Since I quit smoking the granularity of time will have to be acknowledged some other way, perhaps by living (thereby experiencing events), or by spending more time with my grandmother, whose vulgar metronomic chewing is her calling card now that her grandchildren have turned out to be embarrassing failures. I must also give up my dream of having a cigarette in The Valley of Ten Thousand Smokes, in Alaska, near the Mount Katmai stratovolcano. My interest in vulcanism borders on the erotic. The spatter cones, the lava tubes, the pyroclastic flow.

Smoking is wonderful but I no longer do it. The list of things I love but no longer do is growing. My sad gerunds. I'm keeping a rice paper scroll. Health and happiness can be dreary affairs, as I believe Squirrel Nutkin said in a book by Beatrix Potter just before he was skinned alive. At least now I am in a better position to achieve my dream of one day tramping listlessly through the Great Dismal Swamp, picking the paw paw fruit and pursing my lips in extremely mild wonder when glimpsing a fawn, unaware of the cottonmouth approaching my ankle. My rubber boots will make that great suctioning sound and I'll consume bitter berries and begin to weep uncontrollably in a swarm of poisonous insects. The entire earth is teeming with malignant lifeforms, it's not just a problem of the big cities, and this is why it's better to imagine yourself immersed in it on television. As I sit on a sectional sofa in air-conditioned comfort with a bag of crispy snacks, the camera will show me in dark silhouette trudging along the horizon and I will be a symbol for man's lonely journey through life, until I somehow find Highway 17 and hitch a ride to Cigarettes Cheaper.