Longer Hair Grows Shorter Essays.

This is the year of change.  And one difference will be the length (not the complexity) of my blog essays.  I can go on – I’ll admit.  And I’m not saying I won’t from time to time – depending on the subject matter.  But the most dramatic change will be the visual reality of this shift.  Yes, fewer words of course.  But as my hair grows longer – the shorter the essays (depending on the blah, blah, blah). 

Why?  I’m bored.  As Clay Quinn used to say regarding bodybuilding exercise articles – “How many times can a magazine show how to build the biceps?”  I agree.  How many times can a cigar article show the swaying fields of tobacco leaves?

So I have every intention of continuing the essays on cigars and culture, but I’m going to try my damnedest to keep them brief and perhaps less frequent.  This will afford a minimum of effort on the part of the readers – and will be a hell of a lot easier for me (considering I’m branching out to other subjects and writing projects).

My reminder to keep them pithy – will be the hair. See.  I haven’t had my curly locks cut since this COVID virus changed the world – ergo, my retro appearance and alas – my concocted, personal visual cue.  Kinda like shock treatment without the pain.

So please continue to read and enjoy my posts and appreciate whatever I decide to mix into them to keep the writing out of the realm of banal conformity; and to permanently etch out a spot on “social” media for originality about the cigar industry and our chaotic, cultural ethos.  

Cigars could cure cultural chaos.

Sitting in the garage in my favorite chair, I’m smoking an Isabela Serpentine. My eyelids are barely open. The roofers about two houses down are replacing the shingles. My God how this day is dragging. I can only make so many calls, send out so many texts and emails before I hit the wall. Damn virus.
Suddenly I am shaken back from my somnambulist state with a notification “ding” from my phone, which prompts me to start reading a Times Literary Supplement book review by Ira Bashkow about the new work by Charles King that centers around the life of anthropologist, Franz Boas. The subhead explains its contents quite succinctly. “A story of race, sex, gender, and the discovery of culture.” Or better yet, “The man who opened up anthropology in America.”
An apropos subject, I thought to myself. Culture. My eyelids begin to flutter shut. But with the cigar in hand, I dare not succumb to my natural instincts and continue to concentrate on the review. The cigar’s aroma fills the garage with an alluring bouquet of slowly burning tobacco as I notice my eyes turn to the subhead again and again, “Race, sex, gender . . . .” Three hot topics in today’s world of change. Or is culture the enemy?
I can hear the muffled shots of nails being buried into the freshly revealed plywood that was simultaneously being covered over with felt weatherproofing paper. The sound of the nails piercing the wood is becoming louder and with the pace quickening, the resulting noise is beginning to wear on my nerves.
I take a long draw of the Serpentine producing a rapid spicy sensation on my tongue. The weather outside the garage is warm – hot, I’m sure – for the roofers. Plus I have been smoking the cigar long before my tolerance for virtual visits began to wane so the concentration of nicotine begins to affect my perception of the flavors coming from the burning cigar.
However, in this case, as with the line of Isabela cigars, the balance of nicotine, lush flavors, spice, and undefinable essences only complement the experience. It’s as if I were being hypnotized and wooed into the rhythm of the nail guns. A Glass-like symphony of smoke and sound. Rhythmically repetitive.
I lean back in my chair, allowing the thick cloud of smoke just produced to drift back toward my face and into my nostrils. I further draw in the fragrant particles and for some reason begin thinking of a thick mango slurpy mixed with mature pineapple and guava.
I tap off the ash – forgive me fellow aficionados, thus revealing a perfect conical shape of a glowing ember. The spice becomes intense on my tongue as the surfaces of my papillae begin to figuratively swerve back and forth duly accepting the fermented flavors of tobacco I am forcing upon them.
My Serpentine is getting shorter and my sleepiness is beginning to abate. Johnny makes a tremendous line of cigars and in this case, his expertise has allowed me to soften my fixation on those three little words, “Race, sex, gender” and concentrate on the fullness of his hard work when blending.
A small part of the wrapper lifts off this Nicaraguan delight. Maybe it’s making a statement of some kind. Making a point? I continue to read about Franz Boas. Was my experience insignificant when compared to the discoveries of this so-called “Father of Anthropology.” Hardly, I mused.
And then I read this one paragraph written by the reviewer, Bashkow, “To understand others, Boas taught, would require more than casual observation and reliance on second-hand reports by colonial travellers (sic) and missionaries. It would need first-hand acquaintance, competence in the language the people spoke, immersion in their environment, and adapting one’s ‘own mind, so far as is feasible’, to ‘follow [their] lines of thought’ and ‘participate in [their] emotions.’” We don’t do that. We fight!!
I continue to smoke my cigar. A fly is buzzing around seemingly trying to compete with the noise being made by the roofers’ automatic hammers. It only wants to land. Rest – be in a safe place.
A few last long draws and I begin to feel like the fly. The taste of a fine cigar could cure cultural chaos.
I only want to land. Rest – be in a safe place.

