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sublingua | |||||
| The heart with a mind of its own.(Be present.) | The mind with a heart of its own.(It's past.) | The dream that is your waking life.(Go there now.) | |||
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Killing The Demon Who Lives on Nicotine
The question of the day is: Why, why, why are all of Sublinuga's friends digging bomb-shelters in their backyards? Why are they running for cover? Why are they replacing the windows in their cars with bullet-proof glass? Why? Why? Why? Why, because I quit smoking of course. Yeah, you're all thinking the same thing: Let's see how long this lasts. And: The New Year's resolution rears its ugly head. Well, fuck all you all. First of all, I've quit before. It's totally doable. Stop. Laughing. No, seriously. I did quit once, for years. Then the stress of this past summer and fall threatened not to kill me but to make me kill all the others, and I decided that if death was coming for anyone, it should rightfully be me, and that I'd help the whole process along by providing a useful lot of smoke signals as, you know, guidance. (That last sentence was constructed by a grammar expert with a degree in English and should not be attempted at home. Amateurs.) And secondly, I don't do New Year's resolutions. New Year's resolutions are for suckers. Do or do not, said my little green guru. There is no try. My friend Bernardo said once to me, in speaking of the then-recent law that made bars and restaurants in NYC smoke-free, "You'll take my cigarette from me when you pry it from my cold, dead fingers." And, last semester, that became my rallying cry--because it's hard not to cry when you're huddled outside a building in the cold wind, trying to get a damn cigarette lit. No, actually, it's never really that cold in N.M., even in the dead of winter, so quit your bitching. Just smoke in the bathroom like the good little j.d. you know you are. No, really, I began smoking again because smoking kills stress. (Pavel flashback: Pavel standing at the board, chalk in hand, asking in that sardonic, sexy-as-hell Russian accent, "What kills D? What kills D?" And, getting no response from the class, finally answering his own question, barely supressing a roll of his eyes, "Derivative kills D." Pavel. Yum.) Okay, right. Where was I? Started smoking, stress, kill. Now I remember: Yeah, so I started smoking again at the end of the summer when everything was falling apart. And then it fell apart, and I should've issued a great big, "Whew!" and laid down the pack then, but I didn't. I kept smoking. I couldn't stop. And this was unusual in itself. In the past, I had always been able to buy a pack, smoke it, and then not buy a pack for, say, another year or something crazy like that. This time? No. I was buying cartons and stashing them in the freezer against lean times--lean times that I was sure were coming. I was a smoker. And, apparently worse, I was a smoker trained in the Great Depression or something. And then--a few weeks ago, I began to have visions of mouth cancer. Lung cancer. Liver cancer. Stomach cancer. Breast cancer. Cancer. Cancer. Cancer. I was sure that the sore in my mouth was a tumor. I was sure that my scratchy throat was not a cold, not allergies, but cancer. I was going to get cancer. I was going to lose my tongue, my lips, my voice, a lung, my life. Visualize your power animal? Mine was Joe Camel, just after his last chemo session. I had a little less than a pack left. I smoked that pack. And then I ran out of cigarettes. And I've stayed out. And I'm staying out. And you should stay under cover until I tell you it's safe to come out. Because I love you all. I love you all and I'm not afraid to hurt you.
More lies:
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