Cigars

At some point in the last 48 hours or so a cigar dream. I woke up this morning thinking about it, but was not at all clear when it had been. Perhaps a going to sleep dream from the night before, rather than a waking up dream this morning.

I had, early this particular evening, smoked two cigars, in company, outside, perhaps in a suburban garden, perhaps coronas, perhaps (taking a peek at google) Romeo y Julieta Cedros De Luxe No. 2, a brand I used to get on with, although perhaps not that particular model number.

A not entirely satisfactory smoke. Partly because I smoked the second too soon after smoking the first. These are substantial cigars and one should not really be smoking more than one of them at a sitting. Partly because the smokes were not quite right. Maybe the cigars were flawed (as these sort of cigars often are, not like cigarettes in that way), maybe I was not smoking them right.

I associate now to bicycles, another sort of thing which is never quite right. There is always some nagging flaw. Maybe the brakes are a bit worn, maybe the gears need to be adjusted, maybe the tape on the handlebars is getting a bit ragged. Or maybe the leather of the saddle has been scraped along a wall at some point and the untreated scrape irritates every time one take the thing out.

Associating now on the combination of perfection and yesterday's post, I think of those Renaissance artists who prided themselves on being able to draw a near perfect circle freehand. Not drawing around something and not using a compass. And of those lesser mortals who prided themselves on being able to draw a near perfect straight line freehand. One might admire such a circle, take pleasure in its perfection, in the knowledge of the love, care and skill which had gone into its construction. Construction by someone who really cared about being able to translate his concept of a circle, a perfect circle, through his arm & hand and onto a piece of paper. A rather different experience to looking at a circle drawn by Powerpoint - a complicated business itself, but a different sort of complication. The love and care has gone into building the (inorganic) machine, rather than in the guiding of the (organic) hand and arm. Love and care which is probably the product of many people, rather than just one, and with the person who, at the end of the chain, asks Powerpoint to do its thing, not really counting at all.

Then if you are really bored, you can examine the pixels of the Powerpoint image and see how the perfect circle maps, in the rather messy way that it does, onto the small rectangular pixels of a screen. Or if a screen is not available, onto the small coloured dots of a picture on an advertising hoarding.

So the free hand circle is example of an artefact which has merit for me because of my knowledge of how it was done. A second artefact might be identical in itself to the first, but be of quite different provenance and so be quite without merit.

Returning to the dream, another source of dissatisfaction was the knowledge that I could not have another cigar whenever I might feel like it. Smoking was bad, and if one was to do it at all, it had to be strictly rationed. Maybe one a week, one a month or perhaps freely on bank holidays. The knowledge that such rationing usually broke down and that perhaps it was better not to do it at all. In some obscure way, the knowledge that I could not indulge freely in the future, tainted the pleasure of the present.

Clearly time for a bit of fresh air.