Ash Tray

Looking at a big crystal ashtray in my office I bagan wondering what the ashtray would be thinking if it has been alive. Its main purpose is to receive ashes from the cigarettes of smokers though quite often it also serves as trash disposal or knick-knock container.

If my ashtray could complain it would have objected to those other duties forcibly assigned to it by supposedly intelligent beings. As a coin-catcher it could be very interesting for the ash tray not only for the joyful musical sound that falling coins create but also because coin could make the ashtray experience the feeling of being rich even for a while.

As a tray catching dripping water from flower pot the ashtray could be so irritated and it will surely repulse the idea after having been quite used to catching hot ashes and rugged-looking cigarette butts.

I believe that if the ashtray could feel and have active external senses it would have been more interested in the lives of people using it. It would have been asking why someone like me who used to smoke four packs a day, suddenly should quit. But my ashtray in shades of beautiful maroon, must be very grateful for having a very choice position in my office for a long, long time. For years it has been idle but now it is occupying the center part of a circular glass table at the side of the Terrace of Merriment in my garden where it now serves as a unique flower base... a very attractive and unusual piece of art.