Fuminations

The worst thing a folk musician can do is stop smoking. Smoking is important. It tells the world that you understand your own transience and mortality. At least, it enables surface conversation outdoors in large cities, remarks punctuated by a silent inhale, a glance into the night sky. And in better circumstances -- and to the smoker, this is smoking's persistent lure -- it is a vehicle for existential "fuminations" on the mortality that smoking both defies and defers to. This writer is lame. He has stopped smoking. He is spiteful, spiteful, spiteful. He misses his transience. He is unhappy about how long he will have to not smoke cigarettes in order to safely die. Please, God, please, make America smart, but make it stupid about smoking again. And oh, if your mother was a waitress who died of emphysema, mine was a doctor who died of gin.

Eustace Pendragon III