How can you write when you don’t push down on the pen? Trust me, it’s procrastination, not writer’s block. Go grab your tools and stop making excuses. Quit disguising your creative block with procrastination. – Ash
A white towel around my neck, my curling hair is all wet, and I’m riding my mountain bike down a quiet highway in a standing position. Ah …the way back after a summer’s day swim.
It’s well past seven, almost eight and the sun, like us, is on the way home. I’m chilly now as the sun sets. I have goosebumps and my skin is drying out from living in pond water for the last four hours. My pedal strides are lazy as I slowly catch up to join a zigzag bicycle pattern my friends have already graciously started. We laugh right away bringing up our whole day and explaining to each other like it happened years ago. Drawing out every last second of detail and sodering it unconsciously to our souls. Every one of those day-at-the-pond moments we smiled at again and again. Over and over.
The adrenaline produced from a day like that would fuel the whole trip home for us. No matter how tired we were our along-the-way stunt dares and ten-second races kept us gaining ground without even noticing how close we were getting to home. Then, most times in the middle of a good joke or a story, one by one, each of my buddies would have to start branching off. Going their “rest of the way” alone. Breaking away from the pack usually with a middle-finger gesture, a newly learned curse word, or a bodily function. Sometimes all three. Soon, I too would cross that imaginary line that separated my neighbourhood from the rest of the world. The world of a twelve-year-old Ash. I remember that day swimmingly.
This second thought was brought to you by a walk earlier today on a path less taken. There was something about the atmosphere in the moment I was in and it overwhelmed me and I was there for it. I kicked up a little dirt and it transported me. Summer is indeed in the air and given the last few weeks, I needed this memory. Thanks, universe.
Until…
Everything is poetry. – Ash
It’s a shame that the colour blue can sometimes share itself with a feeling. Because of that, when I feel blue on the inside, I do my best to seek a better shade on the outside. – Ash
this is a dream
I can’t be awake in this world
because you are not in it
I’ve searched everywhere but you’re gone
today though, the dream changes
I get to release a jar of hope
to make your voice the loudest
make your face come back to me oh so vividly
like the first day we met
that happy May
lately, this dream gets so close to a nightmare
because it has started to fade everything
and my jar of hope is almost empty
not enough to awaken me
to see you in reality smothers me
I gasp toward that life
choking to reach the other side
someone, please shake me
tell me it’s over
give me back my biggest loss
hear my may-day
Of all the possibilities in life, you were chosen to be a part of it. Think about how special that makes you. – Ash
Hey everyone,
I wanted to touch base and let you know that I have been on the shelf lately with some health issues as well as having my laptop die on me. So, I have been trying to post using other computers and it has not gone well. Anyway, I have a new laptop on its way to me and will be back to doing what I love to do and that’s provide content for you, my faithful followers. All I ask is that you be a little more patient and Earth to Ash with be up and running full force in the next week or so.
As for my health, I am working through that too and this post is not to alarm anyone but to share with you another reason for being dormant these past few weeks. No need to be concerned, I am on the mend and will soon be able to put that behind me as well.
I also want to take this opportunity to say thank you for your loyalty and support. It’s been a long time since I started this journey of blogging, and this absence has proven that writing and connecting with you is a very important part of my life. I miss my audience like an appendage, but it won’t be for much longer.
Until…
It’s 8:15 P.M. on a Monday evening nineteen ninety-something, and my last load of laundry is two-quarters away from being done. I dig through a pile of old magazines and find one with a half-finished crossword. The hum of the dryer is soothing… hypnotic to a focused folder. Pearl Jam plays on a scratchy radio above the pop machine that never works. As a spring night hue casts in against a long wooden table of folded clothes and empty baskets reaching where I sat, a bell jingles. I’m the last one there. The sometimes friendly middle-aged attendant who’s been watching the one-channel TV eyeballs my sightline up the far wall across from me. Toward an overly huge numbered clock fixed on it. Below reads the hours of business. He silently without words offers me a delicate cycle amount of time by tapping his watch before my clean getaway ends its cycle. I nod in appreciation for the fifteen minutes and go back to my crossword tapping a half-chewed pen…
Let’s see… 6 Down, a bottle with a narrow neck…?
Coping with my anxiety is like a bike ride. It’s hard to balance. There is a chance I will fall. Sometimes I do. But, I have to keep going if I am going to learn how to ride with it. – Ash
My body was controlled by my mind for a while now. Not in a good way. As my thoughts pierced me like bullets, I fell from the wounds they created. I was allowing my happiness to die by jumping in front of the fire. As I lay to sleep… my will is bulletproof. I only had to find it again. – Ash
Earth To Ash 