In Praise of Smoking
It's an idealistic concept, this hand-rolling of your shortcomings and imperfections into a compact cylinder with thin, sticky paper. Breathe in your sins (french-inhaling at your leisure) on a front porch swing, breathe out you vices in a halo of translucent grey smoke. For a few minutes you feel cleansed, although not clean. Do you understand? Your bare feet push off the damp, cold concrete propelling you and this concoction of nails and slatted wood into a gentle arc and you find yourself dancing in and out of the contaminated air you are making with each exhale.
So you bathe yourself this way four, five, six times a day, sometimes less, oftentimes more and the scent lingers with you, on clothes, fingers, hair, reminding you of the very demons you were hoping to exorcise. The demons that will choke your throat, clog your lungs, linger in your cells far after your last inhalation.
So you bathe yourself this way four, five, six times a day, sometimes less, oftentimes more and the scent lingers with you, on clothes, fingers, hair, reminding you of the very demons you were hoping to exorcise. The demons that will choke your throat, clog your lungs, linger in your cells far after your last inhalation.