The act of smoking (or smoking up) is a sacred ritual. Dating back to ye ‘ol times of yore, it involved an old man, probably senile, and definitely hairy on the wrong side of the head, transforming crushed dried leaves and herbs into a portable-apparition device by the simple act of lighting it up and inhaling the white fumes. Puff-puff-pass was probably a thing back then too, definitely.
Air,
fire and earth – the holy trinity of existential liberation in just the right
proportion seems to free your mind and soul[1]. When in actuality, it chokes your lungs and wreaks havoc on… well, pretty much every other part of
your body. But goddamn does it feel so good to breathe in that toxic smoke.
Maybe
that’s why the first drag of the dirty nicotine stick every morning feels so special.
That DNA-altering carcinogenic smoke tickles something so primordial, it wakes
up the dormant gene that once resided in the (organic) tar-filled lungs of your
great250-grandfather[2]. Like a near-dead addict
reaching out for the one final hit before crossing the rainbow bridge. Probably
only to be killed by the toxic smoke.
“Find what you love and let it kill you”
– Charles Bukowski.
But
that doesn’t really matter. What matters is the illusion - the maya, the
abracadabra. Smoking after all is an escape – or a futile attempt to escape the absurdity of life by weirdly inching closer to death. The sexy cancer
stick, in a poetic way, essays how death is the ultimate liberation from all
our suffering and happiness. Basically, nothing matters, except – no exceptions!
Smokers are unsuspecting, unwilling philosophers. More Diogenes and less Ayn Rand – who live by their own twisted principles instead of preaching it. Also they don’t know what they’re philosiphising (is that a word? It is now). How do you explain to someone who doesn’t smoke that the first cigarette of the day feels like heaven and the 10th feels like you’re the cigarette’s bitch.
Every
smoker knows cigarettes are bad. Neither the constant reminders of Mukesh and
Sunita before every movie (makes you crave a smoke, really, those ads DO NOT serve
their purpose), nor do the cancerous lungs on every pack deter a smoker. And not
even a determined smoker. Even the ones who “only smoke when I drink” or those who
“smoke once in a while, sometimes, when I’m stressed”.
In sickness
and in health. In stress and in leisure. With chai and with rum. A cigarette is
that constant companion whom you love to hate and hate to love.
But
the cigarette? It’s built to kill.
Alt-paragraphs (to be read after the citation thingie)
[1]
Put it in a hookah and you have the holy quaternity – air, fire, earth and
water. Put a hookah in the hands of a troubled artist and you have the holy Captain
Planet – earth, fire, wind, water and heart.
[2]
The earliest evidence of smoking tobacco was in 5000 BC. Writing was invented
around 3400 BC. Which means for over 1500 years, all paper was rolling paper.
P.S:
I’m not an idiot, this just makes for a funny… fact
Smoking is heavenly until one finds other better, multi-heavenly things (in human world & beyond). Maybe the way to not be it's bitch is to be something else's or someone's (lol), and boy o boy there're some crazy addictions out there, if only one has the guts to explore and experiment! A free personalized list if you figure out this 'anonymous'.
ReplyDelete