There Are Days Where I Wish I Smoked


There are days where I wish I smoked.  Days where I’d like to just lean back in my seat at work, light one up and watch the smoke curl up towards the fluorescent lights on the unbroken expanse of white ceiling.  Just stare at all those acres of tiles and lights and wonder about their mathematical predictability.  Perhaps a combination of the biological nicotine boost and the social marker of disengagement that the clink of a lighter would give me would suffice.  There’s something about the magical path that a fine curl of smoke produces; its like watching fish in an aquarium with the exception that you don’t feel sorry for smoke like you do for the fish.

Quiet introspection that’s embraced by a process both edifying and destroying me at the same time.  Smoke.  Maybe we both need it.  I listened last night as my wife fought to quell the obsessive-compulsive behaviors of Bethany.  She went from tired and frustrated to assertive and demanding; dwelled there for a brief moment and moved on to belligerent, condemning, and dangerous.  It made my skin crawl to hear her scream words like this, words I didn’t even know she had in her vocabulary.  She burst into tears, sobbing that she “just can’t do this anymore”.  I did nothing.  I didn’t move a muscle.  Didn’t come to her aid, didn’t offer words of support, didn’t pray.  Were I a smoker, I’d have lit one up at this juncture, leaned back and watched the smoke curl upwards.

I don’t know what to do either, hell – I’ve been in this same spot plenty of times myself.  Yelled and threatened to do things that I knew I’d never do, just needed to let the words fly.  Bethany hears none of the threats, they mean nothing to her anyways; in fact, she listens to the tone of voice and when you’re done ranting, she laughs.  She won.  You blinked first.

So many nights are spent holding her during seizures.  So much time spent with drool running down your arms as she pathetically roots around her face with her finger, looking for some part of it that doesn’t feel weird.  Perfect time to light up.  Hold her hands while balancing a Camel between my lips.  Later, during the manic sessions as she crashes around her room and I lay downstairs listening, late into the night – I could watch the glowing end in the dark.  I could take that amber glow and write words in the air, imaginary messages to friends, asking them about their summer plans.  I always liked the photo of Jackson Pollock working on a large canvass in his studio, paint bucket in one hand, brush drooling colors in the other hand, cigarette hanging on his lower lip.  He was a brilliant idiot, as am I.  A tired, brilliant, idiot.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

I Watched a Loved One Die Today

I watched a loved one die today. It was nothing like in the movies, nothing like what I’ve read in novels.   It was neither glorious nor peaceful, exciting nor frightening, there was no opening of the heavens, loud voices or gaseous paranormal activity.   It was in fact, nothing.   She was there one moment and gone the next.   She went from a wonderful mother and dear friend to a stiff and lifeless form that had little visible resemblance to the person I’d known all these years. When I arrived, I could see her struggling for breath through a dark hole surrounded by taught, grey cheekbones and my first thought was “good thing I didn’t stop and get gas in the car first” .   The tragedy in that thought, as shallow as it is, lies in the fact that had I stopped, She’d have been gone before I keyed the debit number into the pump.   Trading gas for life – that’s how bizarre this all is. As I approached the bedside, I could only feel pain for m...
Read more

Balance Within a Balance - Fik vs. Calder

People keep talking about balancing work and home life as if were actually even a possibility.  I'm finding in my world, that balance looks more like an Alexander Calder mobile that didn't quite past muster. It hangs askew from the ceiling with a limp and peculiar air about it and I'm not sure if its pathetic for its planning or its execution, in either case - the vision before me is anything but glorious. There's not simply the question of two opposing forces balancing; in fact, the deadly component no one mentions are the dozens of little balancing acts within each topic.  Balancing the politics at work with the actual need to get something accomplished.  Balancing what gets accomplished and who looks to gain what, from it..well, you get the drift; balancing within a balance.  Watching Bethany get off the school bus the other day, I was suddenly overcome with a glimpse of all the poorly balanced items in my life.  For the eternity of one minute, I was full...
Read more

Being Fed With Stone Soup

The quiet surgeon went on to explain how his life had gone from being the doctor to being the patient in a span of about 60 minutes.   One moment he’s a surgeon doing what he believed God had designed him to do, the next moment he’s looking at his own x-rays which reveal that he’s now a cancer victim with less than 3 years life expectancy.   Somehow, at the end of all this he was able to say “I thank God for the cancer”.   From that sobering testimony, the pastor turned to face a tent full of individuals who have their own sobering realities stuffed into bodies that are “imperfect” by conventional standards.   He was able to face them and with words that defy logic, speak how each developmental difference was in fact more special than different, more a gift than a curse.   That one set me back a bit.   The tent was alive with human movement but little of it would be welcomed as special in most of the world.   Jesus’s absurd metaphor came to mind,...
Read more