Tobacco Abstract

It’s late, 2 AM to be precise. The room is dark. The only light spills in from the streets, from the neon signs of vape shops and the incandescent glow of the streetlamps. Four faces are dimly lit, facing each other, revealing themselves for brief moments as the cherry of their cigarettes get brighter during inhale. The air in the room is thick with the smoke of tobacco. On the table between them rest two ashtrays, one is full, they are working on the other.

The space is calm, breathing, coming to life as the four men punch back cigarette after cigarette in steady fashion. The room continues to fill with smoke. With each inhale the metaphysical space in which the men sit gets older and older. This is the function of the cigarette. The little stick of tobacco. They light their cigarettes, the flick of the lighter hearkening back to the ancients, when the first peoples discovered fire. The flame rests at the tip of each cigarette and slowly travels toward its smoker. The smoke within is imbued with the life force of their elders. Each inhale carries the lessons of the men’s ancestors, it fills their lungs and disseminates throughout their bodies into their bloodstream. The space slowly begins to change, the walls turn to stone, the sound of the streets take on old wave forms. Each drag of the cigarettes is a pulse in the beating heart of the old world which is now taking shape before their eyes. The stone walls etch themselves with the glyphs of old, depictions of animals, tools, the early people. Some serve as warnings, some as lessons. Where the ashtrays once sat now rest piles of charred sticks and twigs, and from within them emanates a deep blue flame that turns to orange the further outward it reaches. The men gaze into the flame and see their own faces staring back, rewinding, the faces take new forms, or old forms. The reflections of their ancestors stare back at them, from the tip of the cigarette, the beginning of the flame.