Wednesday, February 26, 2014

Darn that cigarette dream

I stopped smoking on October 8, 1989. And still — to borrow a line from Brian Wilson — I dream of it. Last night I dreamed that Elaine and I were living out of suitcases in a large house with its own cigarette machine. I bought what I thought was a pack of Merits, a brand I never smoked. What came out was a pack of unfiltered Gauloises, a brand I did smoke, with pleasure. This pack was tan not blue. The rest of what I remember: holding the pack, walking around the house, thinking that it wouldn’t be so bad to smoke a few cigarettes, thinking about how to acquire matches, realizing that I would have to go outside to smoke. But I didn’t smoke. In all the cigarette dreams I’ve had, I’ve never smoked.

I can think of two elements from life that may have shaped this dream. From Monday, lines from Langston Hughes’s Montage of a Dream Deferred (1951):

TWO DIMES AND A NICKEL ONLY

    says this particular
    cigarette machine.

Others take a quarter straight.
And from Tuesday, a conversation with Elaine about the rise in heroin addiction.

Reader, if you smoke, quit. It will never get easier. And you can always dream.

Related reading
All OCA cigarette posts (Pinboard)

comments: 1

Slywy said...

I've never been a smoker, and I used to have very vivid dreams about craving cigarettes. It was very strange.