Today, I don’t want to exist. Tomorrow is fine, but not today. Today, I don’t deserve anything. I hate the happiness, I hate the gift ideas. I hate the attempts to cheer me up from friends and family. I hate cards, I hate phone calls, I hate the internet. I hate robbing my stepfather from his day, I’m so damn sorry. I hate Sundays, I hate barbecues, I hate gatherings and music. I hate being called something I’m not, stop telling me different. Stop!!! It only encourages me and I lie to myself again. I’m not a Dad a son or daughter wishes were still with us. I’m not a Dad a son or daughter celebrates beating Cancer. I’m not a Dad a son or daughter begs freed from behind bars. I’m not even a Dad a son or daughter forgives for his mistakes. I’m not a Dad…and I have all the scars to prove it.
If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. – Rainer Maria Rilke
Every picture tells a story or is a key to one. – Ash
Whenever I see a pile of wood by the side of the road or in someone’s front yard, it instantly takes me back to when I was kid. I believe I was around ten years old. Back that humbling day when I tried to prove to my Uncles that I was just as big and tough as they were. A coming of age moment of my life with a Shade of Ash humour that I will never forget. A bunch of wood grouped together sets the scene and some of you already know this, but I grew up with my grandparents, so my Uncles are like my brothers. There’s five of them. I made six, and the youngest in that dynamic and because of that, I was considered “Mommy’s Boy”. *I called my grandmother, Mom, by the way.
OK, Cue the wavey time-travel lines, fade to the 80’s.
Firewood was a primary source of heat for us growing up, so from time to time, that meant the whole family would have to pitch in and help bring freshly cut wood from my grandfather’s boat up to the front yard to be packed and stacked. Every now and again, my grandfather accompanied by two or three of the Uncles would travel by boat to some remote area to cut down the wood. Then, once they had a load, they would return home where the wood still had to be sawed up and stored away. None of that process involved me though. I got off the hook for stuff like that. Hey! It’s not me, my grandmother just wouldn’t have it back then. She’d look at my Uncles, each of them, and tell them to go on outside and not bother me. “Leave Ashley alone, he’s alright, go on, your fathers waiting.” She’d say. This rotted my uncles of course. Now, they wouldn’t say much in retort and just went on to work. Though like prisoners knowing all the blind spots of a prison yard, they too knew when to get in a few licks and wrestling moves behind my grandparents backs to make sure I knew what’s up. Until that one day, where I had enough of it.
With every stroke, with every ounce of me, I move forward. Pulling myself through the wake of life. Today, I cross a pond. Tomorrow…I challenge the ocean. – Ash
Earth To Ash 