Phoenix Business

This is the first time I have gone a full week without smoking in as long as I can remember. Not to imply that I track my smoking, or that I tend to have perfect recall about these things, but just merely that I tried not to smoke for a week and successfully kept from doing so. I smoked last Monday night after drinking myself silly with Nat and Dave. I remember we were discussing a breadth of personal topics, our evening drunk extending into the giddy hours—the choppy ones where nothing of substance is said, but everything swells with importance. These nights have been ripe on the vine, lately, even among the friends who don't drink; tiredness and being lonesome together pinch-hitting for aqua vitae.

The cigarette recalls itself to me with a green sky seen through my personal haze and the blinding cityglow that permeates The Bay. The choking vapors had become more noxious of late. Maybe some lost fetal care in my breast awakened... a catalyst or reagent of self-preservation and the long view suddenly introduced. The taste was wrong, and a blighted feeling swept my brain, dismembering the usual feeling of rightness that comes from that intoxication.

And maybe that's what I get from the substances I bestow selfward. It feels just like that. Correct. Cool, even. Cigarettes, alcohol and the more mind-altering chemical pastiches I imbibe. The memory of them leaves me haunted by a longing spirit with transparent designs. A couple of beers and the blur is present, all creation at peace. One tall drink of coffee inspires the next until fingertips rattle, and the effect is oddly calming. Nesbitt's Paradox.

The alcohol I can deal with. The consequences, the missing time, the hurt feelings. They're rarities. Lashing predators, who, caged in sobriety, will always find an escape. The alcohol acts as a steam vent, and as the blackness and bile are dealt with on my own time, we see that those incidents move away. No matter how powerful the drug, your head will still rear. Thus, similarly, the fungus, the weeds.

The cigarettes, though, they have to go. An experiment. Sacrificial bull for the open maw of addiction. Real strength is seen in the men who stand before the vortex, urging a little more out of every muscle; straining for purchase. Those who spot the whorl on the horizon and juke left until it fades from sight... we envy their foresight, but we do not commend them on their accomplishments. Now and forever that little black curse will be there, smirking. I'm a part of it.

Sacrificial bull. Lay the head upon marble, and take the bronze knife in hand. The haft is bone, just like this trussed brute. Slice carefully, a semicircle from vein to vein, loosing a double fountain of scarlet. He moans his last, and you stroke him on the neck. There's a powerful muscle there: strength and honesty. This is your innocence. His heat fades in the cold morning, steam rising from the blood. He shudders. That strength is going somewhere else. It would have died, with or without your hand. This is transfer. This is phoenix business. The brawn of innocence can only be used so many ways. Some of us give it up to carnality. Others violence. But those who let it fester and die, I maintain that they never truly join the rest of us. Never grow up like people who give in to temptation.

Now that I've sucked a thousand tiny fires and dripped ash like a volcano god... Now that I've tread upon the shores of Oligartha and vomited through the night... Now I can take from that strength. Stronger than the desire because I gave it a ride. I can learn, I can change, I can move by steps and stumbles in a direction of my choosing. Phoenix business measured in millimeters. A pinch of ash, a dash of flame, and all the world is within reach of something that's within reach of right now.