Booze is essential. Cigars are not.

Ambivalence or being overwhelmed.  This legal cigar situation has not been put on the back burner (excuse the pun) at all.  In fact, the coronavirus has actually highlighted our plight on regulations. Case in point : 

The ruling here is that only essential shops are open.  The question is, “What’s essential?” The dictionary defines the word to mean, “absolutely necessary; extremely important.”  (Google) And what the Powers That Be considers essential are grocery stores, pharmacies, doctor’s offices, and of course – liquor stores.  

Think about this for a minute.  A cigar isn’t essential, but booze, hard seltzer, bourbon, gin, wine, scotch, vermouth are all considered “absolutely necessary; extremely important.”   It’s insane – egregiously inane.  Or is it?

In the end, the deciding factor of what is essential is, of course – MONEY.  Because of course, liquor is not essential – depending on your perspective I suppose. But no matter how you look at it liquor is far from being  “extremely important.”  

Go back, oh 40 years, then I guess I would have thought that beer was essential.  But I’ve grown up since then and my experience has taken over. But even back then, I never needed it – I wanted it.  BIG difference.

So since money is essential, I need it via cigar sales!  So this determination has brought about a conundrum not easily balanced.  Think clearly for a moment, you can live without both but you can’t live without money.  To make money I must sell cigars. It’s easy for a liquor store to make sales. They unlock the doors and sell without restrictions – except for age, of course.  Money flows.

However, Cigar stores can’t do that.  Nope. Scuttle the curbside delivery, dash mail sales (that’s been f*^king us up since the pony express) – open the stores!  Are cigar shops essential? NO. But neither are liquor stores – money is. So they make money – we don’t. Asinine, uh?

We’ll get it right.  Bob finally did.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UfVmJBF-OY

Smiling through dem cigar broker blues.

Who would have thought something like this would hit the United States – the world?  Are we prepared? It depends on your perspective. I travel for a living.  I go to smoke shops. I breathe in air you can see. Some lounges are clean, some are not so clean.  Some people care. Some people don’t.

Customers are in the shops, but the numbers are way down.  At least in my territories.  

So I’m sending out emails, making calls, going to the shops that most likely will be making an order.  Some are holding off buying anything. Some are purchasing just what they need. Introducing a new cigar is now more of a challenge than usual. So, I ask myself, so what else is new?

It’s the emotional stress that has snaked its way into our lives that apparently isn’t going away soon.  Sure, a lot of guys and gals are laughing off the seriousness of this pandemic. I’m not one of them.

“Medical research estimates as much as 90 percent of illness and disease is stress-related. Stress can interfere with your physical functioning and bodily processes. High blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, and heart disease have been linked to stress factors.”  Then when you add the expectations of sales and, for some, you have a time bomb just waiting to go off.  (Google)

So what does an independent cigar broker do?  His or her best. That’s all that can be expected – of anyone.

That’s all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hDK6X0Nxa8M

 

The Space In Between.

The documentary film, “The Space in Between,”  features famed performance artist, Marina Abramović, on a journey through Brazil in pursuit of what she calls “people and places of power” and the links between art and spirituality.  The physical journey leads Abramović into an intimate and personal journey as well, through memories, pain and learning about herself.  (Google)

********

I just returned from a business meeting that I would have to say was my trip to Brazil.  I am by no means a performance artist, but I am a writer who is continually fascinated by the concatenation between our culture and cigars.  I write about this mix in my essays all the time.  

This voyage confirmed that the cigar is the “art,” and the reaction to smoking it is the released essence of cultural “spirituality.”  Marina’s journey led her to experience those things (often ancient rituals, others ancient ceremonies with a modicum of modernity thrown in) that she had no idea how they would affect her physical being, her psyche, her mood, or her concept of what is and what would be important (or unimportant) for her present existence – or her future.

My brief sojourn, though less dramatic, brought to the forefront the nexus of reality and spirituality rather than art.   I traveled to areas beyond my imagination and left with a wealth of knowledge and insight that will remain with me for as long as I live.

