i am not an alcoholic, nor tobacco addict.
i believe, however, in the human ability to choose one's own existence.
savoring a sip of wine or neat whiskey,
then a different one,
and again, over time,
is simply allowing yourself to experience
all that life has to offer.
when i am of an age where my life has been sufficiently lived,
then will i smoke pipe and cigars.
one need not become intoxicated nor sick,
but to end this existence without knowledge of the subtleties of
taste
smell
physical feeling
mental experience
of those items which have been created
seemingly for the sole purpose of
ingestion by homo sapiens
stands contradictory (in my eyes)
to the idea of experiencing
the gift of existence
in the first place.
when one is in a place of acceptance and enjoyment,
and when one is not susceptible to addiction,
to intentionally avoid an experience life offers
is to deprive oneself of a gift
and is akin to taking life for granted.
so, when i am older, and nearing death,
i will drink,
and when i am older, and nearing death,
i will smoke
cigars and pipes, plain tobacco,
living slowly and richly,
taking all in.
for now, however, i avoid a slow suicide.

i read, but am not well-read (yet).
i make sure to read the "classics" though
because why should i not?
they are "classic" for a reason.
they tell of a time when people were uninhibited by late capitalism,
when life moved slowly and locally,
when to produce was to be known to produce,
when what mattered was truly tangible.
what matters in the post-information age is still tangible,
though an ephemeral cloak of
post-contemporary noise
hangs over all,
obscuring meaning to the clueless and
troubling the clued-in.
that is not to say
there are no good producers in
the post-information age
and it is not to say that
mediocre producers should quit producing.
i am a producer, after all,
and i know who my influences are.

i have not built anything notable with my hands,
nor written a magnum opus.
i will build some manner of
tangible structure
to last forever
(or at least as long as i can
control its environment).
i will reform land and mold my world.
one should be long-remembered;
stone and metal and
large swathes of earth are nigh-immutable.
i will create many a composition,
whether musical or oratorical or scribed,
and they will be treasured by people
i will never have the chance to meet.

to mark memory is to achieve immortality.

gt