On Smoking

I realize that smoking cigarettes is currently, sociologically unpopular.  I also realize that cigarettes kill (numerically) airplanes full of people on a daily basis.  But … there is something really, truly aesthetically pleasing about smoking a cigarette.  There is something quite lovely about the sulphur on a match igniting and subsequently meeting the end of an untainted, white tube of tobacco, followed by the sudden, sweet rush of smoke into one’s mouth and lungs.  It’s jarring, and then consequently enormously relaxing to pull the smoke in through the lips, to treasure it, then to expel it back again into the fresh air.  (Smoking outside is the key; indoors, the smoke is too concentrated and toxic.  And yes, I see the obvious oxymoron or juxtaposition or whatever you want to label it.)

The key is to smoke a cigarette when 1) no one else is watching, or 2) to smoke with people who will not judge you.   Finding these two conditions is, for me, quite difficult, as I live with children who have been taught that smoking is bad, and I also live in society where, well, smoking is bad.

I smoked cigarettes for most of my adolescence, and then into adulthood.  I quit when my son, who was then about 10 months old, picked up my pack of cigarettes from the table leading out to my deck (I was only smoking outside by then, because secondhand smoke is obnoxious and rude and harmful to others) and starting eating them.  I came into the kitchen about 30 seconds too late, and he was vomiting up MY cigarettes, which I had left within reach of a newly walking person.  I quit immediately, cold turkey.

That was about 16 years ago.  It was only recently that I tried less chemically-laced cigarettes, and found that (in moderation) cigarettes are quite lovely.  I’m not endorsing the stank-mouth, foul-smelling lifestyle I once ignorantly embraced; I’m just saying that there is a time and a place for a trail of smoke wafting off into the distance and a few consciously-pulled drags from a cigarette.  That TIME and PLACE needs to be carefully timed, or else the cigarette-smoking experience is ruined.

Here are the rules:

·         None of my younger children can be present, imminently present, or even accidently/potentially present.  They make me paranoid and self-conscious, and thus ruin the aesthetics. 

·         There must be a cocktail within reach.

·         I must have food in my stomach.

·         Ideally, I can call someone on the phone, who I would never in a million years be caught smoking in front of.

As you can see, these limitations severely hinder my ability to smoke (which is good) and also make the experience rare, satisfying, and personal. 

In a day and age when everything is bad for you and neuroses is the norm, it’s the little things that can make one moment a celebration of both lung capacity and social rebellion.  

I'm sitting outside on my patio, and through the backyards I can see into someone's bay window.  The sun is kind of fading, and the family seems to be sitting around a table doing something, backlit by the lights in their living room.  There's a kid out in the street playing catch with his dad in the street in front of their house, and I can tell they're chatting it up about something, even though I can't hear them.  It's like a fucking Norman Rockwell moving picture.  Meanwhile, I'm over here sitting at an empty table with my computer.  No one is home; they all have their other things going on.  One's eating at a lovely Japanese steakhouse.  One is at a raucous slumber party.  One is on her own, living life in a different house.  And one is ... well, who cares where that one is.

The cicadas are droning and my Tibetan prayer flags are barely swaying in the breeze.  If Norman Rockwell is to my right, to my left is some kind of suburban ghetto house:  busted-up deck that has to be some kind of housing violation, blue tarp over a hole in the roof that has somehow survived several years of weather, trash littering the yard, and four shitty, rusted grills in various disorder.

Yes, I am so lonely and bored that I am describing my view.  I don't know what else to do.  What does a person who is moderately old and has no love- or social life do?  Go to a bar by myself?  (No thanks.)  Treat myself to dinner?  (Sad.)  Wander the neighborhood hoping to find someone else bored enough to talk to?  (I hate small talk.)  Have a cocktail?  (Check, that's the one thing I have.)

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After about 10 minutes of spacing out, I looked over at the Rockwell family again, and no one has moved.  Maybe it's all an illusion, and those people I see are just cardboard cutouts put there to create a vision of family.  That would actually make more sense, because I can't seem to figure out why everyone seems to have an engaging life except me.  I talked to a kid who's going to a prestigious, pretentious college this fall, and he admitted that he just sat around playing his instrument and watching netflix and going for insanely long walks every day this summer.  Maybe that sort of reality is more commonplace for people who dislike pretending to care about the mundanity of everyday life.

As disgustingly hippie-ish as it sounds, I think I'd be better off in a commune, where like-minded people come and go, and are free to interact (or not) with their chosen community.  If I had any money, I'd start one.  It would be awfully hard to get me to accept your "friend request" for that commune, but once we were in, it'd be pretty great, I think.

For now, I'll have to just sit here and watch these prayer flags flutter, and hope that one day this purgatory will end.

Fuck You

Is that a good title?

I'm just wondering, since apparently the packaging of ideas is the central thing in America 2013.

People will look at and read things as long as there is a sufficiently radical tagline attached.  What does that say about people?!  I don't even want to spend more time than I already do thinking about it .  I'm confused about what excites and inspires people.  I used to think inspiration was about ideas, but obviously, I was wrong.  Or maybe, as long as it's a SHARED idea, then it's an okay idea to have.  Or maybe, if the "idea" can be conveyed in a six-second vine, then it's a solid idea.  Or maybe, if the "idea" is a blurted post on facebook about how you just took a shit or ate a sandwich or woke up late, then it gets to be valid.

I guess I'm either too old or too stupid or too intellectually pretentious to understand what "good" means anymore.

Syria

Are you fucking kidding me?  Why are we helping other people commit murder?  Both sides are a death squad.  There is no winning in this, or any other conflict like it.