Ode to Smoking

Every day I want a cigarette so badly. it’s been nearly 3 days since I’ve had one. It was a childhood habit. My first smoke was age 11 when my step-uncle Kenny left a half burning cigarette outside. I picked it up and had a puff. Enjoyed the secrecy of getting away with something elicit. Later at age 14 I discovered drinking and smoking, after signing off campus of my fine arts boarding school. I loved how the first hit of nicotine made me dizzy with euphoria and it felt like magic to be connecting with the townie teenagers of TC.

In public high school I hung out with the thug kids who stood around and smoked under the bleachers. My friend Tiffany and I would escape during lunch to her nearby grandparents house her grandpa smoked unfiltered Pall Mall’s. Her grandpa was the sort of guy you would call white trash . We were happy to have access to free cigarettes no matter how harshly they burned our throat and lungs. Later cigarettes became a sort of punctuation—something to mark the end of a meal, some thing to mark the beginning and end of the day. At its best smoking was always communion with one or multiple people. It must be having alcoholics felt when they drank together. A relaxed space opened up and made room for bonding, transgression and sweetness all at once.

Then even more recently, smoking became a solitary talisman against the night—a tiny torch to ward off mosquitoes and dark spirits. Smoking became prayer, letting smoke emanate from my breath and enter the sky. I miss the sweet taste of tobacco, even though there’s bitterness to it Tobacco is said to be the mother of all plants, meaning Spirit likes the smoke. The mother implies the creator, but I think it is mostly the position of power and sacredness within the indigenous world. I’m trying to grow Nicotina Azteca from seed. It’s a kind of sacred tobacco used for shamanic rituals with the heaviest amount of nicotine and small amounts of DMT to facilitate altered states. It’s a green plant with white flowers. I know that I will never smoke it, even if begins to germinate. The process of drying tobacco leaves, and then taking the chance of becoming addicted again is too arduous . The process is too intensive. Luckily, my laziness is what saves me from going to the store and buying another pack of Dunnhills, American spirits, Camels, Winstons Parliaments whatever I can get my hands on.

My nine-year-old told me even though I am no longer smoking to keep going outside. I do go outside to water the plants and to let the dogs out briefly. but it’s not the same as sitting in my chair and watching the butterflies flit around the passion flower fruits, the squirrels guarding over the figs in my tree, Griffith Park Observatory far off into the distance like an Italian renaissance landscape painting. Without smoking, it’s hard to find the excuse or the reasons to take time to breathe and just sit and be. Some people might say it’s a good time to meditate, but meditation feels like a chore and not a treat. Every day I want to cigarette so badly.But if I’m really honest cigarettes are mostly addiction—craving it like food, wanting it first thing in the morning—feeling hungry and empty. Smoking filled me the way that a perfect song came on the radio just when you needed it. Now that I’m abstaining, dealing with all the sad feelings underneath the addiction sucks

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