Writing Life
Crack open my soul and tell me
what’s in there, would you?
I am thinking of a decadent Easter
egg with filling too bright and
sweet to look at or taste. A Cadbury
egg gone berserk spilling out gooey
gold light.
Is this my soul or is it gooey
gold godly Ichor?
What’s the difference
anyhow?
-M. Ashley
“There is no calamity greater than lavish desires.”
-Lao-tzu
I get this out of a devotional book for a twelve step program. Well there you have it, I’m in a twelve step program. But the thing is that I disagree with the devotional quotes about half the time. All these old men, very rarely women, who thought they were so wise. This devotional is like an assemblage of ancient and medieval Twitter. Humans have been thinking, wrongly, they are so wise since the first human threw a bone in the air to impress the mysterious monolith. Or maybe that was a movie.
But now that I’ve complained about people who think they are so wise and we who desire so much to find people to be wise to us in our faces to give us direction when our wisdom fails us, let me tell you how much wiser than this guy I am.
Lavish desires is the IT! That’s the magic! It’s the juice, it’s the jazz, it’s the… I can’t think of another “j” word. It’s where it’s at. The gods tell me all the time to “ask ask ask.” There is no limit, not even the sky. The more we ask and surrender to the knowing our ask will be answered, the more they get to answer and the richer we all feel.
I’ve been trying to focus in my writing lately on concrete, physical details, because that’s the jazzy juice of writing. But how do I explain sensually what I mean about this lavish desire and bold asking that is the very opposite of calamity? What are some antonyms for calamity? Alexa says one of them is “blessing.” That’s exactly whatI’m talking about, I mean, right on the nose, but “blessing’ seems so benign. It’s more like BAM! BLESSING! Nothing banally benign about that.
But you don’t get the BAM BLESSING unless you ask ridiculously and desire lavishly.
Even the wording…
Every week in my white and gold planner that is the white and golden apple of my eye, in the section on the left side of the two page week spread—the section marked priorities that, frankly, I don’t actually know whatI’m supposed to write there—in that section, under priorities, the first thing I write every week is, “My gods love me lavishly at every single moment and in every tiny detail.” So you see this Lao-tzu guy stole my very word to say a very wrong thing.
The heavens drop golden plums—plums not apples now—in my lap almost constantly. More and more and more and more, better and better and better, and why? Because I lavishly desire golden plums constantly and greedily ask for them and BAM the BLESSING and, sensually, golden plum juice is sweeter than your best French kiss, and wetter. And why? Because I dared to desire lavishly.
So here’s the wisdom—my wisdom—that in this one and only case may be actually wise. Desire lavishly. Ask greedily. Receive the juicy plum. Celebrate with jazzy gratitude.
It would have been a better finish if “gratitude” had started with a “j.” Hey gods, give me a “j” word for gratitude.
“Joy.”
Yes. Joy.
-M. Ashley
Roll up your sleeves
my golden god
these clavicles ache
for the cracking.
Your bare knuckles scrape
but are not scraped.
My blood spatters.
You stay freshly washed.
Dear god,
my kidneys have grass stains
and
I need an oracle
to locate my spleen.
-M. Ashley
One fourteen-year-old lies in another’s lap
face-up
squeezing the pimples on her
I’ll-die-for-you-sweetheart’s scabby
sunburned face.
I lie with you
naked back to the earth
dug deep
moist and recently turned
picking the teeth of a death trap.
-M. Ashley
Legally drunk on The Strip I slide
anonymous past the break-dancing boys
who sell CDs and their phone numbers
on the liminal bridge between
The Lion and The City.
Blurred, a bronzy man walks in front of me
gray skinny suit filled out to six feet, six inches at least
almost big enough to be the ancient god’s skeleton
found by archaeologists in an unmarked grave
somewhere in the backwoods of Greece.
On this night,
Caesar’s is the best he can do.
Its plastic emperors, audio-animatronic mythology,
and the gray-water fountain Evel Knievel jumped
wait to praise him
just north of the newest destructions—
about ten blocks shy of the lonely Stratosphere.
-M. Ashley
I saw you bought that house I loved
on the hill, off Doheny, hard to get to
during rush hour or when the veins of LA
burst and bleed all over West Hollywood
up Sunset
and gush through the Bel Air gates.
The skin of my inner wrists
with her oxygen-blue undertones
(soft contemporary design)
is up for sale too.
