Flying Leaps

Good morning, everybody!

I hope that it's all going nicely today. It's Thursday, which always amazes me because, with a twinge of synaethesia, I always think of days like today feels. It's a color like this: 

Now, lest anyone think that Thursday's perceived liaison with this color is a complaint, I can assure you that it is not. It’s distinctive. The sun may be visible on days like this, but it’s not terribly relevant.

So, I started this bit of writing for the blog yestereve, and it went on for hours, but I realized after a time that I likely had other things to do, and I was getting a bit worked up about my subject (about redneck America and the blight of our economic and cultural imperialism and the disgusting depths of our respective and collective sanctimony and how the paradigm of scarcity cripples imagination in worse ways than we’re no longer capable of imagining), typing rapidly and incorrectly, holding my breath through entire sentences (though not this one, thank goodness, because I’d’ve lost consciousness by now) and feeling very motivated, entering something of a self-imposed exile, when Molly came to see me, at which I saved my nearly completed post and we ate berries and talked past midnight until we started to fall asleep and I love her more constantly and I awoke this morning and approached my post to finish it but it was a snarling and seething blob of invective in which I was just getting ready to give those Baby Boomers a piece of my mind and when I remembered:

I quit smoking (for like the bazillionth time) yesterday. Ugh.

No wonder consumerist conformity pisses me off to an unmanageable extent!

I had almost 8 years of being quit, but not really, because I was a social smoker. So, I’m sad that I lost my mock-control of my ongoing low-level nicotine fit.

And I can’t be placated, which is sorrowful, because I’d like to take a placation (NEW WORD ALERT).

Oh, and this is good, and it pertains to the strident post of last night that did not tumble into public view: I’m going to post some writing (later today) that I did (back in 1999) about the town in which I lived as a child (Frederick, Maryland). (Sorry about all of the parentheses. I’m disorganized.)

MY MIND IS CHAFING,

WHICH MEANS THAT I SHOULD

WALK AROUND THE NEIGHBORHOOD

AND BREATHE DEEPLY. AIR ONLY.

THAT’S WHAT THE EXPERTS ALL SAY THAT

PEOPLE IN MY SITUATION OUGHT TO DO,

BUT THEY CAN TAKE A FLYING LEAP.

I WISH THAT I COULD TAKE A FLYING LEAP.

THAT’S WHAT I’LL DO; I SHALL PRETEND THAT

I AM ON AN AIRPLANE, AND THAT I AM GOING

TO VISIT THE MALDIVES. THE INDIAN OCEAN IS

FASCINATING! I WILL GO TO SRI LANKA, TOO.

AND OTHER PLACES AFTER THAT.

Cessation vs. Sensation

1/30/2011, 12:42 PM

Well, a return to Maine has occurred, along with compounded confusion. Twelve days in an unforgivably pleasant climate does things like change minds. There will, most assuredly, be more on that in future postings, but this time (i.e., now) requires a gesture of solidarity toward an old friend now suffering the throes of the
Mediocre Life of the Non-Smoker. I'll offer some pretext first:

Even though I "quit" on the 25th of May, 2004, I remain a staunch advocate of cigarette smoking, and my reasons for quitting were fairly obvious--with my MS, smoking a cigarette would cause instant paresis on the entire left side of my body. Yeah. Expletive.

While all sorts of impossible people will go on ad nauseum about conditions like cancer and emphysema, younger people tend not to give a care about such distant consequences. And I could never blame them--smoking is fantastic. However, the alarming proximity of my particular consequence did much to extract the carefree, yet intensely intentional, joy from smoking that I had always treasured. I had attempted quitting on many prior occasions, but this time really stuck, although I sometimes do indulge socially. My sons have never seen me smoke, and I prefer it that way.

This is a poem that I wrote in 2002, during one of my first bouts with quitting.

nicotine and my mind

i’m changing my relationship to boredom–

you’d think that we were sweethearts

if you weren’t always right

something something something

words like the big forever problem

to which i’ve possibly damn-fool sentenced myself

are problems

so let’s see i can get on with it or not

are those my only options?

day one

and another

day one and

another day one and another falling like dumb damn dominoes

they should give it some better or at least more-accurate names

like day in which you sweat all of the time despite temperature or

day on which you alienate all of your friends without even trying

and ouch are those things pricey

i mean, worth it

or, rather, deadly

and mysteriously beautiful sputum ingenious cancer phlegmatic wonder

i love to stink but not necessarily to smell and that’s just plain wrong or

i mean i love to smell just not with the

nose that i had when i was born but

i mean that everything that i say is

not true i love it i love it i’ll always

always love it

taking me somewhere while

killing my friends and

funding fascists and

looking at me loving it &

bemoaning its coincidences

cussing and kicking everybody

knows i’m deteriorating anyway

but i am standing standing strong

looking and acting like i actually know better

sopping with the snot of my suppression

okay

breathe and pretend and

remember that it hurts