Now, if you’ll excuse me as I return to my divine state of consciousness as I light up a cigar and mentally return to Brazil.

 

 

A cigar essay that will be written. I hope.

I know my handwriting is atrocious.  The other day I had this thought that was precipitated by a book review I read in the Times Literary Supplement.  I won’t go into detail, but what I will tell you is that the article I wanted to write was bombarding me with such force and speed that I found a scrap of paper and started writing on it with what I thought was in my better penmanship.

I could understand every word I was scratching at the time.  Then I made the blunder of feeling that since I got it out of me (it was quite late), I would transcribe the full article the next day.  Well, as the late multi-millionaire, Bill Britt, once said in no uncertain terms – DO IT NOW!  I didn’t.

“Bless me, Father, for I have sinned.”  

I worked on trying to decipher that short cigar essay for over three hours and was able to piece together some of the thoughts that were so clear at the time of its writing.  Why not record them? No recorder. Have one ready. I’m not THAT disciplined. What to do? Slow down. Get to a computer. None was available. Text it to yourself. The thoughts were racing so fast, it would have been impossible to even understand, as I am a slow “texter” it had to be ejected from my mind immediately.  And the human hand, for me, is the extension of my soul. Not a keyboard.

And that’s how I am with this surgical cigar business.  Sometimes things happen so fast that it’s like trying to catch a greased pig in a mud bath.  (No, I haven’t tried that, but it looks good on paper.)

Impulse.  We all succumb to it.  Yes, even geniuses will wilt in shame as they forget that one element in the formula.  “Haven’t you ever lost anything, Dr. Bronx? Your purse, your car keys? It’s rather like that.  Now you have it; now you don’t.” (Medicine Man 1992)

So will the article be thrown out?  Never, as anyone who knows me and my stubborn streak will tell you, I don’t give up.  If I feel it’s important, I do it.

So I will let the paper with the scribbles rest on my desk. Time will bring back the memory of what words I originally wrote.  Memory is never lost. It lies dormant in the curlycues of our brain tissue until they slowly rise to the surface and we can capture them and write them down – legibly.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ek8NmpVBssA

 

  

  

Contemplating the Cigar Collective.

If you know nothing about cigars my suggestion is to listen to “Mummer Love” the new album by the avant-garde jazz ensemble, Soundwalk Collective and Patti Smith that channels the work of Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891), during the period when he was in Ethiopia.

The album has compositions by Pattie Smith, Mulatu Astatke, the Sufi Group of Sheikh Ibrahim, as well as Phillip Glass.

A perfect pairing would be a Buena Cosecha Corojo cigar by Aganorsa Leaf to completely understand the complexity of not only the music but also the (a) cigar.  It is a contemplative album that celebrates and also examines the work of French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, during his travels in Ethiopia and the resultant influence on his poetry.  “After leaving France and what he deemed the ‘western stagnation’, Rimbaud found himself in Harar, Ethiopia – an epicenter of Sufism in Africa. Sufi practice focuses on the renunciation of worldly things, the purification of the soul and the mystical contemplation of God’s nature.” (bellaunion.com)

Pattie Smith’s only poem is the title track of the album.  But it was the work of Glass that began to trickle into my brain and produced this post and its relationship with cigars. 

Glass, a composer who is known for his “approach to musical composition that relie(s) on repetitive, sometimes subtly nuanced musical structures . . . .” (biography.com)  The composition, La Maison de Rimbaud, is performed in front of a live audience and brings to the ear the subtleness of sound, silence and rests.

Just like a cigar brings to the mind a calmness, varied taste sensations, and satisfactory pleasure.  When listening to the piano of Glass, and drawing the smoke in, the visions of a dream are conjured up that can be remembered only during the actual smoke or visionary experience. 

There is so much more to this album and its subject matter, but it is the “collective” of pure, unadulterated undulations – née talent, that brings to mind the intricacies of both literature, music, and cigars.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgD6lDda4HM