smokin

I'm gone, so out of there (the winter, I mean). Headed south. I'm sure I'll get pissed off about something along the way, and I'll fill you in about it. Meanwhile, let me just say, In Virginia you can still smoke Virginian in a bar. and buy cheap. Put in your orders now. And—see ya bye!

roads not taken

I love maps. All kinds of maps—topgraphical, climate zone, street maps, continental maps. Right now I'm looking at road maps. I'm sick of waiting for spring, and I'm thinking of going to meet it as it works north.
Being goal-oriented, the first thing I plot on a map is the destination. Being sociable, the next thing is is anybody I vaguely know in a broad swath between here and there. Then I estimate travel times, with particular attention to where I might be at 7:00 at night. To my way of thinking, it's rash to drive after 8:00 p.m. if you've been hauling ass all day. You need to pee, you're hungry and your powers of decision-making are sapped. Holiday Inn or Best Western? MacDonald's or Stuckey's. These are tough calls.
I take superhighways, obviously. OK, you learn more about the actual terrain by meandering down back roads, but something about the way you can soar over mountain ranges and down through valleys, sweep across rivers and tear through prairies gives you a better appreciation of the great geography of the land.
Still, the map also charts missed opportunities. Natural Bridge, which I will never pay money to see, likewise Carlsbad Caverns. There's the town where I spent some formative years, and another that has the best biscuits in the whole world. There's the one where I did the story about the white supremicists, and the one where an ex-lover still lives.
Let's look at the route and contemplate the possibilities.
Reason not to stop smoking today: It's a big country, and somebody's gotta drive it.

reach out and touch

"Mom, can you tell me how to do Jacob's Ladder over the phone? I'm going crazy here." Phone clutched to my shoulder, I tied a piece of string into a loop and tried to remember the difference between cat's cradle, witch's broomstick and the few other string figures I once knew how to make. I was able to remember Jacob's Ladder if I did it at top speed without thinking. So I did it over and over to talk her through it. "Drop the thumbs. . . put your forefingers through the triangles."
My daughter also calls me when she has questions about grammar, finances or recipes. And when sick, especially if she's throwing up.
But she never makes the kind of call that some of my friends do, which I call The-Last-Person-I-Spoke-To call. This person calls with a request for advice or help. So you look up the fare to Costa Rica or the 15-year mortgage rate or say "you were right to dump the asshole" (actually, I'm pretty careful not to say that, since you never know whether they're getting back together) and talk them through it.
Then they call the next person.
And the next person.
And they always listen to the last person they talked to. And then they call you back and say, "Well, Betty's daughter says I can get a fare for $230." "Well, Maria says I am crazy to pay 6 percent interest." "Well, Kate thinks any guy who does dishes is worth keeping and that I should get over my jealousy issues." And then, after taking a freaking poll, they want to know what I think. Again.
Put the string around your neck. With your hand in a fist, palm facing you, take your middle finger and extend it.
Reason I can't stop smoking today: phone polls

our crown of thorns

The most pagan of all our holidays is upon us. The fertility festival that, in the northern hemisphere, is the time of planting the seed. Hence the copulating bunnies, the abundant eggs, the vulval flowers. It is the time of the vernal equinox, a time of renewal and resurrection when the sun is risen again.
Bingo.
The Jesus thing.
That guy has a lot to answer for.
I blame Jesus for the fact that my Catholic friends can’t even get naked in the shower without feeling guilty.
I blame Jesus for Mel Gibson and George Bush.
I blame Jesus for the Crusades and World War II and the Ku Klux Klan.
I blame Jesus, most of all, for that blank look people get in their eyes when you ask them to think about something they don’t want to think about.
Like their belief system. Consider Christianity for a second.
Immaculate conception.
Right.
Resurrection from death.
Sure.
Eating flesh and drinking blood.
Okay.
I think I’ll stick with the sex and chocolate. And a cigarette.
Reason for smoking today: Jesus, Mary and Joseph

that's cold

Originally uploaded by big head.

