DAWN OVER ARKHAM

The Eastern Seaboard is teistered by smoke from the Canadian wildfire, which is making the air in New York and other metropolises in that region thick and orange. Everything smells like barbecue. Or like the Tracy tirefire. Even Ctulhu is affected. He's fled the city for his home in the outer wastes (Long Island or The Hamptons, I think).

It puts the horrible smells generated by my pipe tobacco into perspective, doesn't it?
All of a sudden the old Dutchman and his horrid pipe don't smell that bad.

Which makes the Cantonese bakery lady trying to persuade me that smoking wasn't good for me totally baffling. Madam, is there ANY evidence that blandishments have an effect on me?

I don't think so.

And yes, the medical profession has already informed me that tobacco isn't good. Plus I've seen the disquieting disease pornography on much European packaging; tumurous lung explosions, gangrenous foot with dangling toe, outer space fungus eating the entire left side of the head, and all family dead from haemorrhagic fevers and eruptions because the damned Dutchman didn't stop smoking when they were still in grammar school.

Oh, the humanity! It done become burnt-y crisps, maw!

Two bowls, one after lunch, one following tea and a biscuit (一個大嘅老婆餅). Aged Virginias, mostly a mixture of flake tobaccos rubbed out, with a minor inclusion of firecured and other condimentals. Very subtle. At one point the very old fashioned fragrance of the smoldering leaves brought back memories of sunlit days in North Brabant, summer warmth, zephyrs, and open windows. Sweet heaven.

I had said to the lady at the bakery "yiu gwo ngo m sik yin, ngo jau m wui hoi sam" (如果我唔食煙，我就唔會開心). If I don't smoke, I won't be happy.

True that.

The more Americanized people become, the more they piss and moan about smoking. Wildfires, however, are green and natural. Holistic. Nature's spirituality.

Free the glutens.

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