No smoking for one week. The patch helps.

Cigarettes are sublime. As Richard Klein wrote, "Smoking belongs to that category of action that falls in between the states of activity and passivity—a somewhat embarrassed, embarrassing condition, unclean, unproductive, a mere gesture." I often quoted Matthew Schmitz as well: "If our bodies are temples, we should not fear to fill them with smoke... Still, incense is not tobacco, and I consider smoking a beautiful indulgence but an ugly habit."

A weapon against time. Pleasant beyond all measure. Yet I'm no longer free, entangled in a web of smoky tendrils. The patch has the nicotine covered; the craving is something else, something psychological or spiritual, affective--of the heart, even. Blessed are the pure of heart. It was, for me, becoming an ugly habit, tethering my attention and my gratification to itself and becoming something that clouded the eye of the heart.

So here I sit, slowly clearing the way for a better way. I may be permitted a little poetic musing to fill the gap.

"I cannot help but think that a leaf hailed by the French as une volupte nouvelle, the only pleasure unknown in ancient courts, is a fitting symbol for the advent of our Lord. We know what the ancients did not; we taste the sweet presence for which they longed. Christ is the true volupte nouvelle. To those who know him, all other pleasures seem tired and worn."

#quotestr #grownostr