Happy New Year’s Eve, friends and family (and enemies and the indifferent and still-not-sure).
Last night went and had a couple cigars with the brother-in-law. Some strip-mall smokes and spirits hole, but really nice. I told Doug, as we were sitting there, that in a past life I must have been a smoker or frequented places where smoke hung regular in the air – as I’m oddly at-home comfortable in those types of places today. Even though I leave with my clothes smelling like they were washed in some foul smoke-bath (I guess they were), my skin feels like paper and my sinuses tighten so much my head feels heavier for it – I enjoy the smoking experience.
Pipes, cigars, even the occasional cigarette… all have a draw. Like I say, maybe in some previous life this was comfortable to me. Or, maybe, Piaget was onto something and the stage of my youth which was marked by time spent with the smokestacks who were my maternal grandparents is imprinted alongside “safe, comfortable, and easy” in my mind.
Anyway we hung out and smoked and drank dark beer (Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout, something I fist had as a bottle offered in trade for a campfired hot dog by a dirty hippie at a Grateful Dead festival). We talked about grown up things to justify our grey hair and sore feet: real estate investments, insurance, the march of technology, our jobs and families. In the end I found myself again wishing that were we closer to family. A hollow hope and really not much more for now, since I wouldn’t leave our current situation anyway; I’m risk-averse and happy and comfortable. But for a lark it’s fun to sit and think what I might do if we up and hauled buggy across the country. Maybe I could start a whole new career. Maybe not.
See ya.
Also written on this day...
- a luxuriating lordship - 2019
- fleeting festivity - 2009
- our white day - 2008
- mud and weeds - 2004