Cigars Could Cure Cultural Choas.

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 cold.

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

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 Philip 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 [ . . .] lines of thought’ and ‘participate in [ . . .] 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.

Smoka, Mocha, Joka.

I’m sitting here wondering what the next post is going to be about because I don’t have a clue right now.  Trying to please the reader is like trying to aaaaaaaaaaaaaa ignite a cigar without a flame.  In short, I need a subject that will ignite the reader’s interest.  And that ain’t easy.

Hey!  I smoked a flavored cigar recently – a PDR 1878 Natural Roast Café Toro.  At first, I had my doubts.  I’m not accustomed to dip cigars.  But I had access. I also received a First Edition of Sylvia Plath’s Johnny Panic and the Bible of Dreams (1978).  Excellent copy.  It includes one of her most famous short stories (though she’s widely known for her exquisite poetry and her one published novel, The Bell Jar,1963) – “Mothers,” (1962).

So I open up the plastic bin where I keep flavored cigars and pick out one from the rough-hewn wooden red box – this, this Café toro.  I walk outside to the lounge, read –  the garage.  I amble in.  Once I feel comfortable, I put the flame to the tobacco – I draw in the air resulting in a cloud of faintly, Wonka-scented exhaled smoke. 

Powder!

That’s all I could think of at first.  You know the ground chocolate confection you mix with milk?  Briefly, it was kind of nostalgic – but a bit offputting as well.  Remember, I don’t usually smoke any infused, flavored, or whatever you want to call those types of cigars.

I was, I will admit, stē-unned.  This one was called Natural and it did taste, well, natural (but I really didn’t have a baseline.  I don’t drink coffee.).  There wasn’t any chemically concocted taste, either.  Rather the exotic roasted bean flavor was somehow miraculously married with fermented tobacco leaves (which we all know have some notes of chocolate in them anyway) came out tasting good!  Methinks you need a good palate to detect that.  Bing!

Because of a mailing/ordering mixup,  I never thought another book would show up the same day -but it did, by Bette Howland, a hardcover (2021).  But I already have a copy.  A softcover, as opposed to a paperback which is smaller than a softcover, and the quality of the paper is not high-grade at all.  Pulp.  But I didn’t need it.  So back it would go.  (And the bookseller is charging me a restocking fee of 15% to return it.  Do you believe that?)   Anyway, I got the book boxed up within fifteen minutes of my receiving it, got into the car, and dropped it off at the nearest post office.  A hardcover beats out a softcover any day for a book collector such as myself.  I’m really searching for an original edition of, Calm Sea and the Prosperous Voyage (1978).  Not a reprint.

So my taste buds are savagely salivating – dripping with chocolate, and a heady hint of coffee (Mocha) both creating exotic flavor experiences in my mouth and on my lips.  I smoked the cigar to the end and was not disappointed. 

I looked up the tobaccos and found out that the natural has an Ecuadorian Connecticut-shade wrapper,  Dominican Criollo binder, and a Dominican 98 filler.  

There are three strengths.  The medium has a sun-grown Claro wrapper,  a Dominican Criollo 98 binder,  and a Dominican Criollo 98 filler.  Finally, the dark roast is wrapped in Brazilian Maduro, the binder is Dominican Criollo 98 and balanced out with a Dominican Criollo 98/Nicaraguan Criollo 98 filler.  The cigars are gently arranged in 20 count boxes, and are available in three sizes: Corona ~ 5.25 × 44; Robusto ~ 5 × 52; and Toro ~ 6 × 52.

It’s odd that the reprint edition of the original Howland softcover is a deep-sea blue while the spine is a pale pink.  Hard to find on the shelves when I’m looking for blue.

So what to write about in the world of cigars?  The tsunami of cigar brands that continue to flood an already saturated market?  The new book about Lorraine Hansberry, the author of, The Raisin in the Sun, and its cultural connection to cigars?  Certainly not a puff-by-puff cigar review.   Perhaps a piece on all the backorders from major companies, or how about the obvious selfish, flagellating fragmentation of the Cigar Coalition?  Or maybe why I smoked a flavored cigar in the first place?   Who knows.  But I’ll find something – “in the way she moves .  . . .”