Giving Up Smoking Part IV: When is a Cigarette Not a Cigarette or I Wish Paddy Chayefsky Was Still Around
Jesus Christ rose again from the dead; Neil Diamond, Tom Jones, the Eagles and the Marie Celeste all came back – but the Marie Celeste came back without her crew… Okay bad example. Let’s move on, the point for me was, Could I come back from mental oblivion?
Being incapable of thought wasn’t all that bad. It gave me a warm sense of brotherhood with a large, hitherto alienated section of humanity. But I knew it also had its downside even if I couldn’t pin down precisely what that was and wouldn’t have been capable of expressing it in words.
There was I, sitting in the hotel general manager’s office, listening to the sounds of the Thailand economy going into melt-down. The general manager was strumming a country and western song on his guitar, a sad funereal air, while my eyes slid around the décor like a pair of headlights on a long and winding road. What was I thinking? Zip. What should I have been thinking? Now, in hindsight, now that I have recovered, I realize that I should have been thinking, I Wish Paddy Chayefsky Was Still Around.
Paddy Chayefsky. His masterpiece, Network, in particular that stunning scene of Peter Finch exhorting his fellow Americans to get off their adipose engorged butts to cry, “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Ok, here we go off on another diversion, but it’s relevant. If the world economy hadn’t been in a downturn I would probably have stayed benumbed and mentally null and void. Not necessarily a bad vantage point for seeing out the year, but there I was embroiled in the thing. The planet was in trouble and I was out to breakfast, lunch and dinner.
In the US the government was about to throw good (actually non-existent) money after bad, bailing out a bunch of criminally incompetent and incompetently criminal corporations by stealing the money from the tax-payers. And they were getting away with it. Paddy would have been pi**ed and might have moved to Asia where the populations were at least still capable of civil disobedience.
I was stuck in Bangkok because a group of political malcontents was camped in the airport. Before the airport, they’d taken over government house and forced the administration to move out. Even though the motive behind all this was completely undemocratic (they were trying to pressure the popularly elected government to step down) it was a fine example of 5000 people (out of 63 million) practicing effective civil disobedience. Too bad that they were doing exactly the wrong thing for the economy, but no one said malcontents were smart.
In Taiwan, the government was dealing with the downturn in a uniquely Chinese way: the government announced it would issue a gift certificate for about $110USD, to every man, woman, boy and girl including newborns. Now that was smart and fair. Instead of bailing out losers they were going to stimulate the economy by getting the tax-payers spending up big.
And there was the US penalizing the citizens and rewarding the criminals – and no one was standing up and shouting “I’m as mad as hell, and I’m not going to take this anymore!” Where was Paddy when we needed him most? He died in 1981.
Anyway, back to the general manager and my headlights roaming over the decor. What did I suddenly see that brought a faint color to my pale cheeks? I saw a box of cigars.
Cop out! Backslider! Coward! No, no you misunderstand me. Really. Honest. After all when is a cigarette not a cigarette? When it’s a cigar! Yes, I was saved. I stuck one in my mouth and lit it. My god, suddenly the room got dazzlingly bright. I felt – what did I feel? I felt a small, pink, mewling thought wriggle its way to the front of my mind and announce itself with a loud burp. I translated that burp into words. The general manager thrust away his guitar and stared at me across his graffiti-burdened blotter.
“What did you just say?” he asked.
Coming Up: Happy Ever Afterness…
