Whiffer

Match smoke (Andrew Magill | flickr.com)

I don't smoke. When I was a little boy I promised my grandfather that I would never do. He smoked heavily and condemned what he called a "bad habit", but he must have known he was in fact physically addicted.

Yet there's something peculiar about smoking that I do love. It's that first smell of the tiny puff of smoke from a wooden match gone out, and the initial, fresh waft of tobacco lighting up in a cigarette or pipe.

The slowly a-morphing little cloud of smoke is beautiful even: an art creation lasting just a few seconds... before it starts stinking toxically.

If asked, I would say the smell reminds me of my father. Not grandfather or anybody else. It is weird, particularly because father died from lung cancer.

So I am a smoker of a kind. Perhaps I should call myself a whiffer.

Tomáš Fülöpp
Sint-Agatha-Berchem, Belgium
September 21, 2014, October 2, 2014, October 3, 2014