this admittedly strange habit of inhaling smoke, smoking, making and burning little tubes of tobacco, etc, began sometime around 20July2001. it’s currently in cessura as of a bet made on 2September2002 with another smoker: whichever of us smokes first within the next six months buys dinner at Chez Panisse.

cigarettes are addictive precisely because they are so versatile; for me they have served a metaphysical role, as markers for time, as surrogates for memory: i can tell you what i smoked at the marina, in Germany, on the deck of the house on eunice, and in golden gate park. i can enumerate the specific reasons for switching, can catalog the oddities of buying them in various places in europe. i have crystallized the vast inferno of my heart with the at least fifty Galouises that burned in her apartment. and now that i have quit, time has begun to operate differently, to move more swiftly in certain ways, to draw other things to fine points. the strange effect of this is that it is easier to quit for six months than it is to quit for one.