Ten million or best offer
(like the house on Doheny)
plus, realistically, another million
to meet your execting standards.
How deep, my Darling,
are your lightless pockets?
-M. Ashley
Not the first time I was alone, but the time I learned to love being alone. Art school. Summer arts school between my junior and senior years of high school. I went for writing. I had two writer roommates. They put the writers together because they said we had a tendency to keep odd hours and they didn’t want us keeping the dancers or singers awake all night because they had to wake up early and actually work for their muse. Lazy cusses that we were, our first class wasn’t until nine and we only had two classes and one group activity a day. The rest of the time we were supposed to be typing away at our keyboards making Shakespeare or whatever. We were supposed to be getting inspired. We were supposed to be collaborating. We were supposed to be bouncing off the walls with creative energy.
Mostly I remember wandering through the halls exploring myself.
That sounds unnecessarily sexual. If I were to say exploring myself from the inside, that doesn’t make it any better. Feeling myself from the inside? No.
Understanding my own soul better. There we go. Expanding. Spreading my arms into the empty space.
The halls were white painted brick and white tile, fluorescent lights. Someone in my class, more brilliant than I in that moment, said the halls looked like Communism. I just about fell out of my tree laughing at that at the time. I’ve used that joke several times since. I’ve probably used it more than the person who cracked it in the first place. I wonder if they even remember. I wonder if their own humor followed them the way it did me.
The halls of the funky math and science building at Vanderbilt looked like Communism. The mental hospital I was in on a hold that one time—that looked like Communism too. Math and mental health and art school. There should be a connection there. Art led to math led to the nuthouse. Maybe the more talented writer who cracked the joke in the first place could do more with that than I can in this moment. Don’t expect much of me. I was great in art school, I did marginally at math, and I was not one of the popular kids at the nuthouse. It was hard to be alone there. I made myself lonely in math when I didn’t need to be and at art school I was alone, but damn I was never lonely. Damn I loved being with myself then.
There was a smell in those halls. It was the smell of freedom. I had been to summer camp before—lifetimes of summer camp—but here I had all this time to do with as I pleased, to be plying my art, and no one was up my butt to be cheery or play Red Rover. Our meal times were even flexible.
I was planning a good roam one afternoon and went to the cafeteria first to get a sandwich. I was in the middle of a bad attempt to wrap it in a yellow napkin that was too small for the job, when a handsome man who worked there, I’m sure one of the regular students, so maybe all of 20 years old, came over to me and offered to wrap it up for me. That was the kindest thing.
I thought I was being so sly. I wasn’t even sure we were allowed to take food out. I was being on the down low and he busted me—busted me, then helped me out and in such a sweet tone. I wonder if he was a writer too or if he had found his personal space there—had explored his own self from the inside wandering down those halls, so he understood the lure and understood the need to have portable sandwiches for the journey.
-M. Ashley
I have a book of Guy du Maupassant stories. On the cover is an impressionist painting of a woman coming out of the bath and drying her feet. I assume it’s by Degas because he’s the impressionist I did my high school French class report on and, as far as I’m concerned, all impressionist paintings that aren’t famously and obviously by some other painter, were painted by Degas.
Degas started going blind at the end of his career. Tragedy. Tragedy for him and for us. I am legally blind. The tragedy is merely personal. The world does not mourn a loss over the fact that reading, for me, is slow and difficult. I have to be choosy about what I read because it takes so much time and effort. In college, I chose to read that book of Maupassant stories. After college, I chose to read it three more times.
Those stories can be a little like Far Side cartoons. Sometimes you don’t get it on your first shot. Sometimes you need someone to explain the world and the ending to you.
My junior year of college, I had a little time between this and that, who knows—I don’t remember the obligations, I only remember the time in between. There was an in between place on the Vanderbilt campus where four paths met in a sort of pedestrian roundabout. At the center of the circle was a planter overflowing with the campus’ signature Spring yellow tulips. At the center of the planter was a blossoming dogwood, shedding its white blossoms, covering the ground in floral snow. The circle was bordered by ancient shade trees and magnolias. There were antique style street lamps dotted around. At night, they cast pale blue efficiency light. There were glossy wooden benches.
I was alone in the circle, in the in between time, in the in between place, sitting on one of the glossy benches. I was reading Guy du Maupassant. It was a bliss time. A life is only blessed with so many, and this was a precious one of mine.
