Nailing my lungs to the post

Non-smoking crowd, please forgive me, but smokers are nicer people. Except for fashion world smokers – designer cigarette people are way out of our league. Smokers always gather somewhere, and whether they know each other or not, conversations will be had, cigarettes will be offered and lighters will be lent.

Airports. No one really likes them. Waiting rooms, 6 hour long stop-overs, all-the-same duty free shops, the mystery really isn’t there. So you sit in the waiting room, waiting for your flight. Stare as blank as a goldfish towards whatever screen is, or occasionally fall asleep on those more than uncomfortable chairs. It really is a life of an aquarium. Unless you happen to be a smoker. Oh your fingers and lungs tingle just at the thought of stopping over and being able to smoke. And as you make your way to the smoking lounge at the airport you ponder as to why airplanes can’t have a smoking area. Smoking lounges, I find, can vary immensely from airport. But whether they are cancer-closet-like or ample, chique and comfortable they all have one feature in common. The glass wall. And though some might interpret it as a nice act towards smokers, enabling them to not feel so excluded from the outside world, it actually serves a didactic purpose. Parents from all over the world can stroll along the lounge pointing at jolly smokers and saying: “Sophie, Candice… Do you see those people there? They’re all engaging in a very un-healthy habit. And one day they will be very sick. And might steal your place in a public hospital. These people have black lungs and yellow teeth and nails and bad breath.” But, obviously, what Sophie and Candice see differs largely from what her dad is telling them. What they see is an exciting world, much more exciting than the goldfish world they are stuck in. They see people interacting, laughing, and blowing smoke out like magic dragons. And except for the occasional suit and briefcase introvert everyone seems to be happy, entertained. They walk off, bemused at this alternate, smoky, almost mythical world and follow their parents in pursuing cheap whiskey and Lindt chocolate.

Other than having each other, smokers have also that precious little tobacco stick that can be of most use in many situations. Cigarettes have been told to prevent mosquito bites, provide little but crucial lighting to dark areas thus impeding smokers to walk aimlessly around, minimize stress levels and heal the sense of post-modern world loneliness. Absurd, you say? I beg to differ. Upon making plans with friends one can many times be left to wait alone for a good hour as said friends make themselves fashionably late. No cigarette, you’re left to stand there, looking sad and stupid and feeling abandoned, with nothing more to do than people watch. Cigarette in hand, your confidence is restored, your sense of loneliness and abandonment diminished. You are no longer someone just waiting, you are a person smoking. You are no longer passive, but active. You have a purpose in life, the world will not crumble down over you. You are in control. If Estragon had been holding a cigarette in hand during the first section of Act 1 in Waiting for Godot the play would’ve had a completely different impact. The power of cigarettes is clearly underestimated.

A cigarette can not only change the entire course of an earth-shattering play, it can also make people look smarter. The act of taking the little white stick to the lips, inhaling, holding it in, and then exhaling makes people gain a complexion of insightfulness. It’s as if life was revealed to them in a different way. And their sensorial, chromatic and chronologic perceptions are a whole different thing altogether. Smoking also has an impact of mystery on other people. It is an ambiguous endeavor, especially if accompanied by iconic clothing, such as leather jackets or scarves. It can at the same time make one look absorbed in life and nonchalant. Imagine if there was a Nicotine Addict Barbie. Life as we know it would no longer be.

But as all better-off minority communities, we must be fought and eradicated in the name of alienation, fragile and therefore more easily corrupted labour, selfish individuality, goldfish lifestyles, Sophiesms, Candiceisms and Malibu Barbiecisms. As every day goes by smokers are restricted to smaller and smaller areas, making population density in these places higher than in any corner of São Paulo. Our favorite characters on main-stream TVs, battling against cigarettes, buying nicotine gum and nicotine patches and being encouraged by their friends to quit. Most of the cigarettes that get airtime are found in the mouths of villains and women of dubious professions. No one to identify with, we are unworthy societal types. Not even the market, which is out after every different group, hype and clique – from midget anarcho-punks to blonde samurais – want us. And unlike other minority groups, no one will be by our side to raise our flags and offer a helping hand or a comforting word. We will not despair, however, fuelled by our daily intake of nicotine, sense of community and insightfulness and will ride off into the sunset, hat on a high-held head, cigarette in hand.

- by Mariana R.

Podcast: Dual Identities (Dafur Radio Project)

In "Dual Identities," the Darfur Radio Project explores the divides between Khartoum and Darfur, Sudan and Kenya, and expatriates and their homeland. First, a look at how economic growth in Khartoum compares to development in Darfur. Then, in the second installment of our series on Sudanese culture, we speak to two Sudanese musicians who find they're connected in unexpected ways.
And, who's who? This month, an introduction to the Sudanese Liberation Army, one of the key rebel groups in Darfur. Finally, we look at how the Sudanese expatriate community in the US is preparing for the 2009 Sudanese elections.
Click the title to download the podcast.

The Darfur Radio Project is a monthly radio broadcast that explores the historical, political, economic, and social contexts of the conflict in Darfur. Using personal stories as well as critical analysis, we aim both to introduce listeners to the complexities of the situation in Sudan and to give them the tools to effect change. We believe that education, good information, and analysis will play an important role in the search for sustainable, long-term peace in Sudan.

A list

Shuffle through the list of names

Faces, drifting away

Relegated long ago from current, now

Drifting in a sea of obscurity

And today the recent remembered,

Wait to join the queue of the forgotten

What memories you have

Locked, in the prison of the self

The mind’s stagnant focus

Capturing them as they were,

As you want them to be

Fractured statues of youth, now

Growing on some distant shore

Free from the eyes that time

Made fierce and cynical

Their absence, apparent

In the little days spent,

Observing the staccato punctuations of clocks

And wishing for reminders that they

Free from your desperate preservation

Have suffered too

Under the corset of age

But life’s vacancies fill

And now you have new faces,

New lists, short-term bonds

That strangle the past and wait

Complacently, to be strangled

Now we sit comfortable, as the present

Gnaws away passings, and faded photographs

Become less tattoos and more memorials,

Silhouettes of moments and spaces, past monuments

Fast becoming new routes to today’s

Arrogant characters and places

But, in vain, layers of triviality

Amassing like fossils, to be later buried

The present’s desperation, to be encapsulated

Perfectly formed, in the otherwise dusty

Museum of memories and mementos,

Embodies itself in friendship pacts

And photographs of fast passing eras

But behind smiles and daily reunion

All are marked with the unhealing scar

Of dormant obscurity, marked to be drowned

Waiting to join the queue of the forgotten

And become a face

In your most prestigious list

- by Halligan Quin

Written with Anger (at Oneself)

You have a duty,
to right wrongs.
You have words to say what may be.
To render just, what you view unjustified.
A quality in a character, a view or description.
But words move people, not mountains.

Meet two mouths willing to move.
Do not waste your words any more.
Who are you really trying to help?
You have a duty to build.
Otherwise don't speak of cracks.

Moan, and the world moans with you. How useful.

- by Dr. Fieldmouse