Absence creates a space for presence. So in absence, there is presence.
Though in this case, presence is a smoke created by the mind’s chain of cigarette drags.
You see it, then you don’t. One wave of a hand and it vanishes.
And mind you, cigarette smoking is dangerous to health, which only means that my mind has taken a habit into an addiction. Just seeing irregularly shaped smoke, and making figures and faces out of it takes away the boredom of a dead air invisibly floating before a blank wall. It creates life that is not mine.
But this time around, I was brave enough to stop my brain from taking another drag. I took away that new cigarette stick from its mouth with the force of my right thumb and forefinger. Threw it away without being lit up. I had to stop this sooner or later. Or maybe right about now.
There it goes. All the smoke disappearing like ghosts from the past. Only these ghosts are ones from the future. If ghosts from the past often have an unfinished business, ghosts from the future do not have any business at all. They just stick around in your brain, trying to keep you entertained with baseless promises, teasing you with a trailer of your imagination’s self-produced and self-proclaimed blockbuster movie.
So I had to stop it now. Make absence just be absence.