Eskimo kids smoking, 1918

my precious life

I've got an idea, let's keep everybody alive as long as we possibly can. Take me, for instance. When the ticker starts to give out, or the lungs, put me on life support right away, before anything starts to shut down. Don't worry about my quality of life, just extend it by any means possible. After all, my life is precious. And despite the fact that it's my own fault that my organs are facocked, some medical breakthrough may make it possible to regrow them and bring me back. I think that prospect is worth it. Don't you? I mean, your life is precious, too. Every life is precious. We need to stop building nursing homes where you can play cards and go to arts and crafts and sign do-not-resussitate orders and just concentrate on building warehouses where we can keep as many humans alive as possible so that their lives never end. And while we're at it with the end-of-life end, let's also make sure that we cover the beginning-of-life end. We can harvest women's eggs before they're aborted (alas, it may be too late for many of mine) and grow them in artificial wombs so that no precious life is wasted! Wouldn't that be cool? The whole world could be covered with these facilities and the few functioning people left would all have jobs! And what rewarding ones! Like vegetable gardening.
So what the heck, I'll have a puff and go run around in traffic.
Reason for smoking today: Because I'm worth it.

boss lady

Every week there is some new disaster in my cleaning lady's life. The granddaughter who's mouthing off at school. The son whose policewoman wife was beating him. The contractor who's suing her after fucking up her kitchen. The fainting spell that took her to the doctor. The bag of gifts she left in the subway by accident. The doctor again. The contractor again. The legal fees. The doctor.
Is every cleaning lady's life like this? And do all of them share the information with their employers? How did I get the position of confidante and problem solver for a woman I see for a couple of hours a week? I have never met her family nor been to her house.
But of course she knows all about me. Who my family and friends are. What newspapers I read and how often I move the furniture (often). Where I keep my spare change. What my closets look like. And my underwear. And my sheets after visitors.
She knows where I live. And everybody likes feedback from an employer. Never mind that I'm just a person, too, a person who has consistantly refused positions that require managing employees. I know the rules. And so I listen.
She doesn't approve of my smoking, although she's never said so. I think I'll have one now, before she gets here with her litany of misfortunes.
Today's reason: I'm the boss.

nightwork

Sleep can be so exhausting. The body checks all its systems—temperature control, fluids, mechanical systems-and runs through the programming. You're sweating, coughing, twitching, palpitating. And then there's the mind, which seems to need to clean up the hard drive. There'a lot of shit on there. Everything you have ever done or might do or wish you had done is all in there to be run and rerun endlessly in a whirl of psychogarble that's very difficult to sort out (save as, trash) once you wake up. Ah, but then you're cleansed in body and mind, tabula rasa.
Reason to have a cigarette on this new day: I'm beat.

smokin'

photograph by Chien-Chi Chang/Magnum Photos

our president

Gobsmacked is the term I'm looking for, I believe. Yesterday the cops were soliciting my support, today it's Republicans. Is this for real?
A card with my name on it claiming that I'm a platinum member of The President's Club has arrived at my address. The accompanying letter reads, in part, "We must give President George W. Bush the support he needs to do what is right for our country by cutting taxes, modernizing social security and strengthening our military." Wait for it: "I believe your expemplary record of loyalty and patriotism proves you are the caliber of leader President Bush can count on in this impressive struggle.".
Loyalty and patriotism? Leader? The administration's intelligence is as flawed as ever. Who have they been talking to? Not the FBI. And they sure didn't get my name from the IRS—the pitch continues that all I have to do to keep this card (for use at "prestigious events") is pay $1000 to the Republican National Committee. That's like asking a homeless person to pay off the hit-and-run driver who maimed him for life.
Having the name of an irredeemable pacifist-leftie like me on such a mailing list is not identity theft but identity transplant. I suspect that my name may have been provided to the RNC by the same friend who pasted a Bush-Cheney bumper sticker to my rental car—you know who you are. I got him back by surrepticiously affixing a sticker to his bumper that read "Honk If You're Gay."
Buddy, can you spare a cig?
Reason not to quit today: Mailing lists.

