a poem a day for four days | day 3

1.25.2012

-----

What direction are you now from this Nordic mountain house?

dusty, vacant

chipping beamwork,

capsized cabin.

No matter the route -

Just follow me down,

to the boat that needs an anchor,

though she floats

bold balloon

only just above the ground.

siphoned death weight,

midday waverin

black eyed crater.

that parallel: my closest cousin

folded me ‘round

and slit the moon into her mouth

that lofty spectator.

decadent dreamer, with cinder feet

and breath of soot

would you concede?

It signed and swore our oaths in flames

to palms of water.

four gloaming basins

carved us there

2 marionettes where, once, a tree.

cold vine bushels

past-prime fruits

scarlet guilt upon our cheeks.

Same sorta ghosts, we.

those limber

linden grove

dream thieves.

----

ash xo

a poem a day, for four days | day 2

written 12.18.2011 @ 38,000 ft. without a pen, on a red eye plane strolling west.

i repeated it to myself for 3 hours until we landed and i ran for a pen finally getting it down on the last page of a book i had, my only paper. the employees on the flight would not allow me to borrow a pen from them. :p

the following is © Ashley Lebedev | Bottle Bell ™

please enjoy, but please don't swipe. | xo

----

i watched the sun rise,

for three hours

bursting from the sky

like a swollen tidal wave

unfolding itself across my waking americana.

a castle of mirages

rose up

3000 mile billow of

lit bonfire

two honey eyed bobbers like

cathedral beacons

those fleeting arches

were traces of zion.

i saw an avalanche there,

in her kettle below

lead-bellied curves

rolling from the hands

of mineral giants,

rousing from her clouds

and evergreen terrain

like a frozen breath of chalk dust.

i felt the youth of virtue

revisiting me in her strange pace

as we plunged from blue

to the milky white,

stirred quilt,

concoction of fog.

prism of patchwork

underbelly of rainbows.

a soft child's hand

treaded my face

in all the weight of ghosts

pondering along

a game of remembrance,

shaky hopscotch.

her permanent mirror,

chisel of

spooky craters

or course cloak,

descendent of oceans,

two orphans coming home.

---

ash

"untitled" | poem a day for 4 days.

i've decided to post a poem a day, through thursday. long or short.

first one, long. ;)

this was written in the teens of this january, one very early mornin'.

ps. please don't swipe.

ashtree. x

------

we slept, ten days too tired

under the perfect hum of your winter hymnal

ghosts of seattle snow,

still mourning itself through your speakers

seeding the bed

and resting you.

the youth of men - eternal and wounded

where every pore remembers

that thing you didn't choose.

tears beaded along, the both of us

martyrs of conditioning

and brought me into the blue hour.

where the loan bird called to me

with it's diamond throat and shifty, opiate knowings.

such things.

and, for a time, our eyes met - lawless.

different souls, same wings.

through your low slung, level window

to that branchy, branchy tree

a harbinger or angel

where i took in it's mutterings of utter, gutting truth

drawing me with shadows, speaking:

2 reflections now

1 fading...

and the light treaded me even closer than the cradle of you - my silhouetted stranger.

who i met too late or too soon.

who i knew without knowing.

patient lover

badge of danger

flask of ginger spit water

delayed traveler.

hey pretty baby

i'm catching my plane, it seems, just a little too soon.

to the ghost of warmer seasons

affixing me to memories

of dresses

that gathered leaves with hemline hands

spinning little filly

pheasant feather gypsy.

so, i paused in your pocket sized space

tucking in to itself, custom tailored to you.

between microphone, that condom, and a waning moon

ever present, ever fleeting.

and time stood for what it was:

it's own pinnacle

it's own culmination.

where it became, not irreverent but irrelevant.

and you stirred in heavy pleasure breaths

brother bear across your toes

from that other place where we dream without rules

and don't fence our fields.

i watched you,

time of pause,

for an era.

the elegant romance

nixing out

this task of absence.

learning everything and memorizing you.

this what i saw, with my cat eyes:

i saw your

summer lashes, light as sandy ocracoke - those beaches i wandered

the both of you.

she, with shells

and you with braille bumps

ink blots

maps for pleading dart fingers.

flitting lids like restless southern summers.

thick neck, briny skin

tiny chain upon it

with the saint you trust to keep you. (and so he does)

your fuzzy blanket of late season wheat grasses

sun faded, wild and winding to your briary chest

chock full

to the root of you.

part serpent, part man

where your laughs are held

gathered in their boney bed of ivory rafters

dripping with pulse.

lone echoes and

whispers -

those stowaway stockpiles

with renegade lineage

your call of honor

prone to surrender

self perpetuating.

the symphony, pretty foreground to

to the day that followed:

her timelapsed, flaking, pastry snows

my last midwestern day

beckoned me to stay

from a cinematic terminal.

where the tremors hushed

silent

resigning to deaf ears

a world orchestra and snow globe

of busy mannequins

toasting the morning w/ a shot glass

2 parts leaving

1 part you

heart bursting with dreams

of a far away willow grove and a

heavy mellow chaser of freedom.

yes | yes | ... yes.

