Postponing the Past

An exercise in I don't have time to remember because I have to start a new life began as soon as I lay foot in America. One of my cousins is so good at this that she pretends or really does not remember. There was nobody in high school, not even her. There were no teachers, nobody sitting on her right and if there were, she does not remember their names nor faces. I have often wondered if she does this to counter my remembering. She says "you live in the past Arpie." I remind her that it is because she has a past that she is talking to me.

It could be Nancy Ajram or Fayrouz or even Fahd Ballane's voice overheard somewhere. How do you stay in place and time? I was not even in Lebanon when Nancy Ajram was born but her music, a gift from a friend, is so Lebanese. I just cried tears postponed for a month. She helped me. This is the first installment. I had to cut short. I had reached the store where I had gone to buy my American Spirit tobacco. The new owners, an Indian family, are very nice. As nice as the previous owner. I also have a machine which makes filtered cigarettes. Organic, economical and tasty. I am not advertising smoking, on the contrary. I have noticed that I smoke less because the cigarette I make is more satisfying and I don't have to reach for another from lack of satisfaction. And one day...who knows?

But I digress and I postpone, I get sidetracked, I find myself in Ridgewood, New Jersey buying a box of empty cigarette tubes with filters. There are 200 tubes in one box. That's one carton. I bought it three weeks ago and it is still half full. Now I can invest in the market with the money I have saved...uhm!

Or is it postponing the dealing with the past? There must be a connection between the past and cigarettes if they came together here. I will not go into analysis but here we are the three of us. The past, cigarettes and moi.

Yes, yes, I know they are bad. The tsk tsk tsk kind of bad which is half way to "tskel", to quit, in Armenian.

And only after that, after quitting, the past will be dealt with I suppose. Right now, I still have to think about my future.