Split the fissure. Crack it. And, dive in.

I have bifurcated.  Officially. The numbers do not lie.  The thoughts in my brain are always whizzing about at such a blistering speed that I challenge Einstein’s Theory of Relativity that “no particle that has mass can travel as fast as the speed of light—about 186,000 miles per second.”

Ah but is a thought a particle?  No. Thoughts are “impulses of electricity . . . .”   How fast do electrical impulses move? Guessing from research, that depends on the size of the neuron but for the most part about 250 m.p.h.  S-L-O-W.

So what I think is fast – isn’t.  But in terms of recognition, it is – fast.  So in short, the changes that have taken place in my cranium may seem slow when compared to the speed of light, but in reality, they are more comparable to the leatherneck sea turtle when traveling on the land about 6 m.p.h.  This changes to about 21 m.p.h. In water. Still not fast – fast, but still not that slow. But a change nonetheless.

Point.  Cigars and Art are catching up with each other at what I consider a tremendous rate of speed.  Friends are increasing in number on social media and the communication between myself and other artists are growing exponentially.   My being asked to join art sites has been – even with my impatience, gotten out of control. I’m on long-term art crack. A slick thought of being out of my mind.

Point.  What is the point?   Growth.

Physically there are various differences in the shapes of cigars.  Figurado, Robusto, shaggy foot, smooth cap, there are cigars with caveman designs on them – no change in flavor, just appearance.  Same as art, I suppose. Although taste would be quite different. Taste in art means a preference.  Taste in cigars means, ah . . . having to do with the sensation of flavor in the mouth and on the tongue, etc., etc., etc.

What happens though is the shift has had such a noticeable effect on my consciousness, it’s like devouring donuts, and then one day the site of the fried desserts want to make me vomit.  

What do I do?  

Ponder this.

Can I fixate on them both?   Donut. Coffeecake.  Green River.  Perrier Peach.  Maduro. Connecticut.  Lonsdale.  Gordo. Barberpole.  Some unnecessary wrapper design.

Is satisfaction an element that needs to be discussed here?  Yes. And No.

Cancel cigars?  Accept art?

No.  And YES!

What, then?  Fusion during differentiation of muscle, bone, and trophoblast cells, during embryogenesis?”  (Google)

No.  Interest.  Man. Developmental dividends.  Of what? Desire. Lust. Passion.  A change, a metamorphosis? Morphing or collusion.  Shading or blacking out!

There is no explanation that will satisfy a cigar manager.  Nor a gallerist.

It’s FOCUS!

Deliberation.  Mass acceleration.  Pure glistening “Breaking Bad” powder-blue rock candy!  It’s the excitement that you’re not stuck. You can make transitions.  You can make the prayer a reality. Whatever you like and whatever you don’t like.  DO IT! Don’t be static, single, stagnant. To hell with the comments. You can’t hear them anyway.

PTL!  The mind is a magnificent gift.

So be bifurcated.  Go for it!   SPLIT!

More Maverick Cigar Posts for the New Year.

Colder than hell in this garage.  But – here I am.  A Presto Heat Dish®️ staring me

in the face like a miniature orange remnant spun off from the sun that’s practically searing the skin off my face as the rest of my body feels like it’s dangling in the frigid iciness of outer space as I’m smoking a Red Box cigar while my mind is making mental excuses for the efficacy of my decision.

My gloves are mealy warm, and wearing them makes writing an arduous task.  Yet, I’m doing it because I can have my cigar clenched between my teeth not because I’m addicted to the tobacco, but because I’m accustomed to the kick it sometimes brings to my mental state thus producing thoughts and placing them in the correct order to achieve my goal which is to create an article for my cigar blog.

Sure, I could be in the front office of my house, blissfully typing away on the keyboard listening to the constant whir of the portable heater at my feet, feeling the warmth on my face, instead of shivering my ass off in the building I use for my lounge.  So why not make life comfortable and simple.

Because being physically and mentally uncomfortable oftimes brings to the surface novel ideas to write about – at least for me.  And for the last few weeks, my mind has been so fraught with so much useless ephemera and discomfort I couldn’t ponder on any one thing – not even for a second.

Until today.  I was able to focus on my own “Eureka!” moment (I have found it!) as Archimedes shrieked upon his discovery of the answer to a most perplexing question that had been swirling around in his brain.

I desperately needed the blistering heat and the bitter cold – as a mixed drink “calls” for that certain something that must be added to balance out the flavors – to create the satisfaction of tasty thought.  

Physical discomfort was what I was seeking – that prickly pinch of pain that lunged me into the ethos of another year of off-the-wall cigar industry posts.