Fire is a kind of magic to a child, and some of us never grow out of a fascination with it. The heat, the change of almost anything into ash, the smell and the smoke, the different noises of things burning.
I’ve recently taken up smoking cigars – a habit I never thought I’d ever try, let alone enjoy – and I’ve literally burned a sizable chunk of my savings this summer. It’s an expensive pasttime: Out of the thirty or so cigars I’ve tried out, the cheapest acceptable brand (Don Tomas) is still 55kr each, and the cheapest ones that I prefer (Casa Turrent) cost more than 80kr each. And since I’ve always been of the persuadion that “everything worth doing is worth overdoing” I’m smoking a couple cigars a day.
It’s a nice punctiation of my waking hours. Since each cigar takes at least an hour to finish, I need to set aside some time in the garden (or in the greenhouse if it’s raining) and stock up on tea or beer, a book and some sketching paper for the duration. I did buy some pipe tobacco in order to rekindle that habit – I started smoking pipe when I was 13 – but it doesn’t give me the same satisfaction, and it burnes my tongue more than the cigars, leaving my tastebuds numb for at least a day.
It’s mostly the smoke and the ceremony that I enjoy. My tastebuds are crude and unrefined at best of times, but my appreciation of the smoke swirling out through my nose and into the world still feels as magic as when I was a child and played with fire; picking up a burning stick and swinging it around until only the embers at the tip remained, letting off a thin string of smoke, spreading the smell of burnt pine and leaving a residual glow on my retina.
There’s so little magic in the life of an adult, that I cherish this new habit of mine. At the same time I know that the nicotine addiction is part of it. Already I catch myself looking forward to the next cigar while smoking, and I know it’s not only a fascination of the thing itself that causes that, but the glow of reassurance that comes from being addicted to something and knowing I can satisfy the craving.
So my plan – vaguely formulated and presupposed on the impending autumn and poor weather – is to give up the cigars once I can’t sit outside any longer. Having quit smoking and using snus a couple of times already, I think I know what will come next, but that’s fine. I’m quite good to follow my own rules.
I don’t know how long I will keep up the fascination and enjoyment of smoking cigars, but I know that I enjoy the illogical transgression of it right now, and I already feel a nostalgia for when I will look back at the days of smoking and not having that sense of serene magic anymore.