::this moved me, oh it did...::

‎"But you children of space, you restless in rest, you shall not be trapped or tamed. Your house shall not be an anchor but a mast. It shall not be a glistening film that covers a wound, but an eyelid that guards the eye. You shall not fold your wings that you may pass through doors, nor bend your heads that they strike not against a ceiling, nor fear to breathe lest walls should crack and fall down. You shall not dwell in tombs made by the dead for the living. And though of magnificence and splendor, your house shall not hold your secret nor shelter your longing. For that which is boundless in you abides in the mansion of the sky, whose door is the morning mist, and whose windows are the songs and silences of the night."

~ Kahlil Gibran

this image felt like a nice pairing. it's a very close-up of a drawer in my kitchen. the drawer is an old bread drawer in a large, primitive, cabinet & holds the dried petals of every flower ever given to me, within it.

feel free to click and make it just a bit bigger. i think that's a sunflower i got a bit earlier in autumn (and therefore on the top of the very deep drawer ;)

ash x

11.1.11

happy november 1st. :)

snapped this, this am, during breakfast.

i hope you all are very well. i have a lot of writing coming your way, very soon.

ashtree, x

Medieval Villages & The Day of the Windstorm.

(**imagery, high resolution, on flickr)

july 2011 - ceyreste, france | a journal.

it started with a walk that began to pick up speed until i was running down a 1 car road. i ran down the hill and towards to the village.

i knew something had gone wrong when i found myself silently crying deep in a village alleyway alone in southern provence, my fingers trembling,

barefoot.

a dreamer's tears cascaded down my freckled cheeks, melting themselves to my speckled shoulders and watering the dusty road, a trembling chin trying to maintain its stillness, half failing. i sat in my mother's striped vintage jumper, the one she wore when she was pregnant with me; at least that's the story that her pictures seem to tell. she was always touching her stomach when she wore that jumper. it's amazing what you think of when you think, sometimes.

there i was - 28 years later, and so happy i was wearing it; a bit ironic.

an hour passed as i sat tucking into my knees, on ancient cobblestone, looking up at the village's medieval watchtower, silhouetting itself so perfectly in front of a dry and waning Mediterranean sun. i traced old engravings that lay beneath my feet, lovers professing their love in stone. in stone. when had it been written?

if it was in stone they must have meant it.

i pictured starcrossed lovers using miniature wooden chisels; i pictured them running away and laughing into the night, despite their parents. but, perhaps, that was too archaic or too romantic.

still... i hope.

i remember shutting my eyes over and over again, just to savor the smallest, most beautiful luxury: watching the entire spectrum crushing itself into my lashes, with every blink.

i told the sun, ''please renew me. you are the only one i know here.''

i said it aloud, maybe a whisper, maybe not.

i told myself to sit there however long it took, until i was strong enough to know i was strong enough, even if i became another statue on someone's historical tour. their tourist book would read: "to your right is a woman that sat so long in contemplation that she became a statue."

my breaths were so short, and offered only shallow exhalations, all trying to grow wings.

i could smell the wind bringing the sea air to me, so wildly untamed that they'd closed the mountain passes. it seemed invincible. i could taste the croissants i'd eaten for breakfast: one filled with chocolate, the other with apples. the bread was so cakey that half of every bite would float to the ground. i could hear a wild symphony of cicadas, hitting me like percussion. i remembered the little brother i'd played swords with, with broken sticks. he'd win every time, mustache painted on with big sister's eyeliner, chanting his victory in a foreign squeal. what a charming little Zorro. i thought about his father who was a mime, eating his morning baguettes, each drenched in bowls of coffee. i thought of his wife, who ate pie with her fingers, making motherhood and cooking look so elegant. i was all ears when she told me that she learned english during her time in ireland.

i picked every thought i had and replanted it, and began to see beauty in all of the un-sung cracks. i remembered just days before - the night of French Independence Day - watching a drunk woman dancing (flailing) to 'YMCA' in the village square. she was going all.out. i remember so wholeheartedly laughing as i meandered down old streets, meeting new people and never knowing, upon introductions, how many times i was supposed to kiss their cheeks. sometimes it was 2, sometimes three, and once it was even four. that night, a man gave us the entire oral history of his village, albeit in French, without us asking. i think i know a lot about that village, considering i didn't understand a word. he was just so passionate. the memory of that night has engraved itself into me. so much fervor.

