No Filter

Y’know, when I smoke a cigarette, I roll it myself. Just the tobacco. No filter. And I roll that little mofo fat, as fat as the packaged cigs everyone smokes. Yeah, you guessed it (well, probably you didn’t, because you aren’t quite sure where this blog-post is going yet, and you don’t know a damned thing anyway), the ones with a filter. I know a few people who roll their own, but they roll ’em thin, and with a fucking filter. Each time I see how they roll the little filters in, that they bought extra, I have to laugh.

Dammit, if I’s gonna do drugs, I’s gonna do ’em without a God damned filter. Fat. And, believe you me, tobacco is a drug, baby, one of the most addictive there is. I’ve kicked tobacco twice, the second time for 14 years, and what am I doing now? Smoking a damned cigarette. Enjoying it, too. Tobacco tastes good. Especially with coffee in the morning. Or with wine in the evening, or… you get the picture. Of course, when I get drunk and smoke one after another, my mouth feels like an ashtray the next day.
What does an ashtray feel like, actually? Hmmm. In any case, not good. It’s then, drinking my coffee on the morn’, and (what irony) smoking a cigarette, a nice fat one without a filter, coughing, that I think: why are you doing this? Well, my inner voice says, because it tastes so damned good, in spite of everything.
So, what is the point? It’s this: I want to enjoy life, even if it is not healthy. Life itself is not healthy. After all, it ends in death, and what could be less healthy than that? Nevertheless, I want to enjoy it, and that means I want it unfiltered. Pure. Let it roll over me, knock me down, infuse me, fuck me over, pick me up, toss me on the mountainside in the snow, pick me up again and let me fly. I want it. I want it bad. I love it. It’s beautiful, even when my mouth feels like an ashtray.
No damned filter, please. So many people I’ve met filter their lives. They steer clear of anything that might hurt them, and thus they limit their lives to necessities and banal shit. And when, in spite of all their efforts to the contrary, they encounter heavy duty stuff, they simply tune it out. They do everything they can in order not to feel the pain. They don’t love, because love is dangerous; they might get hurt. If in doubt, take some antidepressives, is it not so?
Now my inner voice says, you do that too, don’t pretend you don’t. You don’t like pain, c’mon now, admit it, you superior little fuck. When you are unhappy, you drink. Well, I answer, it’s true, I don’t like pain. I don’t like to suffer. But I do love, and if it doesn’t work in the end I always face it, because I feel I have no choice, because I still possess at least a trace of self-honesty… don’t I? The inner voice grumbles, and says well, a trace, a trace, mind you. Well, better than nothing, I say, and besides, you know as well as I that I often revel in pain. That’s what melancholy is all about, and I think it’s really too bad melancholy is hardly accepted in todays society. Why can’t people just feel like shit, when they feel like it? Because it hurts, you fool, as if you didn’t know… my inner voice mutters on, but I can tell it’s resigned.
It knows me too well to argue any further. Fuck you, I say, giving it the last stab. Even when I drug myself to stop the pain, I do it conscientiously, without a filter, to get the full effect. I don’t go to a psychiatrist to ask for drugs to stop the pain, I prescribe for myself, and when it doesn’t work, surprise surprise, I face the shit I’ve staved off long enough to allow me to deal with it somehow.
You’re just buying time, it says, in a last effort to bring me to my senses. Just like everyone else, it says, just like everyone else… I take another slug of ouzo, light a cigarette, and tell my inner voice to go fuck itself.
I already am, it says. Fucking myself, that is.

Properly Toasted

Just right. Nicely browned, slightly darker at the edges. Buttered, that’s me. Been eating those lovely little roasted coffee beans covered in chocolate. Keeps me zipping along. Add to that a half a bottle of wine, a couple cigarettes, and a bowl of weed, and I’m buzzing like a bumble bee, blundering through the grass to find my little hole, where I do whatever it is that bumble bees do in their little holes in the ground. I don’t want to know. I wonder what the bumble bee-equivalent of toast is.

Alone

The person you love is far away, and you feel like you just can’t live without them. You’re stuck in limbo, you’re somewhere in between. You’re not alone any more, but that just makes you more alone than ever. If you were truly alone, you’d have no worries… if everything goes wrong, it’s just you, no big deal. Though it would be tough, one could accept it with a certain philosophical detachment, like a gentleman fighting his bitter fate. But now there is someone else, someone who cares, someone who will suffer when you suffer. You just can’t stand the thought of them suffering, so you have to make sure you don’t suffer… you have to take care of yourself.
You have to. You love this person more than anything you can think of. It’s better than religion, better than drugs, it’s the ultimate thing. There is, quite simply, nothing else you really care about.

Certain conflicts arise. You feel lonely, so you want to drink. But drinking is bad for you, you know that, it’s fucking poison when you drink enough to conquer that gap… the problem is, eating a healthy salad does nothing for your state of mind. A big glass of vodka can help, verily, poison though it may be. And old habits die hard.
When my girl is with me, I don’t need a damned thing.
Listening to I Want You (She’s So Heavy) from the Beatles.