Oh Yeah

I drank my birthday under the table and only one of us walked away.

But now that one of us has a very bad headache and funny poo.

-brian.b

Today

I am Jack Bauer.

Seventh Day

I’ve made it a week without smoking. I’ll be honest: one reason I didn’t do this sooner was fear. I was afraid that if I tried to quit, then I’d fail, and consequently prove that I was an addict. That’s a pretty stupid reason to persist in a moderately dangerous habit.

But the reason why I haven’t “quit,” so to speak, is that I actually do enjoy the atmosphere of cloves, both physical and abstract. Physically, they taste good, plain and simple. They’re very aromatic, and somehow I’ve associated them with incense. Sure, there are some risks, but there are some benefits, too.

The abstract reasons are far more pertinent. Every time I light up, I recall some good times had with friends, such as: rainy nights relaxing on porches, backyard games of gin rummy, six mile walks on winter weekends. Cloves have (historically) worked as a boundary between “us” and “the rest of them” – and that aromatic space is filled with some of the most important conversations I’ve ever been a part of.

Cloves also bring back a waves of private memories. I have probably smoked more alone than any of my other old “smoking buddies.” I’ve smoked the most on those long solitary nights, regardless of whether I’m watching a pile of wood or simply up because “I can’t stop thinking/writing about her/him/it.”

I said that every time I light up, I invoke a lot of (really good) memories, mostly with friends, sometimes individual. I think, for anyone who cares, one reason I’ve resolved to significantly reduce my smoking is simply to preserve the sanctity of that tradition. The times and places where those conversations happened are gone; they’re not dead, just absent. In the meantime, I don’t want to cheapen the memories by “invoking them” all the time.

Still, I’m considering just quitting and remembering the past in other ways. We shall see after this weekend.

[bye]
-brian.b

success!!!!

bad news: the hard drive is damaged.
good news: diskwarrior 4.0 allowed me to retrieve my data!
the other good news: apple is covering the replacement of my hard drive at no cost to me.
the other other good news: replacing the hard drive is an in-house job, so they’ll be able to do it in one day once the parts arrive. i’ll probably be back on all fours next wednesday.

i seriously hope you’re in miami if you ever have a problem with your mac. the staff at the apple store at the falls will treat you right.

[okay, fingers uncrossed]
-brian.b

ps: day six, no cravings. i think i’m on the wagon.

only this time

my macbook kicked it. well, not the whole mac. just the hard drive. you know, the part of it that i care about the most. 
i closed my notebook and put it in my bag. when i opened it again, i noticed that it had never fallen asleep. immediately, i worried – if the mac didn’t sleep, the hard drive didn’t stop. 
if the hd didn’t stop, then it’s very possible my data got corrupted. the hard drive’s needle hovers at a literally microscopic distance from the disk itself – a piece of metal rotating at several thousand times per second. so if that needle ever hits that disk, wave bye-bye to your data.
alas, such was the case last night. i opened my notebook, and it functioned like a groggy drunk – i could interact with it, but only enough to realize the situation was hopeless. i managed to squeeze out a disk verification (which came up with a very bad error) before my computer completely locked up.
i restarted, waited for thirty minutes while the apple logo just stared at me (the bastard), and finally the screen changed (!) – to a black DOS-like prompt with the words “I HAVE NO NAME!” burned on the background. 
i have two seminar papers due in the next three weeks. i am currently at the best apple store ever… they’re covering this under warranty, but the data may be gone. i’m spending 100 dollars on “datawarrior” to find out – after which, i at least have a good solid data recovery program. 
[fcirnogsesresd]-brian.b

right now…

i crave any contact. even the painful. where is my blood?

[i think i left it over...]
-brian.b

on omissions

when ___ and the ____ ____ to ______, i ____ my _____ and _____ to the sounds of the _________ from my bedroom. childhood _________ _______; i was _______ again. i knew if i _____ then _____ would come _____ me.

the sound repeated. but ____ _____ i was _____ ____ the present.

fly paper.

i thought i mattered… at least a little.

