When last we left our non-smoker, he was battling temptation by refusing to get out of bed and make coffee...
Before I go any further, I need to best try and describe this smoking addiction and how I view this battle between myself and my demon. I tend to be a very internally visual person, allowing my mind to race into parts unknown, creating scenarios that more often than not become nothing more than an overactive imagination. My friends often say that I over analyze things and sometimes they are right. There are other times when my thoughts and feelings are right on the mark, or at least within the in-field. Psychic? Some say.
But I'm drifting away again...
Back to my monster...
On my first morning as a non-smoker, I decided to walk the 20-25 blocks to work, meandering through the tree lined streets of Center City. What I didn't expect at such an early hour, however, was the heat. At nine a.m. it was already pushing 80 degrees and the humidity was climbing at a rapid pace. By the time I was halfway to work, I found myself trying to find every sliver of shadow to hide from the blistering sun. As I made my way down Walnut Street, I quickly discovered that I wasn't the only person walking in this fashion. It seemed like several people were hugging the stone and brick facades of the storefronts, afraid to step out into the harsh morning sunlight as if they may instantaneously burst into flames if any bit of their sweaty flesh should come within direct contact.
I watched as these people (and myself) inched closer and closer to the buildings with each passing block as the shadows grew shorter from the rising sun. And all the while, I kept wanting a cigarette even though I knew that, in this heat, inhaling a lungful of smoke was about as pleasurable as kneeling down behind a 30 year old VW Bug and inhaling the fumes through the exhaust pipe (not that I've ever tried, mind you). But the feeling; the need for a cigarette continued to eat away inside me, trying to get me to reach into the breast pocket of my shirt and pull out the 1/2 empty pack of smokes I foolishly brought with me that morning (for just such a mental breakdown). I realized that this feeling was really taking control, eating away at my insides to the point where it was beginning to feel more physical than mental.
The feeling was beginning to take on a shape...
As I begin to describe this monster within me, I can't help but be drawn back to a short story I once read: "The Sun Dog", written by Stephen King, and found in a book with three other novellas titled "Four Past Midnight".
In "The Sun Dog", the main character, a boy of about 11, receives a Sun camera for his birthday. It's one of those poloroid jobs where each picture is spit out of the camera with a mechanical whirring sound and you can watch as the picture slowly begins to develope infront of you. The camera this boy received, however, only took what appeared to be one photograph; a photograph of a picket fence outside of a rundown house. With each click of the button, the camera would spit out the same image no matter where you pointed the viewfinder. Even replacing the film didn't change the outcome. Except for the shadow...
Slowly, from the left side of the developed photos, a shadow starts to appear. In each picture taken, the shadow grows larger until a dog, mangy and hungry looking, appears from outside the shot. With each picture it takes a step further into the frame. If you were to stack the photos on top of one another and quickly flip them (as they did in the story) a little movie would be created with this ugly dog walking into the shot from the left.
Then the dog slowly begins to turn toward the camera. Whomever is taking the initial photograph is spotted by the dog and the dog, in each photo progressively snapped, begins to charge the photographer; snarling for the camera; leaping into the air to attack.
So, the image of The Sun Dog became stuck in my head as I felt this monster deep inside me scratching, biting & clawing his way out, trying to satisfy its own need by making me light up. I can feel the pack of cigarettes in my breast pocket pressing against my chest with each step I took; a heartbeat against my own, pulsing in sinc with my own footfalls. It's the heartbeat of my demon.
My Sun Dog started to take shape in my mind. If you can imagine a poorly documented commercial on television, maybe one for some new pain relieving pill. "University studies have shown how this little green pill, when swallowed..."
--Cut to the bad diagram, white on a black screen, used as a visual tool. It is nothing more than the outline of a human being, the head turned in one direction, a raw diagram of the throat leading from the mouth down to the oval shape representing the stomach. Animating the diagram (a green circle being the pill) you see how the medicine reacts to the body, getting absorbed into the bloodstream and suddenly turning in many happy faces floating throughout the body, eliminating pain as they go.
I started to imagine that bad diagram as me. My insides consisted of nothing more than the outline of a throat and a stomach (and of course a bright box of Marlboros floating around in the left chest area where my breast pocket was located. My demon, not a Sun Dog as Stephen King described but my own demon dog, was not even really a dog per-say. It was more of a arts and craft creation gone wildly possessed.
For starters, my Domeon Dog appears in my mind as mostly 2-dimensional. He is like a piece of heavy duty black construction paper crudely cut into a shape that can only be described as part Jack Russel/part Pitbull, a combination of my most loved and most feared breeds. The edges of the cutting are slightly curled, casting the faintest hint of a shadow along the edges onto the background, the interior field of the human diagram (me). Its ears stand upright, giving the impression of a devil's horns. The mouth is cut out to appear always opened, but ready to snap shut; never smiling, always hungry and angry. The mishapen rows of upper and lower teeth, childlike cuttings of slightly different sized triangles cut from the blackness of the rest of the figure are razor sharp. The eyes are two construction paper cut-out on one side of the Demon Dog's profiled silouette, cartoonish, but alive with fire. The eyes are unseeing, but they know...they know the hunger.
When my Demon Dog moves, it's like stop-motion photography. Each movement is sharp and unflowing into the next; twitching. But it is constant and ferocious at the same time. The snarls from the Demon Dog are viscious and gutteral. The sharp claws on the black paws are feverishly clawing away, faster and faster, like a dog scratching at the base of a door, desperate to be let outside to relieve itself.
The Demon Dog is trapped in the crude outline of the stomach in the diagram. It's scratching and clawing at the outline, pushing and stretching the stomach from inside making it look like a mishapen elastic ball. The snarls are deep and angry. The firey eyes are fixed on the floating pack of cigarettes just inches away.
As I made my way through the tree line paths crossing the grounds in front of Independence Hall, I could actually feel the Demon Dog's prescence inside me, scratching his way to the surface. My hand reached for the pack of cigarettes in my pocket, but fingers never actually touched cardboard. Instead, I took a deep breath, held it a second and slowly let it out. I could feel the Demon Dog settle slightly in the pit of my stomach and I could actually hear him whimper softly. In my mind, I pictured the diagram stomach and the Demon Dog trapped within its outline. The stomach, in sinc with my deep breaths, seems to be shrinking slightly around the Demon Dog, giving it less room to move. I took another deep breath and imagined the Demon Dog being forced to crouch within the walls of the outlined stomach.
After a few more seconds of deep breaths, the Demon Dog was settled; the craving had passed.
But that dog was merely lying in wait, buying his time. There were several more opportunities for him to jump and stretch that stomach lining. Like a celebrity stalker, he just rested...and waited...
**Author's note: I am completing this posting on the morning of my forth day of Goal 1. Although I am doing well, I must admit, the Demon Dog has won a few battles over the last couple of days. The war will be long, I can tell.
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