IT’S SATISFYING. Instant gratification. One long drag, and the smoke hits your lungs. Exhale. Simple. Easy. Your head slowly gets lighter, maybe you’re a little dizzy, the world—the giant bustling, horns blaring, pedestrians streaming past, hot dirty pavement, people that won’t leave, work that never goes away, thoughts that never end, the world around you—it stops. Even if it’s just for five minutes, it stops. Maybe you’re addicted, maybe you just need to occupy your hands, maybe you’ve been counting down the minutes until your smoke break all day. You carelessly toss it to the ground, or you drop it and grind your heel straight on it, so afraid of the horror story your friend told you about that cigarette that didn’t quite go out. That fraction of a fraction of an ember that barely touched a leaf that barely touched another leaf, and another and another and another. And then five leaves became fifty, and fifty became five hundred and five hundred became one thousand. It was the end of fall and the weather was dry, and the leaves were ugly and crinkled, so the fire spread quickly.
So quickly that before anyone knew what happened the whole house was gone, tiny ashes in a giant field of dead grass and bare trees. So you step on it. Hard. And you watch it slowly burn into nothing—along with your anxieties. Everyone in Tel Aviv smokes. The sixteen-year-old girls who look twentythree, puffing away on their cigarettes as they toss back their fabulously long hair. The couple at the café on the corner sipping on their cappuccinos and tea im nana. He blows smoke rings as she gazes at him, carelessly breaking the symmetry of the circles with her perfectly lacquered fingernail. The guy waiting for the 5:45 a.m. train to his army base, sitting in his crisp ironed uniform. He’s chain-smoking, dead tired, his eyes staring blankly ahead. The mother who waits until after she’s dropped off her two kids at elementary school, and hurriedly sneaks her pack out of the glove compartment. She smokes on the way to work, hoping her children will never pick up her nasty habit. The security guard at the grocery store, who sneaks a few drags in while checking bag after bag, getting so bored he checks less bags and smokes more cigarettes. The drunk group of socialites
NCSU | SPRING 2012 | 25