October 1, 2008

• Addictions

  The Story:  something small with a cylindrical base traveled up out of the muck toward shore when abruptly something wearing gull feet swooped down out of the sky and ate it. Life in the mud is hard, and now it’s also cold. It can get much colder, of course, but the eighties are gone and may not be back for a very long time. We closed the windows. It is another murky, cloudy day with rain forecasted. I’m beginning to feel like something in the muck with a cylindrical base.

  I have to call over a hundred people today and beg them to help me call the entire registered non-Republican population of Three Rivers and ask them to vote for my candidate. I would rather perform my own dental surgery. The only advantage this particular bout of calling has to recommend it is that it is not fundraising. Nancy called  a number of her ‘strong dems’ last night. She said the average strong dem is about 85. When it takes them eleven rings to get to the phone and their voice shakes and they can’t hear what you’re saying, it’s hard to ask them if they would like to walk all over the city collecting votes.

  This is not a wonderful photograph, but it does show the reconstruction of the bridge. There is a large vehicle parked at both ends to prevent any weekend travelers from trying to make unauthorized crossings. Again, I stress: this is supposed to be a little crackerbox with a roof on it; this view is altogether airy.

  I am restless and out of sorts. I ate a candy bar yesterday. Not a single serving candy bar: about three-quarters of a pound of chocolate. It didn’t taste particularly good (it was, ironically, too sweet) but somehow the fact that it tasted all wrong made me continue to eat it, sort of like you eat a really bad piece of pie, hoping at least one bite, somewhere in it, will redeem itself. Furthermore, when I finished it made me faintly ill, and then nearly put me to sleep.Lesson learned, you are thinking, and I suspect you would be just wrong. However, the craving for chocolate has abated (in fact, it’s nearly loathing at this exact moment) and I am determined to be a better person for my regret. Addicts everywhere will recognize the sentiment.

  This photograph I think is a much clearer picture of what is missing. (yes: water.) All up and down the river are boats and rafts sitting in the mud, some quite some distance from any floatation medium. It’s a sad thing.

  And now, swiftly and gracefully back to my addictions: I used to smoke. I was not a moderate smoker. My Beloved recently stopped smoking and she struggled mightily with her 5-cigarette a day habit. I have bite scars all over the end of my tongue. I smoked two to two and a half packs a day, and on one particularly intense evening I smoked half a carton. I loved smoking. I loved cigarettes. I did not so much love that whole packing-to-leave process whenever I left the house/car/wherever I was for wherever I was going… But the light of my day was putting that cigarette to my lips, striking the match or the lighter, taking that first deep drag…  God, I loved smoking.

  My asthma, not so much. I remember the first time I woke up at four in the morning and could NOT get my breath. I must have lain there convinced I was dying of some fatal but undefined disease for twenty minutes before my chest released and I could inhale and exhale as much air as I wanted at will. I swore I would stop smoking first thing that morning.

  I didn’t, of course. I quit smoking–all three times I quit–when my asthmatic bronchitis became so intense I could no longer smoke and breathe at the same time. There are addictions, and then there is total respiratory shutdown. It really is a no-brainer. What I found interesting was the intervals. The first time I started smoking–at 19–I smoked for ten years. The second time I started smoking (about 6 months after I quit) I smoked for three years. The third time I started smoking (8 years later) I smoked for 11 months. I haven’t smoked since 1991, but I suspect that even if I started again, it would only last about 6 months before total respiratory shutdown came again. You can smoke…or you can breathe. Pick one.

  The annoying thing about food is that, unlike smoking, you can’t just quit eating.

  But so far I can still wear my ‘skinny’ jeans (Lord, she shudders) and life goes on.

  • 9:36 am
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