After I shot off in the wrong direction with relation to this, I have decided that in relation to the lecture we had on smoking this post shall be a little closer to the mark.
I am a smoker, I love smoking, I hate smoking, I think of it as a guilty pleasure and above all I am addicted to it. When I stop I find I am most depressed, tired and a terrible hypochondria descends upon me. I am ill and even dying. Thats the nature of withdrawl I guess. I have decided that smoking should be a ritual for pleasure. A moment in time like sex that you can enjoy and leave till the next time you wish to pleasure yourself. I love the draw and the feel that some part of my brain is being filled with a pleasant sensation that I only think about when I decide and try to quit.
http://www.fairpoint.net/~mrtedd/srm/nutshell.htm
The above webpage holds a quotation that explains how the white man took a commodity and lost all its mythological and ritual value. I am fully aware from what I have explained above that I am one of those people who thinks of it as a drug and an addiction I love to feed.
I want to say though, yes it is bad, however if it were ritualised to certain times of the calendar or day maybe the moderation with which we consumed it would reduce the ill affects.
I love lighting up after a moment of passion. The idea in the movies of the mid twentieth century the two cigarettes in an ashtray symbolised sex is merely a demonstration of the fashion of the time. A clever piece of imagery and maybe too a focus of ritual in a western way. It still amazes me to this day the amount of people who reply to the offer of a cigarette with "I only have one after sex". Is this a subtle unconscious change in our attitude to smoking.
Are we finally after several hundred years ritualising the smoke?
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