Smoke Rings - a reading (on YouTube)
For the past few days, high
white clouds have softened the morning, knocking down the harsh, sharp edges,
casting silvery light through the trees. The first sign of fall. Soon, I will
be released from the white prison of summer, free to commune with the goddess
once again, only to find in my absence, she’s dyed her hair from green to gold.
When the weather finally breaks, you’ll find me on the back porch, getting
reacquainted, a burl wood pipe in hand.
I first wanted a pipe after
reading The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien’s wizards and heroes carried their pipes
and tobacco throughout their adventures. They smoked for entertainment, to relax
and sometimes to work through their problems. In college, I almost always had
my pipe with me. I mostly smoked out on a bridge in the botanical gardens. One
of the first impressions I made on my wife was sitting at night with my feet
outstretched on a concrete railing, wrapped in cloak, light pooling around me from
above, my pipe tucked into a moccasin boot.
My father gave me that first pipe
for my eighteenth birthday, a half-bent billiard with a sample of tobaccos.
Since then, I’ve accumulated a small collection, an onyx pipe from Mexico
The only tobacco I smoke now is
black Cavendish, a mild, mellow variety that goes by many names. In a tobacco
shop near college, it was ironically called Fog Cutter. In a shop in the local mall,
more appropriately George the Banker. In one of the last surviving shops in the
county, somewhat more ominously Midnight Blue.
When I was in college, pipe
tobacco was a luxury. Back then, if I could afford to smoke once a week, I was
lucky. Now, due to circumstances of allergies and weather, I’m only able to
break out a pipe at most a dozen times a year.
My father was a smoker. The
smell of a freshly lighted cigarette still brings back a flood of memories.
There is something pure about that scent, unblemished by stale smoke and lingering
ash. Like an oddly refreshing breeze that carries the hint of a distant
campfire after a long day on the trail. But after that first drag, the
cigarette experience quickly descends into servicing an addiction. A pipe
maintains its purity much longer. Its smoke is different, heavier yet sweeter.
If cigarettes are like beer, and cigars like whiskey, then pipe tobacco is fine
cognac. VSOP. Something to be sipped on a special occasion not guzzled every
day.
Like a snifter of cognac, a pipe
lends itself to contemplation and rebalancing. By its nature, it’s a patient
pastime. It takes time to load the bowl properly, time to tamp it down, time to
get it lit just so, time to sit back and enjoy it. On days around the equinox, that
ritual provides an opportunity to defragment my mind. To reintegrate with the
world by sitting and just being. To refocus by not focusing at all.
These days, I smoke almost
exclusively on the porch. Soaking in the sights and sounds of nature, I go
through the rite of loading and lighting it, as is my wont. Then I fire off a
quick succession of tiny smoke rings by tapping a finger against one cheek. Or roll
out larger ones that curl in upon themselves before they wobble and fly apart.
There is something meditative
in the way smoke rings rise and stray. Something magical in the way they hold
together as if conjured by a wizard, a mystic, or a priest. They linger and
float, a spiraling, spinning gray. Constantly turning inward in the cool, clear
half light of fall. And then, like my problems, they slowly fade away.
Relaxed and content, I set my
pipe aside. In the stillness that follows, I watch a narrow column of smoke
ascend in perfect order from its bowl. Until an unseen chaos strikes,
dispersing it in whorls and waves. Scattering it like winter’s impending storms
and strife. Or some unnamed god’s laughter at our plans.
© 2014 Edward P. Morgan III
