SUCH SWEET SORROW

I miss smoking cigarettes. When I got in my car wreck and collapsed a lung, I was trying to quit, and since then, I haven't inhaled a cigarette. (Purposely, at least; on at least three occasions, old habits blindsided me and I found myself sucking in a lungful, against the doctor's orders.) I've smoked a few, if you take "smoked" to mean "puffed on." In that respect, cigarettes are utterly inferior to pipes, which I still smoke, and in fact have smoked more of since my accident than I ever did. However, for sheer ease of carriage, lighting, and use as a prop, no form of tobacco can beat the cigarette.

Cigarettes, despite all their negative aspects and the fact that I can't smoke them anymore, are still one of my favorite things. I mourn not being able to whip out the ol' Zippo and fire up a Chesterfield, Lucky Strike, Pall Mall, or Kamel Red. I miss the days when I couldn't get enough smoking in, the days I would tear through a pack and go to bed feeling good about it. I miss addiction, both to nicotine and the very act of smoking. I wax nostalgic about sitting on my back porch, knocking back Lone Stars and sucking down Pall Malls. Hot DAMN, I WANT TO SMOKE AGAIN!

But I haven't. Yeah, smoking a pipe counts as smoking on some level, but fuck, it ain't really the same. I want to smoke cigarettes again- by the goddamn CARTON- but the thought of having another collapsed lung is too scary, as is thinking ahead 40-50 years, when, if I started smoking cigarettes again, I might start suffering from lung cancer or emphysema. (Part of me recalls that cancer doesn't seem to run in my family at all; sometimes this is heartening, and sometimes it smacks of mental sabotage.) Of course, smoking a pipe could ostensibly give me cancer as well, but I have much less fear of that happening.

Whenever I think about cigarettes, which isn't as often as this missive would have you think, I wonder if I'll eventually override my fears and start smoking again in a year or so. I'd like to say either "hell yeah, I'm gonna smoke again," or "nah, I'll pass," but I honestly don't know. I just don't fuckin' know.

Maybe it's time for another bowl of the thinking man's smoke, University Flake. Or not.