getting the irish up

It's St. Patricks Day, and for some reason my mind turns to the most recent call I got from the Policeman's Benevolent Association when I was either eating or sleeping. The calls go like this:
"Good morning, ma'am, I'm calling you today" blah blah "know you want to support" blah blah "bulletproof vests" blah blah "the Force" blah blah "so can I at least put you down for?"
On my end the conversation goes: "No." "No." No." "No." "No." This is a technique I learned when I found myself switched to MCI (yay, WorldCom!) for saying "Yes, but," one time.
There is never time for me to say, "I hate cops. Policeman's Benevolant Association? My associations with policemen are all malevolent. Maybe it's all the acid I took and there's something wrong with my DNA now that makes me hate cops. Yeah, I know that now that I'm full-fledged fat-cat member of society you're supposed to be on my side. And yeah, one of my best friends used to be a cop. And yeah I'm fucking Irish for that matter, but it just doesn't make any difference. I don't want the sticker that keeps me from getting speeding tickets. I'm never giving you any money. I HATE COPS. Get it?"
Happy St. Patty's Day. Crack me open a Clausthauler. Strike a match.
Reason not to stop smoking today: Fucking pigs.

negative attitude

photograph by Sam Scholes

country media

The Michael Jackson thing finally put me over the edge: I am boycotting the New York Post. Mind you, I do love gossip. I mean, once upon a time I was the movie editor at People. And one of my fondest memories is being in the middle of god knows where and hearing that Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley (guess she's not being called as a witness) were married. That was too wonderful to be true. And yet it was true!
And I reckon that's the problem. I used to read the Post for the same reason that I used to like country music, partly as a goof, and partly to keep in touch with what my brothers and sisters of America were thinking about. But as country music with its drinkin' and cheatin' and numbin' litany of misfortunes began to seem more and more true to life and less and less amusing, I went off it.
Same with the Post. It probably started with Bush's reelection. Then there was the Scott thing, the Martha thing. Even Wierd but True started seeming not that weird and all too true. The headlines started to suck. And I could get the horoscope on the web without ever having to look at the rest of the depressing reality of what America is today.
In fact, what I have in common with my countryfolk right now is mostly the president and the addictions we share. Not enough for solidarity.
Reason not to stop smoking today: Michael Fucking Jackson

for god's sake

In the dream I was attending sabbath services at a synagogue with my husband. When I woke, I wondered why, since I'm neither married to him any more nor Jewish. It was probably prompted by a story I read of a women who converted from Judaism to evangelical Christianity and embraced chastity for two years (with, she coyly admits, a couple of slips) until she married and could have good Christian sex.
Well hallelujah for her. Chastity is no fucking problem at all if you're single, female and over 40, let me tell you. That's particulary unfair since it is at this age that most women become raving sex maniacs. Two years? Wow. I have been chaste for longer stretches (ok, a couple of slips) with zero Christian conscience and absolutely no challenge to my willpower (which we know to be weak, see blog title).
Jesus, pass me a cigarette.
Reason for smoking today: Chastity for god's sake.

nasty habits

I was under the impression that if parents smoked, their rebellious children seldom did. Or vice-versa in my case. It was a comforting impression, since when I had a kid I wouldn't/couldn't stop anyway. So my kid spent most of her childhood crumbling my cigarettes, throwing them out the window, showing me autopsy pictures of lungs and all the other stuff that they were teaching them in school.
One night I had a dream that my daughter was smoking. When I told her this, she said, "Mothers always know." Alas. She quits over and over, but she smokes, along with indulging in all the other bad habits she's learned from me over the years such as drinking, taking drugs, going to orgies and marrying starving artists. There are a few ahead of her (and fortunately behind me) that she hasn't taken up yet. I throw up my hands. She's grown, and I've already won the role model of the year award.
Reason I can't stop smoking today: It's too late

