Saturday, March 25, 2006

Attack of the Tobacco Spongers

I've come to the decision of giving up on smoking. Not just for the obvious reasons of it being unhealthy and financially draining, but also because of the legions of tobacco spongers marching through the city in civil uniforms.


At least once a day I was approached by one of the troopers with the generic phrase: “Could you spare a cigarette, mate?”. There was no scientifically proven way of evading these people. Often I contemplated hiding the cigarettes up my ass, but it would be no surprise, if they just stuck their heads up there as well asking: “Could you spare a cigarette, mate?”. What the hell was wrong with these people? The majority of these people had the financial means of buying a pack of cigarettes. I was a fairly travelled man, but had never come across this phenomenon. Not only was it an obvious and bad phenomenon, these encounters were also increasing at an alarming rate.


You could find yourself in the middle of a completely empty street. Not a single soul would be in sight. Tumble weed would be passing in front of you along with old newspapers. It was when you put that blasted lighter to the cigarette, a hole in the space time continuum would take place. The scenery of an abandoned part of town would transform into a busy medieval market place. Out of thin air these spongers would appear like cocks and do their default church choir line up for you and sing: “Could you spare a cigarette, mate?”. Sing you motherfuckers sing. I was through with the bullshit. I was kicking the habit.

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

Sunshine Today, Sunshine Tomorrow

Yesterday before I fell asleep, I realised a greater truth about myself. It's funny how you can shift mental states and not really realise it. States that can be completely out of persona and consume years of your life. As I lay there in my bed, I finally saw that I walking down a path, which I shouldn't be following.


For the first time in a long time I woke up feeling content in this special way. Yes, I could feel that I have taken one step closer to the person whom I once was. The results were instantaneous, when I left my home. People seemed to smile more and the birds actually did whistle and not curse at me.
At work I was able to shield myself behind my mood, and all the bullshit and the intrigues bounced off of my mental kevlar that protected me from negatives energies. I was angry at myself for not seeing this earlier, but perhaps I needed to fall to realise, how high up I was.


With my new pair of eyes, I was able to grasp things differently. I noticed small things that I would normally ignore. One incident today was, when I on my way home stopped by a place to buy some food. When I first entered the place, there was a man in his late 60s sitting in a purple jacket and grey trousers eating silently. His meal consisted of chips and chicken sparsely distributed on a small plate. While my food was being prepared, which took roughly 10 to 15 minutes, the food on the geezer's plate somehow did change much, and I suddenly noticed why.
This guy was eating incredibly slow. It looked like a cautious process. Slowly balancing the chips on his fork and getting these soaked on enough fat that drenched the plate. A good simile in this case, would be like watching a grizzly bear trying to deflower a virgin fly. I wouldn't be surprised, if he had actually gotten on all four and started licking the plate clean. For fuck sake, it's chicken and chips, it's not French cuisine, where you sit and enjoy the savoury sensation and the restaurants interior decorations. No, this was a dodgy little fish'n'chips shop on a dodgy road in a very dodgy part of town. Some people just overcomplicate things and forget to enjoy the beauty of simplicity.


Walking with my food in my hand back to the house, I remembered how yesterday had been and how today was. Tomorrow would be better for sure. My sunshine days had finally come crashing into my life.
Many things were life are irreversible, but this one wasn't. Your mental state could shift and change, but your true essence would always stayed submerged and stored behind those infinite layers of changed, until one day it will pop up from beneath the surface and float on top like a turd on the oceans of this life time.


Edward T. Shufflebottom