I read a story about a man who observes another man’s gaudy, worldly treasures and also his beautiful daughter and wife. That’s the whole of the story—the observations of the one man and the bragging of the other on all his gaudy, worldly possessions. It’s the kind of story that, when it ends, you flip the pages expecting another ending and find only the beginning of another story. Maybe the printer made a mistake.
I stood up from my glossy bench, chewing on it. I went to my other obligation. I went back to my dorm room overstuffed with the detritus of a busy college career. I called my mom.
I told my mom about the story and asked her what she thought it meant. She said it was quite obvious, wasn’t it? The treasure was the women. In all that house full of stuff, (I looked around my own room and was embarrassed), in that house full of stuff,, (I thought about how often I had walked through that in between place circle with its gold tulips and dogwood snow and ignored it on my way from stuff-to-do to other stuff-to-do and was embarrassed), in that house full of stuff, the women were the treasure. The family bond was the most precious thing,
I thought about how often I neglected to call home in favor of some seemingly more pressing or interesting stuff. I was embarrassed. My life was stuffed with such stuff.
I told my mom I got it now. I told my mom she was an epiphany. I asked her how her day had gone.
-M. Ashley
Hairy Larry gave me the worst haircut I have ever had. I think he was drunk at the time. It was only 6:00pm and he was in the kitchen with the rest of us, all bar friends, but also all sober. He was drunk I think, but I let him cut my hair anyway. My hair was a mess and needed some kind of attention. He was drunk, I figured, but he was always drunk, so I also figured, at least drunk, his hands wouldn’t shake.
He, himself, had ALL the hair. Pompadour and chest hair that would make a pectoral toupee jealous. He had a beard, well kept, but still mountain man worthy. His eyebrows, also well kept, but awnings enough that he never had to worry about the sun in his eyes.
He was a hairdresser by trade, or so I was told. Doing me in the kitchen was a special kindness, a special concession for bar friends. Also, doing me in the kitchen meant he didn’t have to pay a kick to his salon owner. He needed that money for booze.
He asked me what I wanted. I never know the answer to that when hairdressers ask me that question. I usually go months and months between haircuts and I never have learned to speak the language. By the time I gave myself to Hairy Larry, it had been more than a year—longer than the time I had moved into that house.
I told him I didn’t know how to describe what I wanted. It went something like medium length and, you know, not poofy. The not poofy thing is the hard part as my hair is thick and naturally curly. When I was a teenager in the nineties, I would always leave the hairdresser looking like some kind of hybrid poodle/Dolly Parton creature as my hair is as naturally platinum as it is curly and the hairdressers could never resist exercising their mad engineering skills and making it reach the rafters.
I always went home after hair appointments and washed the height out. I didn’t mind if the hair on the top of my head had no volume and the curls throughout weren’t quite as curly as they could have been. I wanted to look something like me and not something like poodle/Parton/other.
So, for Hairy Larry, the not poofy part was the challenge. I was in my late twenties by this point and although I knew very little about what I wanted for my hair, for my life, for this very moment, I knew at least one thing I didn’t want. I knew at least several things I didn’t want. At that time, I think I defined what I did want almost exclusively by what I didn’t want. I didn’t want poofy hair. Anything but poofy hair. No matter how you get there, Hairy Larry, anything but poofy hair.
Anything but the life I had been leaving before I moved into this house with three housemates, four cats, and three dogs between us. Anything but that. Kitchen haircuts and all. Anything but going back. Anything but the poodle of my teens. Anything but the you-are-not-who-you-are poof of someone else’s engineering.
-M. Ashley
In my dream, Satan was a thin, black-haired man wearing a pinstripe suit with a white shirt and ecclesiastical purple tie. His eyes were so dark brown they were almost, but not quite, black. He sat cross-legged on the floor between his rumpled camel-colored couch and Ikea glass-topped coffee table. There were stacks of files and towering reams of paperwork everywhere.
He was insistent he was not Lucifer, nor Beelzebub, nor the Devil, nor anything like that. His singular identity as Satan, he said, was very important to him.
He was flustered in that space with the great peaks of paperwork surrounding him—all the boxes that needed to be checked, all the signatures that needed to be signed just-so by the little yellow tabs poking out diabolically here and there and everywhere.
So when I hear of someone, some ghost hunter or erstwhile exorcist, being touched by Satan and being shaken to their very core, I think of Satan this way and wonder if all he really wanted was an audit of the last twenty years which, let’s face it, would scare the hell out of anyone.
-M. Ashley
M. N. Ashley 