Ashen -

In the Color of Ash: On Endings, Silence, and the Beauty of “Ashen”

You are just between fires. And that is a holy place to be. What does “ashen” mean to you today? Let me know in the comments. In the Color of Ash: On Endings, Silence,

Ash is the ghost of wood. It is the mathematical remainder of a log, a letter, or a city after the energy has been spent. When you look at something ashen, you are looking at a before-and-after photograph compressed into a single second. You see the form of the thing that was, but you touch the dust of the thing that is. Let me know in the comments

You aren’t broken. You aren’t erased. When you look at something ashen, you are

We often use “ashen” as a synonym for pale, gray, or sickly. We describe a shocked face as ashen. We describe a dead landscape as ashen. But like so many words, we have sanded down its sharp, poetic edges. We’ve forgotten what it actually holds: the memory of heat. To be ashen is not simply to be gray. Charcoal is gray. Concrete is gray. An ashen thing is special because it used to be something else .