March 19: smoke it, drink it, shut it (20 minutes)

He smokes the first cigarette in five days with some kind of pride, holds the filter between the middle knuckles of his first two fingers, sucks on the fiberglass, inhales. The smoke seems faint that comes out with the exhale, like most of it is staying in his lungs, making up for lost time. He can't write without the cigarettes, fidgets around the house straightening, organizing, moving things around. Not really cleaning, just tidying up, avoiding thinking about ways to spend big amounts of money, a new computer, a new eco-friendly washer/dryer, a trip to New York City to take a Sun magazine writing weekend. It doesn't even taste good, the cigarette. If he had his druthers, he would've rolled a cigarette, maybe sprinkled a few crumbs of marijuana in with the tobacco to get that extra creative boost. But there aren't any papers to roll with and there is a half pack of American Spirit filtered reds in the freezer, waiting, chilling out. His head throbs, a brief headache, a nicotine high, a cool breeze and smoke gets in his eyes and it hurts but it feels good. And a beer tastes good, helps the gravel in the throat go down. He hasn't had a beer in five days either. He didn't say he was gonna quit, any of it, he just wanted to take a break. Five days is a break. But it goes by so fast he wants another one right away. But that feels a little too much like addiction. It's all addiction. Meditation is an addiction, yoga, ecstatic dancing. He has an addictive personality. Sex? Well that seems to have gone by the wayside. Somewhere along the way he seems to have lost interest in that. If there was sex in a twenty-pack in the freezer, he might have gotten around to pulling one out, pulling one off, just for the addiction of it, just to remember the release it used to provide, the thrill, the inspiration. But that's not so simple so he let that go. He doesn't want to think about it. No, that's not true. He just doesn't think about it, has to muster up the courage to think about it, to remember what he's missing, to wonder why it's not there anymore. But a beer and a cigarette, they're right there in the other room, in the kitchen, on ice, waiting to be taken, waiting to be abused. Or if not abused, at least used. He doesn't always feel like an addict, doesn't really feel like he can't stop, and so he stops, for five days at a time, sometimes longer. Sometimes he forgets about everything but writing. Sometimes he even forgets about that. And then he starts thinking his life doesn't have any meaning, doesn't have any activity. He's just moving about looking for something to connect to, something to get him from point A to point B. Will this feel good? Will this satisfy me? Will this make me willing? He doesn't ponder these things outwardly when he's not doing anything; he's just wondering about not knowing what's next. Then he smokes a cigarette and the ink starts flowing on the page. Ah, this means something, he tells himself. It's like oil, like gasoline, like a lit fuse and he's a bomb, a bomb in his head, where his creativity lies dormant waiting for igniting. And then he ignites it and thinks Why did I stop? What was the break about? Oh, he knows he can stop anytime, but stopping one addiction seems to stop everything. He goes to a slow tick, a heart beat slowed down waiting for the ice to thaw before he can go back into a state of living. He feels powerful with his cigarettes, his beer---