with disquieting seriousness i took up smoking again. it seems like the only way for me to deal with the weakness intrinsic to addiction is to transfigure it, to transpose it onto a new level of commitment. if i can't beat the morbid desire for tobacco, i embrace it wholeheartedly.
i wonder what the difference is between such a damaging (and deadly) resolution and the resolution to its exact opposite. after all, i do not think of myself as a nihilist, i don't long for dissolution in nothingness (assuming death is that)... yet the reality of my habits would suggest otherwise. so why should one be so much harder to enact than the other? why is the appeal of what's wrong more appealing than that of what's right? transgression easier than discipline?
the courting of one's own fragility and mortality in the form of rolling, sparking and sucking a cigarette to the very last puff, the one that burns fingers and lips and reminds one that one literally is playing with fire responds in a twisted way to a promethean instinct, the vocation for autonomy and free will.
self sacrifice is a big word, yet the punishing the body through vices that have no redeming sides whatever is nothing but a form of asceticism. it is with a mystical devotion and a sick - but nonetheless real - joy that i inhale on a cigarette. it is with a fear of the unknown in the universe, with a terror for the unknown in human affairs, it is with a sense of safety in loss that i approach the pouch, that i search my pockets, that i expand my lungs. with enormous sadness and denial to match.
but after all, if i dig deeper in the soil of my motives, far beneath the surface where my smoking habits have the appearance of something so idiotic as a physical addiction, i meet the me that smokes metaphysically. i meet the me who smokes because i can. every fag is a declaration of independence, an anthem, a chant... if i can do so much as to hurt myself, no one can possibly debate the existence of free will.
how fucking dumb is that?
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