speaker phones

Today is the anniversary of the first phone call. There are now some 531 million telephone numbers in the U.S. You got your pagers, your cellphones, your land lines, your FAXes, your beepers, your Palm Pilots. And you got your speaker phones.
Today I spent half an hour on the phone to England. I was holding my phone to my ear, and She was wandering around the room listening to my stupid questions broadcast at volume. Maybe even smoking a cigarette (though, since She's a geneticist, I doubt it) while I held the phone clutched to my shoulder in the way that invariably gives me an ache and tried to scribble down what she was saying in my notebook. The combo of speaker phone and pommy accent with a liberal spritz of scientific jargon didn't help. In fact, I don't dare look at my notes, because they are full of tridots. . .
We know who had the power position in this call, right?
Reason I can't stop today: Mr. Bell

ungrateful readers

So far I have made 12 cents on this blog. That's because you people don't click on the ads. Maybe you don't want to stop smoking. Maybe you don't smoke. I can deal with that, although I won't be trotting right over to the bank to deposit a check for pennies. However, there's another issue. I know that about a hundred people check into this site every day. I know who many of you are. The check-in obviates the necessity for me to repeat myself a zillion times about what I've been up to. But I still have to relay the "he said/she said" parts because you all are sending me e-mails or phoning rather than writing in. Are you just checking in to make sure that you do or don't appear? How about some fucking feedback here?
Why I can't stop smoking today: I'm just blowing smoke.

magazine issues

I don't know if you've noticed, but general interest publications are pretty much over. The Economist is the only one I read with any regularity, and I'm not alone. Niche magazines are what's happening. This is unfortunate for me, because I've never been a niche journalist—I like doing a little bit of everything. Reality bites, though, so I bit the bullet and did whatever niche I had the knick-knacks to fill. Lately, it's been science. So I have these two story contracts for a science mag only to find out yesterday that the magazine is on the block.
Not a good sign. I have finished and billed one story; I am setting up the second; I have been paid for neither. "Don't worry, the editor tells me, the company stands behind you."
The last time the company was supposed to stand behind me it was for a story for a magazine that folded. The company did not stand behind me. Nor the photographer I was working with. Nor the story subjects who gave me their time.
(Inhale)
Reason I can't stop smoking today: The check is in the mail.

puffmama

Just hang onto it. I'm too traumatized at the moment to do anything but smoke, but I'll do the reveal one of these times before too long.
Why I can't stop smoking today: Sorry, too busy inhaling to write.

those darn editors

Have you heard the one about a writer and an editor standing on the bank of a river with the sunset reflecting off the crystal torrent? The editor (a man, naturally) unzips his fly and pisses into the pristine waters. The writer (probably also a man or this incident would likely never have occurred in this enlightened age) looks at him in disbelief and says, "What the hell are you doing?" The editor turns to the writer smugly and says, "Making it better."
So yesterday I saw the editor on my latest story. I was prepared for the above, but what actually happened was worse: He hadn't even read the story I handed in a few weeks ago. I jammed to report it, jammed to do it, jammed to collect the reasearch, jammed to send in the bill—hey, the expenses are already on my credit card—and he hasn't even bothered to read it. Well piss on that.
I think there's one left in the pack.
Today's reason to smoke: editors

price point

The great smoke-out has gotten pretty serious. Rhode Island just went smoke free, as did all the pubs in Ireland. But where it really hurts is that the inhabitants of New York City who, until a month ago, were happily avoiding the seven-bucks-a-pack prices by ordering off the Internet are now finding that loophole plugged. Some have even been assessed for back taxes on their purchases (okay, a few of those were likely black-marketing). The Seneca tribe apparently continues to fight the good fight, but one friend of mine has gone so far as to order his four cartons shipped to Connecticut then (illegally) ferried into town by a friend.
Me, I glory in the high price. I walk to the newsstand, buy my papers and a pack and plonk down my ten bucks feeling like one of those fat-cat cartoon characters who lights up a stogie with a hundred-dollar bill.
Reason to smoke today: It makes me feel rich.