Cigarettes carry memories of perfect moments for me. sunsets, mountain landscapes, stormy nights, being on a rooftop, on a boat, on a plane (yes i remember smoking on domestic flights, you pussies) in a foreign land, growing up, being a child, enjoying a buzz, driving a perfect rural road, really truly enjoying somebodie's company i might otherwise avoid.It's not that i am physically craving for one all the time. the immediate tingling in the face and itching in the lungs that used to be the familiar signs of a jones, are long gone. they usually disappear within 3 months of my last drag when i quit cold turkey. it's the mental and emotional experience that i miss. the pleasant and most welcome interruption. the complete and utter breaking away from the usual flow of life that i crave. the putting down of whatever i am doing, whatever i am thinking, and whatever is bothering me, and lighting up. the tuning out, the stepping away from, shutting down and zoning out.
the lovely advantage of being a smoker means that just about every hour, i have the right, no, the obligation to relax and look out at the horizon without any strings attached. i get to live in the moment as if there was nothing around that. no future nagging at me, no past to hound my thoughts. just the simplicity of the now, and the now is cut off from everything else. just the tendrils of smoke escaping the end of the cigarette and the rush of the nicotine as it fills in those little holes and gaps behind the eyes. the ones that slowly piled up while i dealt with life and all of it's inter-woven and networked needs. the holes that often blinded me to simple solutions to problems that had been bothering me.
often, i could solve a work riddle that had plagued me for a while within my first drag of a Marlboro red. it was as if i had been too close to the problem. too aware of it's menacing complexity, and had not been able to sort of break out of the box and see a simple but alternative answer. cigarettes were an asset often in those bogged down cases. one that a person in HR or accounting couldn't quite justify or understand on the books. but, because it afforded me a solution pulled quickly out of thin smokey air, and allowed me to go home at peace with the battle i had just won.
the splitting of the day and night into easily digestible sections, separated by pure moments of simple breathing. inhale, mmmm, exhale. feeling the heart pump the smoke enriched blood into every needy cell wanting to taste it. the cells each vibrating and creating a shivering sensation of vibrations that moved in waves through my body creating goosebumps and the sense of my hair going up on end. my Tai-Chi crazed physics professor called it Chi. life energy. cellular excitement. simple consumption that felt as if it were at the core of living. simply filling a physical need. one that was so overpowering that society still wages a cultural war against it despite millions of lost lives. nobody ever questions a smoker's right to walk away from their work several times a day and just puff. just breathe. just think.
i really really miss that. the daily rewards and daily inner reflections are still there in my life, but they certainly don't come every hour, on the hour. i drink coffee, but it doesn't allow me to truly break without the nagging awareness of time. even if i do try to walk outside and take a purely refreshing break with a cup o' joe, i have to pay attention to how long i have been outside, and when it's appropriate to go back. without a cigarette's uncanny ability to measure its own time by slowly smoking to the end evenly, i am forced to always stay aware of time's steady motion. plus coffee makes me a little too wired to think clearly and far from being at peace. it also makes me Blog too much :P
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