My hands dance across each pocket, seeking out the misplaced tamper. Standing, I watch it fall from a fold in my shirt and the thing clatters across the floor. Tonight is slow, only two or three men turn and look at the sound. Mouth full of Vulcanite in a cigar shop, I'm the odd man out. It is not unusual for me, though, to be unusual. Perhaps fitting snugly in isn't on my menu.
Retrieve the fallen tamper, return to my seat. A quick pat to the tobacco and another match, my Perique is lit once more. I think, I do not know pipe culture. Cigar Culture I know, these are cigar folk around me and they are great folk in many ways. But to many of them the pipe is unnecessary, even annoying. They cut and light, having no patience for packing and the rest.
Surrounded though I am by tobacco alight, it seems as if I smoke alone.
And I like it that way. Pipe packed, I withdraw from all that which is not part of my briar, my tobacco. Every burning match is studied carefully as it hovers over the bowl, every mouthful of smoke is loosed either artfuly or scientifically, depending on whim. This is my pipe culture.
Then I fall, for just a moment, out of myself and into the smoke
I imagine a farmer with cob in aged hand, sitting on grey wood summer porch, 1930s.
Man on couch, 1957, worried about car troubles while packing his favorite pipe; the one Margo bought him on their honeymoon.
1985, proud grandad in favorite worn tweed coat gives grandson a fountain pen and briar. To work and to relax, each in their own time, neither to be forgotten.
Lost in whatever world my smoke invents, I separate from all time and space. Then reality creeps in: I look to the future, my coming move to Minneapolis. Cold city. Winter nights I'll spend on the porch, fighting to keep my pipe going as snow falls. Next summer, with luck, newly wed and enjoying the small joke of smoking St. James Flake at the St. James Hotel. Years, places in the future I've yet to imagine, they dance in the corners of my eyes.
Something pulls me back, I notice the pipe has gone out. Still so new at this. Another match, a few puffs, and a new set of worlds in the smoke. Ebb and flow like tides, sometimes clear but often distant and faded. In the course of one bowl, I see a thousand places, live a thousand lives, encounter mysteries I'll never untangle. That is how I like it, that is why I smoke.
Retrieve the fallen tamper, return to my seat. A quick pat to the tobacco and another match, my Perique is lit once more. I think, I do not know pipe culture. Cigar Culture I know, these are cigar folk around me and they are great folk in many ways. But to many of them the pipe is unnecessary, even annoying. They cut and light, having no patience for packing and the rest.
Surrounded though I am by tobacco alight, it seems as if I smoke alone.
And I like it that way. Pipe packed, I withdraw from all that which is not part of my briar, my tobacco. Every burning match is studied carefully as it hovers over the bowl, every mouthful of smoke is loosed either artfuly or scientifically, depending on whim. This is my pipe culture.
Then I fall, for just a moment, out of myself and into the smoke
I imagine a farmer with cob in aged hand, sitting on grey wood summer porch, 1930s.
Man on couch, 1957, worried about car troubles while packing his favorite pipe; the one Margo bought him on their honeymoon.
1985, proud grandad in favorite worn tweed coat gives grandson a fountain pen and briar. To work and to relax, each in their own time, neither to be forgotten.
Lost in whatever world my smoke invents, I separate from all time and space. Then reality creeps in: I look to the future, my coming move to Minneapolis. Cold city. Winter nights I'll spend on the porch, fighting to keep my pipe going as snow falls. Next summer, with luck, newly wed and enjoying the small joke of smoking St. James Flake at the St. James Hotel. Years, places in the future I've yet to imagine, they dance in the corners of my eyes.
Something pulls me back, I notice the pipe has gone out. Still so new at this. Another match, a few puffs, and a new set of worlds in the smoke. Ebb and flow like tides, sometimes clear but often distant and faded. In the course of one bowl, I see a thousand places, live a thousand lives, encounter mysteries I'll never untangle. That is how I like it, that is why I smoke.
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