. The hawk was everything I wanted to be: solitary, self-possessed, free from grief and numb to the hurts of human life.”

 Her love of birds of prey and her need for a savior leads her to Mabel, a goshawk (not a falcon!) she decides to buy and train. Mabel appears as “A griffon from the pages of an illuminated bestiary. Something bright and distant, like gold falling through water." The goshawk needs a strong soul and hand to trust while the author needs to soar from the trenches of depression, back to life and humans. She starts by stretching her hand toward the murderous bird of prey.

Long hours of dedication, work and commitment start once Mabel arrives in Helen’s apartment and fills it with expectations and its fierce presence. The two need to get to know each other and feed each other to survive. The process brings us all back to the centuries of falconry and its very specific world and terminology that permeate the book: fearing, muting, jesses, sails… A world of its own, far from the present and its grieving veil.

We are constantly pulled back and forth between past and present in search of balance (the right flying weight) and a reason to believe that flying, lifting oneself is possible despite misery and difficulty. Mabel becomes Helen’s partner as they build their future together. With them, we learn about Terence Hanbury White’s life (1906-1964): the author, among others, of The Goshawk, relied on Medieval techniques to train his own goshawk - and failed miserably. 

With Mabel by her side, Helen won’t travel alone along the path of recovery, back to the light of the surface and self-reliance, up to the point where she writes: “Hands are for other human hands to hold. They should not be reserved exclusively as perches for hawks.”

This rings a bell, right? Call it destiny or coincidence, it seems that “H is for Hawk” is the perfect complement to one of my favorite movies of the year: “Into the Wild”. Nature in all its roughness, cruelty and clarity confronts us with our true selves. Is nature a life-savior?

Credits: drawing by TheDaydreamer