NEUROTIC VARIATIONS

Some of my best friends are pipe smokers. As you would probably expect. And pipe smokers tend to be neurotic. A dozen of them dropped by the saltmines today at various times, and I am neuroticked out. I too am neurotic, as is my apartment mate, who although not a pipe smoker is a very dear friend. While I do not necessarily long for the company of neuro-typicals at this moment, climbing the walls is an interesting and attractive prospect. Bats have claws on their feet which, when relaxed, are clenched, and they have to use their muscles to straighten them. It is by this cunning characteristic that they can sleep hanging from nearly smooth surfaces.
That would, one expect, help them climb walls. If they were so inclined.

Please imagine me doing so. Front against the wall, upside down.


Some people watch teevee to be distracted, so that they don't have to react in an engaging and understanding fashion for half hour increments. Because I dislike sports and garbagy shows, this is not an option. Besides, the teevee was on all day in the backroom.


Smoking my pipe indoors would be excellent for my mental well-being.
This is, at the moment, not an option.

I do not dislike neurotics. I very much like them. They are, well spaced out, and in the right dosages, perfect company.

After an entire day at the salt mines, I just need to take off my shoes, twiddle my long toes, relax with a hot caffeinated beverage, and not be required to talk much.
With a soothing and restful pipe.

That's probably too Aspergers for most people.

The pipe pictured above to a certain extent epitomizes neurosis.

It is one of the most pipish pipes, a bent bulldog with a thickish shortish shank and a beveled silver hallmarked band broad enough to present a square interruption of the continuity when looked at flat on. Which is aesthetically extremely pleasing.

When my father went on a trip to London with his girlfriend for a fortnight years ago I borrowed his, and after I came back to the US for college I tried as much as possible to duplicate his briar collection. Bulldogs, squat bulldogs, bent bulldogs. And though I love Comoys, their version of the shape is far too elegant; the Peterson versions speak to me. Consequently the pipe in the picture is probably one of my favourite briars, though I had to redrill the drafthole slightly and futs around inside the shank to make it perfect, as well as do some re-sanding and re-staining to get it closer to the correct angles (Peterson's quality control is abysmal at times).
Smokes like a charm.

The pipe below is my father's Peterson bent bulldog, the one I borrowed, which he gave to me several weeks before he died.

Again, the proportions speak to me. I also have his Comoys, but this pipe along with his Peterson System Standard and the Parker which his mother gave him when he came back from the war are, till now, the only pipes from his collection which I smoke regularly.

One of my earlier renditions of the Peterson Squire pleases me, in large part because careful attention to the way the light from the teevee room window reflected off the underside surfaces perfectly showed the window blinds. There is a summery lightness there.

The angles are just so.

Sometimes, when neurotics and people with Aspergers syndrome talk, which they occasionally do at inordinate and disturbing length, the point is not actual communication, but they are trying to clarify points for themselves, precisely like good professors at college. The audience is the sounding board; no matter how frightening, all they need to do is make the right sounds indicating attentiveness and comprehension.

This post, in which I waffled on at length about something which does not universally interest people, is very much in that vein.

Thank you for listening.



AFTERWORD

I'll be smoking the Squire tomorrow at work.
It's something which I need to do.
You understand.

TOBACCO INDEX


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