Standing on the precipice of this vast cybernautical sea of blogs, I wave a jaunty hello to you & bid you a gladdening welcome.
This newly byt-en site will contain my first endeavor into a me-ness of wheeness & juicy wordaciousness.
Let me introduce myself.
Please? Oh, please? May I?
Oh, goody!
Thank you.
Here goes:
My name is Veronica Ashe.
I am here to offer to you a peek-see into my latest life adventure & an eye-to-eye staring-competition, life-time time waiver.
I am an artist (of the old-but-good-un-schooled variety: paint & pastels on canvases), a vocalist/lyricist for Smoldering Ashes (my cross-continental/inter-webbing band), a self-taught musician, “making my own music my own” music producer, an un-rule-y poet, a wordy writer, a libertarian (AKA a classic liberal), a logical intuitive, an INFJ, someone thriving with M.S. (since 2008), a 33 life-pather, a self-educated soul, loving lover of all things, a romantic, a designer of many things, a dreamer and a resilient resident of Earth, & often times, waaay beyond even that limitation of being.
I am like most artists of the world, an insatiable starving creative, rich only in vivid dreams & plentiful imagination.
I have had the bliss of releasing music in CD format and in MP3 onto an unsuspecting and unprepared universe.
Thrice in this band manifestation actually, have I had that pleasure, and I anticipate creating much more.
Why am I sharing all of this with total strangers, you may wonder?
Well, wonder no more.
Early in April 2013, I was asked by a dear Facebook friend if we could Skype instead of continuing our usual random conversations there. She said that we had to hurry up and do the Skype thing because she was about to sleep & was already in her bed.
Me, I was just about to have lunch, although a nap did sound good too.
Apparently, I’d been long lacking the iron-y of blood, thus the ok-ness with the brief thought of a brief afternoon nap.
And so we conversed on Skype about all of the usual silly things we found to conversationally toss about, until suddenly, she asked me something very serious.
She asked me how I was doing after being very suddenly divorced by the love of my life.
I must have looked like a monkey caught in the headlights of a safaring inter-galactic space craft. I was, for once, rendered speechless. I honestly didn’t want to bring our happy conversation down, because anytime I talk about it, I cry.
I did what, at the time, I felt I could do.
I smiled & shrugged my shoulders (my imagined code for: I’m still in pain over it & words wouldn’t suffice. I will cry tears like a human Niagara Falls if I speak about even a trace of the details of this life event with you, so don’t ask me anything further, unless you want a monsoon that you would be personally responsible for causing, which possibly would decimate an entirely wrongly monsooned continent.)
Strangely, she didn’t seem to understand my code, so, out of reflex, I shrugged and smiled in vain again, and still smiling, I quickly asked her some questions about herself.
I kept her talking but being a non-nefarious sort, I wasn’t doing the asking with cold, selfish purpose of avoidance.
I just wanted to know more about her, rather than either of us talking about the easily weepy, overly romantic me.
She finished telling me about her new business & renewed love of Yoga.
Then she launched like a rocket into a pile of vanilla flavored, freshly baked & still hot, iced-cake with sprinkles, made a quick right hand turn, and went straight into what must have been her reason for wanting to Skype with me in the 1st place.
She said: “I need you here with me! Please come to India! I can help you find work and you can start your life over here! You’ll be perfectly safe and I will help you!”
As if a magical cat with amazing pruning shear talents had deftly snipped away my speaking tools…I was speechless, again.
Still looking at her like a monkey caught up, in what had, at first seemed like headlights, but had turned out to be a bright green alien tractor-beam, I began finding myself giving her a list of pathetically wimpy, chicken-legged reasons why I couldn’t get there…& certainly not stay…not even for a short visit.
She found arguments made of Teflon and successfully batted away every plucked & battered chicken-ish excuse I threw at her. Eventually, all I could do was listen to her plans for me there.
They sounded like a dream come true, like an answer to a prayer & just flat out fabulous!
When she had finished, expecting me to throw more fowl excuses at her, she stopped talking.
After a few minutes of mutual silence, for I’d once again been snipped quiet by that talented cat with peskily sharp pruning shears, she said that she had to log out and go and get some shut eye.
We said our goodnights. and both logged out of Skype.
I sat with what just happened.
Shortly thereafter, what just happened got up and went into the kitchen for a snack, and ate the lunch that I had expected to eat.
Eventually, after sitting a long time with what just happened (who was still quite full) I ate some dinner.
After not being able to kick what just happened out of my house and out of my head, I gave it the sofa indefinitely, and I went and commented on my sweet Indian friend’s Facebook page, that I was still thinking it over.
The next Indian morning, she Facebook commented on my Facebook comment on her wall, and she said “Very Good!”.
I researched everything enough to agree with her about how the idea did in fact seem “very good”.
To make this blog shorter than otherwise a missing shoe lift would have made it, I let her know that I was gonna go for it; that I was planning on going to India as she had asked me to…and would be there no later than the end of November 2013.
Sadly she reneged on everything saying she was just a young 25 yr old woman. She said she wasn’t able to assist me in starting over in India. I laugh now…but didn’t laugh at the time she told me thus.
So now you know why it is I am here sharing all of this with you.
At least I hope you now know.
If not, let me blather on for a moment longer in explanation-mode.
I, being a starving artist, will offer unto thee, kind reader, a serving of frequent fun-fruits found hanging out among my word thicketry, frequent video visualizations of my India adventures/events & any and all creative results from my time spent there.
I will yield these things up to you for the grateful fee of free.
All of this is dependent upon my getting there, and so I must humbly ask of you, in an internet-ed & busking-ish manner, that is, unless you too are a starving artist, to push the necessary lettered & numbered tabs, equal to a tossing of coinage or paper-age into my cyber-cup, so that I will have the nominal funds for a one way ticket to my life expanding opportunity in India.
In addition to these above mentioned gifts that I offer to you in grateful exchange, I shall mail a copy, also free of charge, of a CD copy of my band’s latest musical release, to anyone kind enough to toss anything over $10 into my cyber-cup and also I offer a CD copy of my 1st pre-Smoldering Ashes release, from when I was in the band JudyJudyJudy, to anyone kind enough to toss anything over $5 into my cyber-cup.
If you would rather not attain either of these musical conversation pieces, after you help me in whatever amount you can afford to to help me fund my way to India…the CDs that I produced & manufactured of my own personal funds, just let me know,
The website address on which to type funding info onto will follow this drop of a blog which is but a teeny tiny drip into this vast cybernautical sea of blogs.
P.S. The amount of a one-way ticket to India grows heftier as the months pass by, so the sooner I find I’ve been blessed with $3,500, the faster I can book a flight, get the heck outta Dodge (AKA, OKC) & straight into Jaipur, and then…onto the joyful task of making the afore mentioned gifts, journaling & documenting my life there for your vicarious pleasures & peek-see into my adventuress life.
Wordaciously yours, with love,
~ V
Veronica Ashe's Word-Thickets 