This blog is under construction.
Believe me, I wish I could tell you it has a theme or an overarching message or really anything at all that could be called unifying. It doesn’t.
This lack of cohesion—the orange cones as far as the eye can see—is one of two reasons it took me so long to start, in spite of years of desire and material. I had this idea that I needed EITHER 1 niche OR 17 blogs, and neither seemed remotely feasible or the slightest bit desirable. (The other reason is I needed to do it RIGHT, but this idea deserves a post of its own. Stay tuned.)
Then I came across this Martin Freeman quote on imgur—his response to a question about playing both Bilbo Baggins in The Hobbit movies and John Watson in the Sherlock series:
Interviewer: You also play Watson, are there any connections between the characters?
Freeman: Yes, actually, they’re played by the same actor.
“Ah ha!” said my brain. Unfortunately, I wasn’t paying attention. Fortunately, my brain is a nice person and remembers the things I need when I struggle to communicate what I mean, even to myself.
Because it wouldn’t be a stretch to connect Bilbo to Watson. I’ve studied literature all my academic career and I could do so without breaking a sweat. Freeman could too, who undoubtedly knows both characters better than anyone. But I believe his point is, and should be—who cares? It’s entertainment.
So turning the question on myself and this blog produced two answers:
Undoubtedly there are connections between my socio-political beliefs, my knowledge hair and makeup, what about and why I love books so much, and the fact that I have never met an animal I wouldn’t adopt. But it doesn’t all have to mean so much. It can just be. I can just be.
And this blog is under construction because I am under construction. Thank God for it. (for more about this read About Me)
Which brings me, finally, to the title.
litewings.ink
litewings is, first, but not foremost, a play on my name. This may be obvious to most, but I felt the need to point it out, since I pondered the name of one of my parents’ businesses for years before they showed me the play on their names. I felt dumb. I don’t want that for you.
The idea, as so many of my good ones do, came from a book: Jonathan Safran Foer’s Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close. Our hero (he deserves more than ‘protagonist’) Oskar is a young boy with what I will call “social adjustment difficulties” (the movie cries autism and moves on) because we are never given a “diagnosis,” and I find Oskar’s characterization richer for that. Oskar describes his emotional well being by the relative weight of his “boots.”
I remember clearly the sensation I had reading for the first time that something had given Oskar “heavy boots” and knowing exactly what that felt like—having those words, and all the later ones—the boots that got lighter and lighter or heavier and heavier, little by little or all at once—touch me in the ways only art can touch the human soul.
And I remember when I realized my boots weren’t on my feet, but on my back
And I remember when I realized my boots weren’t on my feet, but on my back—they’re not boots, they’re wings. The days when they are heavy, I am bent double, and I can only see the ground between my feet, but when they are light…
Someday I know, I believe, they will lift me up.
That’s what I want to share—with anyone and everyone who’ll go there with me.
litewings.ink 