Pinning and Pasting

On the top shelf of my closet sits a row of sketchbooks. Except they aren't filled with drawings or sketches, they're brimming with magazine photos. My version of scrapbooks. I've kept a journal since I was seven, and the scrapbooks followed when I grew up and couldn't bear to part with all of the beautiful images in the stack of magazines I accumulate each month.

My first incarnation of this hobby was the wall behind my bed in my 5th floor walkup apartment in Paris...covered floor to ceiling with fashion and beauty and lust. I loved that wall. I loved that room and that time too. Now, I see similar walls all the time in young girls rooms, but I don't think it was quite as typical then.

Somewhere along the way I switched to the sketchbooks. The biggest ones I could find. It is somehow completely satisfying and relaxing to sit with my sharp scissors and my glue stick and a stack of magazines. Another small way to feel creative without really having to possess any artistic talent! I can trace my life in those books. There's the one filled with engagement rings and dresses and wedding favors. Another with page after page of adorable nurseries and babies. Now there are lots of beautiful locations...homes, beaches, gardens...and clothes. Quotations, and once in awhile an essay I pull from online that I can't stand to forget.

There's one on the Tsunami in Japan, called Watching the World Become Water by Deborah Schoeberlein. And then, the new one by Lisa Belkin, The Names of Newtown. Words that make pictures. But mostly, just photos.

Amber has mentioned a few times at Cast that she doesn't get Pinterest. But I do. It's my scrapbooks, online. I choose people to follow whose eye I like, and then I get to collect all those beautiful photos. It's fun, but I still prefer my scrapbooks. I like the physicalness of them, the real magazines, the slice of the scissor, the smell of the glue sticks. The satisfaction of leafing through the pages afterwards.

And, mostly, I like them better because that shelf will be there, with all those spiral bindings filled with memories in a neat row, when we've all forgotten about Pinterest. And I'll still be happily cutting and pasting. Like kindergarden. Like life.