{"id":322,"date":"2016-07-12T01:34:00","date_gmt":"2016-07-12T01:34:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=322"},"modified":"2016-07-12T01:34:00","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T01:34:00","slug":"i-smoke-very-well-smoking-world-no-tobacco-day-2017","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=322","title":{"rendered":"I Smoke Very Well"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><span class=\"dropcap\">\u201cA<\/span>t eleven years old, more or less, I became almost simultaneously, a voracious reader and a promising smoker.\u201d Thus opens the untitled story in <\/p><em>My Documents <\/em>by the immensely gifted Chilean writer, Alejandro Zambra.\n\nIn the opening paragraph he writes:\n\n<em>\u201cIn my first years at university, a more lasting bond formed between reading and tobacco\u2026 I got my hands on The Clown, a very beautiful and bitter novel in which the characters smoke all the time \u2013 on every page or at least every page and a half. And every time they lit their cigarettes, I would light mine, as if that were my way of taking part in the novel. Maybe that\u2019s what the literary theorists mean when they talk about the active reader: A reader who suffers when the characters suffer, who is happy when they are happy, who smokes when they smoke.\u201d<\/em>\n\nWhen I read these words my heart stopped, I lit a cigarette and read the passage again. He could be me. In fact, he was me. I am the most active reader I know. I have been known to speak in a Scottish accent when I\u2019m reading Irvine Welsh, or asking my wife to \u201cstop those polluting sounds\u201d (the TV), when I\u2019m reading the <em>Dhammapada<\/em>. Just like the narrator in the story, I\u2019ve tried giving up smoking so many times that I\u2019ve forgotten. I\u2019ve clicked pictures of my cigarette butts, lined up one after the other like nails on a cross. I\u2019ve stared at these pictures. I\u2019ve tried to coax myself into disgust. Zambra is trying too, because his doctor has told him it\u2019s a cause for the debilitating cluster headaches that would feel like several hammers hitting at different sides of his brain all together. But like me, when he is overpowered with the sight and smell of that white cancer stick, he relapses.\n\n<em>\u201cWalking down Agustinas this morning, I saw a man approximately my age and height and also my coloring who was smoking as he walked. I watched him take a drag of his cigarette, and for an instant the movement struck me as very odd. It was a long drag, as though in slow motion. Suddenly I wanted to absorb or devour his face.\u201d<\/em>\n\nI hate my habit. I love my habit. Both statements are equally true. I have paid for my habit with a tongue that has lost at least 30 per cent of its sensitivity, a throat that packs up every so often, bad breath, moral and health guilt-trips by concerned friends and relatives \u2013 and I\u2019ve paid for it in cash; cold hard cash, or as Zambra puts it, in houses.\n\n<em>\u201cNow I have the approximate calculation of how many cigarettes I have smoked in my life. And the total amount of money I have spent on cigarettes. I\u2019m keeping this notebook out of a kind of therapeutic intention, but I don\u2019t dare write those numbers down here. I\u2019m ashamed. I do a little division and determine that the monthly amount I\u2019ve spent on cigarettes, for years now, is roughly equivalent to a mortgage. I am a person who has chosen to smoke rather than have a house. I\u2019m someone who has smoked a house.\u201d<\/em>\n\nI have probably smoked two houses. I began smoking in boarding school when I was about 16. Back then the thrill came as much from the fear of getting caught as from the high of the nicotine. The preferred brand was Charminar \u2013 and you could smoke in an airplane, in a movie hall, and even into your little baby\u2019s face. Oh sweet Lord! What days!\n<blockquote class=\"quote--center\">Even Zambra, at the end of the story, makes his peace with smoking. He finds redemption. Maybe I will too.<\/blockquote>\nIn university, we measured out our life with cigarettes and black coffee: Camus and Sartre and Eliot and Panama filter-less cigarettes \u2013 trying to put on an Ernest Hemingway vibe to impress the girls. All writers smoke, and all of us wanted to be writers, so we all smoked. When I got a job, I moved to premium-filtered cigarettes. \u00a0I\u2019ve been smoking at least a pack a day of these for the last 25 years.\n\nTo make things worse, I have a wife who smokes at least as much as me \u2013 and two children who look on in horror. The only time they tried to tell me to stop, I told them they can tell me what to do \u2013 or not do \u2013 only after they start earning their own keep. So that shut them up for a bit.\n\nSo why do I smoke? Quite apart from the nicotine, which is the most addictive substance known to mankind, the fact is that I just really, really enjoy a good smoke. The first one in the morning that sometimes gives you a slight buzz, the long lingering one after lunch, the sweet one with the first drink of the evening, the last one before I sleep, the long lost friend I suck at the minute I get off a flight \u2013 these are some of the finest moments of my day. A line in a poem by Merino says, \u201cThe one you smoke right now is all there is.\u201d And it\u2019s true. Take life one cigarette at a time and the whole thing becomes a little less complicated.\n\nI know I am puffing my way to an early grave. But the one who got throat cancer was my mother, who hasn\u2019t smoked a single cigarette her whole life. And just look at the Japs. They smoke like forest fires, drink like there\u2019s no tomorrow, and live longer than any other race on earth. I thought I wanted to be like the Japs. But do I? Like Zambras, I\u2019m no longer sure that longevity is the endgame.\n\n<em>\u201cI stopped smoking because of my clusters, but maybe that wasn\u2019t the main reason. The thing is, I\u2019m cowardly and ambitious. I\u2019m such a coward that I want to live longer. What an absurd thing, really: to want to live longer. As if I were, for example, happy.\u201d<\/em>\n\nMany years ago, at a meeting, a (not Japanese) venture capitalist asked me why I smoke so much. I asked him why shouldn\u2019t I? He said because you will get ill and die. I said, could you guarantee me that if I give up smoking I will never fall ill and die? He looked at me like I had lost my mind. But I think it was he who was lost.\n\nIn the story, someone interviews another famous Chilean writer, Armando Uribe, about his filthy habit.\n\n<em>\u201cYou\u2019ve never worried that cigarettes will kill you?\u201d she asks. <\/em>\n\n<em>\u201cYou know, I don\u2019t care; I don\u2019t support the idea that human beings, on average, should live for so many years.\u201d<\/em>\n\nI agree with Uribe. Even Zambra, at the end of the story, makes his peace with smoking. He finds redemption. Maybe I will too. Till then, I\u2019m just going to keep smoking till I can\u2019t anymore and then, and only then, will my last cigarette be extinguished.\n\nYes, smoking kills. But so does living.\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Why do I smoke? Quite apart from the addictive nicotine, I really enjoy it. Yes, smoking kills. But so does living.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":60,"featured_media":323,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[62,63,64,65,66,67,568,569,570,571,572,573,574,71,72,575,576,577],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-vice","tag-arre","tag-arre-digital-platform","tag-arre-originals","tag-arre-reads","tag-arre-text-articles","tag-arre-website","tag-kick-the-butt","tag-marlboro","tag-short-story","tag-smoke","tag-smoking","tag-tobacco","tag-vise","tag-web-series","tag-web-shows","tag-world-no-tobacco-day","tag-world-no-tobacco-day-2017","tag-zambra"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v28.0 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>I Smoke Very Well<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Why do I smoke? 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