Smoke Rings (Fall Equinox 2014)

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 that glows softly from within when it’s lit, a meerschaum pipe carved into an eagle’s talon clutching the bowl, a small burl wood pipe I inherited from my grandfather.

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