A good beginning, the ongoing journal of Ashwood

[Ashwood (DELETED 13180)]

On this day, I, Mark Turning, also known as Ashwood have begun a new life.

Such a change this vampire life is. I do not dream as I once did. But lay as one dead. And some nights days, it feels like I dream, but they are waking dreams. That is something I need to become used to also. That my night as days, and my days shall now be night.

I have always felt out of time. But may hap, in this new life I will finally find myself able to reach the self I felt was just out of reach.

I was born over eighty years ago, in a town that has long since been empty in England. I will not bore either myself or any future readers with the long history that was my early years. Enough to say that I did well in my schooling, but found myself a few generations late for where I wish I had been born. I often was happy to stand beside the objects of change. On the school council, but never one of those in true power. Simply happy to assist those who’s vision I could agree with.

After my school years I continued in similar roles. Happy to be on the board of the company, but always in a support role, ensuring that the work and workers were handled. I was never one for chasing the dollar, it was always about making the company run smoothly.

I have an ancient memory of seeing an old man in a watch shop. The many little gears in the pocket watch ticking away in front of him on the counter. His one eye magnified as the lens showed him all the small gears ticking away as they should. The smell of the closed in little shop was of warm wood, oils, the tang of metal and pipe smoke. The shop nearly soundless save for the unending ticking of gears. And each quarter hour the tong of many clocks, only to be outdone at the top of each hour when all the great grandfather clocks would ring out their tones for blocks around him.

That is what I always sought to create in all the places I worked. For the companies to run as smoothly as each watch touched by that ancient man’s hands.

And as I wait this evening, my new morning for my sire to hopefully join me, I ponder what I might need to do to reach this same sense in my new life. And I marvel at the hurdles before me.

I find myself in a role I’ve never pictured I could ever be in. I am less then. As a male born with white skin, the world was mine in so many ways. Now here I am, starting in a role that marks me a second class, no, less then a citizen. I am admitted that I exist, but I am not a person any longer. How amazing and awful. I am sure that this will cause me problems I can not even begin to fathom. In time I might in fact be able to truly understand the heavy problems that exist for other minorities. But all this is still so new to me. The true horror of this state I will never understand. Only those older than I will have knowledge of the way things were before. When they were afforded rights and respect as persons. And now those have been stripped of them.
And that is just one hurdle that I will have to overcome in the coming weeks. I know my nature. I need to find a goal, someone that I believe in and whom I could assist to return to us the right of person hood. Yes, that seems a very worthy goal. I have my tasks for the evening already laid out, and I have lazed away the hours already. I shall see to the house and view the grounds now. Then I shall go out in the city and see that there is to be seen, and to be seen myself. It is time to be proactive and I shall be.

Ashwood.