it must have meant it.

as i continued to sit, i pulled lavender fronds from my pocket (a recent gift) and rubbed the flowers to my temples, to my wrists, below my nose. it was a faithful meditation, that rolled through my joints like a wave.

sometime shortly after, a lizard ran across my foot and i jumped just enough to be half funny, and so i let out a half laugh. i wondered if the sky saw any of this. the sky sees so much.

i was somewhere lost in the middle of 'figuring it all out' when a child came up to me and handed me a disheveled wildflower. he said a sentence i'll never know, but the message carried. in that moment, just for a moment, i felt as if i knew and understood everything there ever was to know about life. the past, present, future were in the eyes of a smiling child, his beautiful eyes reflecting the sun. the same sun that warms me, wherever i am.

i touched his cheek, hoping i wasn't breaking any sort of local custom, and smiled in relief. i said 'merci beaucoup' (sighing into my words and blushing) and touched my heart with both of my palms. i couldn't relay what a moment he'd broken up.

he giggled and bounced away with that vibrant, youthful zest i adore in humanity.

i said thank you to the sun, and promised myself that when i returned stateside i would take a photo recording the feeling of that day, that village, that particular moment.

the entire moment, that hour, was so completely existential.

when i returned home i put on a medieval nightdress (my personal homage to the starcrossed engraving i'd found) and pretended i was still looking up into the provencial sun or into the eyes of that little boy. i like to think, in some alternate reality, i still am.

this is that photo:

and some others:

living out of a suitcase and pleased as punch,

ashes x

"Faerieland" | The Brownie Sequence

please enjoy this new character (and a few not posted anywhere else) and for behind the scenes, click here.

there are something like 6 new characters on the horizon & high res. will be on my website & flickr, within the hour, because blogspot just breaks. my. heart. w/ it's quality. ;)

ash x

journal 2 - day ? - chicago

"you're accustomed to sorrow. it's part of your makeup. you speak the language of hunger. so do i..." -A.P.

---

back home on the farmstead, the fields sweep like a thousand acre ballrooms. i stand at the windbreak and can watch a storm approaching for hours. it's a kind of perfection; the reverent silence that i call home.

but in this - also a waiting game. a waiting and waiting game - always hoping for things to come.

the road is different. it's a leaving game, and leading.

and, it rinses me out.

i drove from minneapolis to madison with one hand out the window and canon ball feet. we stopped in madison for a spell and watched the sunlight literally bleeding itself across the ugliness and undeniable pulse of so much industry, leaving us to night. it was all sort of a dirty excitement that gathered us for the next 72 hours.

hails and i arrived in chicago at 1 or 2 am, and within 10 minutes of arriving at Palmer House, i was reminded that city is not my first language, with my sister being nearly pickpocketed in the elevator to our room and both of us being chased around an endless city block by a man that didn't know more than the smell of liquor and need. we ran from him both laughing and terrified. i remember thinking upon seeing him giving up his chase and returning to the shadowy corner of a silent and sleeping city, that being homeless outweighed my fear enough to where i almost wanted to wander back out into the night and hear his story. this was the case over and over again, during my stay, no matter where i was - watching lovers tucked into the tiniest moments or while i sipped tea in millennium park, soaking up my first rays of sun in nearly 8 months or some such.

the hotel was one of the most beautiful i've ever been in if you don't count the clientele and the $6 bananas. but the life in our room was incredible and the days since have been the same.

the rest of the weekend was a whirlwind of everything i yearn for:

love

art

energy

life

freedom

food

shopping

&

friendship

as i wandered into cafes and people watched; always filled with a desire to wander with a sort of vibrant energy that stayed with me into the nights when i sat at the hotel room window, looking out over a cityscape of lives and lights that lead the way.

but, you know the thing with me is that lights tend to lead me away, further and further away. one of these days i'll be 'leaving to stay' like the song said that dad use to play.

photo taken in my hotel room in just about pitch black lighting. i'm sorry for the low blogspot quality that pulls just about everything apart. ;)

a design studio across the street so quaint & cool, seeing all of the clothing being made by art students...

a quick snapshot of state street from my room...

i have a ton of polaroids accumulating as well and a behind the scenes from my first shoot of the season over on the business blog. i will continue shooting and try to journal as well as scanning in new snaps that aren't digital.

for now i can see the clock is 20 minutes away from my 28th birthday and all i can do is smile.

ash