[but apparently not?]
-brian.b

Day Three

This is my third day without a clove cigarette. This morning (as expected) I started bringing up some disgusting yellow phlegm as my body adjusts to the change.

The phrase “smoker’s cough” is now in the common cultural cache. But a lot of people don’t know that – when you stop smoking so much – you can actually develop a “quitter’s cough.” Here’s the process:

1. Your throat is full of thousands of hair-like tendrils called cilia. Cilia catch mucus on its way down towards the stomach so that your airway is covered with a protective coating of white blood cells and adhesives to trap irritants and microbes.

2. When you smoke, you depress the cilia on the back of your throat. They still work, but not as hard. In other words, they still catch mucus, but not as much.

3. As a result of decreased cilia activity, the body begins to create more mucus to keep the throat coated.

4. Within 1-3 days of the last cigarette, the body’s cilia will begin to function normally again. But it takes about 2 weeks for the body to stop over-producing mucus.

5. Now the smoker has too much mucus in his throat, and nowhere for it to go but “out.” Welcome to the quitter’s cough.

Both days this weekend, I considered grabbing a pack of cigarettes and changing my resolution from “Don’t smoke this weekend” to the much more palatable “Don’t smoke so much this weekend.” I did not give in to the impulse, and once I said “No” enough times, it was easy to hold fast.

Today, I haven’t considered buying a pack. In fact, I’ve committed fully to abstaining from clove cigarettes until at least Friday night. At that point, I will go through the following test:

1. Do I want a cigarette: yes or no?
-If yes, 2a. If no, 2b.

2a. How badly do I want a cigarette: badly or not badly?
-If badly, 3a. If not badly, 3b.
2b. I will no longer consider myself a smoker, but may smoke infrequently and/or socially.

3a. Do I feel like I need to smoke to feel good?
-If yes, 4a. If no, 4b.
3b. I will smoke no more than 2 cigarettes a day, on weekends only, for a month, and then take this test again.

4a. I will quit smoking.
4b. I will quit smoking for a month, then take this test again.

—
On  a related note, I can smell again. I hadn’t realized how much this sense had diminished until I got it back and realized how many different floral aromas there are in Florida.

On an unrelated note, I wish it would rain.

[here's to forwards-going]
-brian.b

A Change

I decided not to smoke this weekend, and so I haven’t. Now, feeling a kind of “good” I haven’t felt in a long time, I consider the possibility of quitting altogether. I do know with certainty I am cutting back.

To tell the truth, an episode of Scrubs prompted this decision. In season 1, JD (Zach Braff’s character) has to test a 27-year old for lung cancer. It turns out the man doesn’t actually have lung cancer (as it’s incredibly rare in people that young), but Cox talks with JD about the high probability that the patient will continue to smoke until he really does get lung cancer – and the need for JD the doctor to accept that reality.

“Dr. Cox: Hey! Smokers, drinkers, druggies, fatties, whatever. All I’m saying is that if you keep living and dying on whether or not a person changes, well… you’re not gonna make it as a doctor, that’s all.”

And two episodes later, Cox says the folowing:

“Dr. Cox You are afraid of death, and you can’t be. You’re in medicine, you gotta accept the fact that everything we do here — everything — is a stall. We’re just trying to keep the game going; that’s it. But, ultimately, it always ends up the same way.”

That may be true, but the pain I might cause my friends and family by getting lung disease just isn’t worth the risk. And that pain, my friends, is entirely preventable.

[root for my lungs!]
-brian.

Hm.

In zeal I make the offering of my blood,
Calamity confirming now in me
a sure belief that piety makes good.
[the] which happy men neglect (or hold ambiguous).
Only the afflicted are religious.
And here I sacrifice these arms to Death,
that Lust dedicated to Delights
offering up for my last, this last of breath,
the complement of my loves dearest rites.
-Cleopatra from Samuel Daniel’s Cleopatra, V.2