While sitting at my desk today, I glanced over at the tiny pile of books in the left corner. Among these are the only three out of my once mighty personal library that made it with me through all the hasty moving I have had to do in the last few years.
One of them, the most special, is a book of Guy de Maupassant stories. It is a holy artifact. I’ve read it two and a half times. You can see the pages are yellowed with age and use and love. The first short story to ever make me cry, (my favorite short story), is the first one in the book,”Boule de Suif”. When I was writing fiction regularly, I wrote my best stories while reading it. At Vanderbilt in springtime, I used to sit in the late afternoon on a bench in a circle of shade trees at the center of which was a blooming dogwood. The stories made me sigh and think and dream of better for my own work all while the dogwood blossoms fluttered to the ground like snowflakes.
Full of both long notes and clipped marginalia, the book now reads to me something like a diary. My handwriting was better then. I am grateful for that.
Pictured here is a note on, “The Conservatory”. How amazed I was, and still am, at his gifts of humor, twist, and sly revealing.
-M.
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Published by M. Ashley
I am an essayist and poet. My work has been rejected by some of the finest journals in America. Fortunately, it also gets accepted from time to time and has appeared in equally fine journals such as Word Riot, Inlandia, Brew City Magazine, and SageWoman, among others.. In 2002, I won the Academy of American Poets Prize for Vanderbilt University.
For no good reason, I possess an unnecessarily dark humor which is why being third generation California Inland Empirian delights me so. My gods are weird. I once won $350 for writing a smartassed essay on “why the wise use of water is important in my daily life”. I am undoubtedly the Greek god Hermes’ special snowflake. I’m pretty sure I got into college via a series of fortuitous clerical errors.
When I had to grow up and get a real job, I decided against it and stayed a writer. I have worked many odd—and I mean odd—jobs to support my habit: PR writer for country music hopefuls, resume massager, WalMart fitting room attendant and switchboard operator, and telephone psychic, just to name a few.
I am also albino. That's why my psychic gifts are so strong. I traded in my pigment for magical foresight, because that's how it works. It gets all technical. Trust me. That's totally how it works.
View all posts by M. Ashley
While sitting at my desk today, I glanced over at the tiny pile of books in the left corner. Among these are the only three out of my once mighty personal library that made it with me through all the hasty moving I have had to do in the last few years.
Full of both long notes and clipped marginalia, the book now reads to me something like a diary. My handwriting was better then. I am grateful for that.
M. N. Ashley 