Who is the Bookish Princess?
I’m Nobody! Who are you?
Are you – Nobody – too?
Then there’s a pair of us!
Don't tell! they'd advertise – you know!
How dreary – to be – Somebody!
How public – like a Frog –
To tell one’s name – the livelong June –
To an admiring Bog!
When confronted with the intimidating blank expanse of an “About” page such as this one, I observe how others have filled their pages with undoubtedly important and laudable status markers and accomplishments — but then as soon as I begin to compile such a list for myself, I’m seized by the same contrary impulse that I think Dickinson must have felt when she penned the above words, and I think to myself, “I’ll just use Emily’s answer.”
After all, there are not a few pieces just a few clicks away which you can read and watch to gather impressions to form your own judgement of who exactly this bookish princess “nobody” is.
However, working with the assumption that many of you clever and kind people have already been good enough to take the time to peruse some of my pieces, I will list a few facts.
I am a great reader, though I take pleasure in many things.
I am a third-generation writer.
I am the daughter of an Elizabeth and a Darcy.
I am the sister of Athos, Aramis, Porthos, and D’Artagnan.
I am a proud “Big Cat” and caretaker of the apex predator Cymbeline.
I am a chaser of sunrises and sunsets and shifting seasons and liminal spaces.
I am a small sub-creator working upon a clumsy loom, weaving tissues gilded by the far-off day hoped and believed in under Shadow’s sway, as Tolkien would say.
I seek a space to share some peaceful and beautiful remembrances, to build a few glimmering arches to span the summits of the mind, as Kahlil Gibran would say.
I try to think of that fine, clean, unspoiled spot down deep in every one of us, children and grown ups, that maybe the world has made us forget and that maybe my sub-creation can help recall, as Walt Disney would say.
I can do with seeing nothing and see nothing that does not answer, as Jane Austen would say.
I like to look for the depths hidden in the frivolous and the absurdities inherent in the serious. I like to weave something new, whether it’s a paragraph or a painting or a photo or a video, out of the blessings I find in my life, mostly because God just put the need to do so inside of me, but also because I feel grateful to all the sub-creators, great and small, well-known and obscure, who have inspired and encouraged and uplifted me by doing the same with their lives.
I have been at this endeavor through different mediums for some time now, and you can scroll through much of my varied output on YouTube. Many times I have thought that I ought to divide out that varied output so that new and old subscribers wouldn’t be confused by ceaseless changes in subject — but this change the contrary Emily within has always forbidden. Perhaps I’ll do a better job at keeping my Substack posts more in one vein. Then again, perhaps not. My inner Sancho Panza has never been able to dictate quests to my inner Don Quixote. I can’t promise anything more than tilting at windmills, but you are very welcome if you would like to come along.
One last, but in fact first, fact about me and my fundamental identity: I am a Child of God, redeemed by the sacrifice of Jesus Christ on the cross, and a member of His Catholic Church.
And now, like Emily, I’d like to know - who are you?
