Suppression

I haven't really smoked in a long time. And by not really smoked, I'm not talking about the social smoking that happens over drinks on patios or huddled together beneath a single coat outside a bar. I'm talking about the way I used to enjoy a clove or two or four over multiple cups of tea with T and K: sitting in K's apartment, or in the Bug or the Jeep, or going back even further, behind Stone-D in those wretched plastic deck chairs as we philosophized and enjoyed the waning warmth of my first East Coast Fall.

Growing up in Northern California gave me a perennial hatred of smoking. What was the point when there was so much clean air, so many healthy alternatives -- like biking! -- to give you a buzz instead of a cigarette? My father smoked for the majority of my (and his) life, and even as a little girl I did my damnedest to get him to quit. I still remember the first time I told Big Bro I was vaguely intrigued by it, as much as it disgusted me. I couldn't help but imagine the indefinable enjoyment that filling your lungs with a foreign substance would bring. By then, my father had quit smoking -- a result of medical problems brought on by his forty plus years inhaling carcinogens -- but, his last half full carton of cigarettes remained in the "Cabinet of Forbidden Things," just below the liquor. Big Bro grabbed an unopened pack, produced a book of matches and led me onto the patio with the single command to "smoke it." I remember blubbering on about tar in my lungs and envisioning black clouds floating morbidly in my chest. Instead of lighting up and inhaling, I stood awkwardly in front of my brother's stone cold stare and ran whatever crappy stoge my father owned beneath my nostrils while I forced myself to intake the raw, upchuck-inducing scent of tobacco. Later, I would cut that same cigarette open with my swiss army knife and sift through the leaves, trying to discern what made this otherwise mundane brown substance so life altering.

So obviously, it was rather a big deal when I picked up smoking in college. Initially it was experimental. Try it on for size and see if the inner bad girl in See would revel in it the way she'd enjoyed all the other debauchery I'd pointedly avoided in high school. Much to my disdain, I did, a lot. For the first month and a half of college I was hooked, and since then it's become both a stress and an escapist tendency which produces occasional unhealthy trysts when I'm feeling anxious, or in the case of senior year, full on semester long lapses. Since graduating though, and likely because I've spent so much more time in California living a much healthier existence, the habit has subsided and for the better part has dropped from my life completely. Unless, of course, a select few people or situations pop up which bring back the familiar yearning.

Earlier this week, Big Bro discovered an empty clove box in the glove compartment of his car. Perhaps a year ago that box would have been the inevitable unearthing of distressing anxiety levels, but funny enough this was just a forgotten remnant of this past Fall and T's visit. I have reserve boxes well hidden, but they haven't been touched since she left in October. I quit! I quit months ago and whatever flare ups there have been were negligible. For the better part I decided to leave the dirty addiction behind me and find more constructive ways to relieve tension. But since Big Bro mentioned it to me, I haven't been able to get it off my mind. Is it just because I've been a wee bit stressed and, when stressed, I crave the sweet aftertaste and momentary buzz of a clove (controlled escapism at its finest)? Or, is it because Big Bro brought an otherwise well suppressed tendency to the forefront of my mind? I've never really considered myself a smoker, and if someone asks I'll generally say no (perhaps with some addendums), but is it possible that the reality is I'm actually a smoker pretending to be a non-smoker?

When we've managed to suppress or control a desire, a tendency, or an otherwise unattractive aspect of ourselves that we loathe, that doesn't mean it's disappeared. It still exists, floating patiently in the tiny corner its been relegated to, and I assume, waiting for whatever previously created synapse to fire which will bring it to the surface. Arguably, these could be referred to as "gut reactions" or "instincts" right? If I wasn't talking about smoking, couldn't I just pass this off as genetic inclination? My father was a smoker, my quasi-addiction is just an instinctual development of some kind. Hrm, there's a claim that's going to garner a lot of smacks. From the few psych studies I've read, like this one in the nytimes, supposedly our knee-jerk responses, or "gut reactions," are from years of not only evolution but of our own personal experience. Which means we're simply taking situational and circumstantial evidence and instantaneously comparing it to a backlog of information we've stored in our brains. Your immediate response is based on years of conscious or unconscious observations. But what happens now, after we've learned how to suppress and ignore even the strongest reactions we feel? Doesn't it imply that, at a very basic level, we've taught ourselves as an entire race not to trust ourselves and therefore not to be ourselves?

While this may seem like some well-formed argument to start smoking again, it's not. It's just curious to think about all the daily reactions we -- okay, I -- have and whether or not many of them are unfounded. Of late, a lot of my knee-jerk responses have been unfortunately tuned incorrectly. What I believe is something similar to X situation from my past, is actually something entirely different, often times contrary to what I originally thought. Is this what growing up means? Questioning everything you know and wondering whether it's even remotely correct? Humans are so smart now they can outsmart themselves.

A wise friend told me the other day, it's not necessarily how we recognize something as good or bad, or even how long it takes us to recognize it; it's the actions we take after we've recognized it that define us. Cue Michael Cane and Christian Bale circa 2005. Smoke, yes? Smoke, no. Bitch-smack girl, yes? Bitch-smack girl, no.

Ah well, much though cloves kept me company throughout college, looks like they're going to stay stuck in their nasty little boxes hidden away for the rest of time. Or, you know, until I have a phenomenally large freak-out that reminds me of X so much, I can't control myself.

What? Like you've never given in before. Geeze.

Wicked Flipping Cool: HAF

First: Mad props to big bro for hopping a cab and venturing into the Presidio to try and get the clowntravelagency.com/ bag! Though it was fruitless, the adventure and adrenaline (for him and everyone around me at work) was well worth it. Whoever has devised the publicity/promotional/marketing plan for Dark Knight Returns is brilliant. Fanboys beware, you're predictable and easily excitable. (And yes, I'm totally on the bandwagon too.) I'll post the new trailer when it goes up, which, should be sometime by the end of today, hopefully.

Second: Oh, gmail. If only you had an auto-send feature for sending emails not super late at night so I don't look nuts when I finish work at 2am. Alas, instead you've only got custom time features. HAF!*

Third: I have decided to become an exotic dancer whilst using my artistic abilities to make elaborate macaroni necklaces to subsidize any living expenses and moral derailment.