a thing in 77 photos

smoke

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appears with…

smoke — ConEd was already on the scene.

smoke — Woke up early Saturday morning to some kind of crazy explosion sound. Looked out my window and there was smoke pouring out of grates across the street.

smoke — Scenic view of my neighborhood from a cab.

smoke — The evening got action packed when a discarded cigarette under the back deck started a fire!

smoke — ...who burns white sage non-ironically.

smoke — Took less than ten seconds to squelch the situation once they got the water flowing.

smoke — Strong.

smoke — Amazin' Mom

smoke — Back at the house we got the grill going again...

smoke — Cleaned up the apartment a bit and burned a bunch of jasmine incense. Sweet, smoky goodness.

smoke — On Wednesday afternoon, I ceremonially burned notes given to me by Jeffrey after our third kinesiology session together.

smoke — After the drink has had a chance to absorb the smoke, you take off the smoke hat and drink it!

smoke — My favorite drink there is called I HEAR BANJOS! It's made of Apple pie moonshine, Rye whiskey, house apple-spice bitters and then they fill the glass with applewood- cinnamon bark smoke. WHAT?

smoke — After holding them for three days and reflecting on how they might relate to my life, later that evening I took the notes Jeffrey wrote out during our kinesiology session and destroyed them with fire, per his specific instruction!

My skeptical & scientific exploration of magic & ritual very quickly gave way to a mystical & non-rational exploration of magic.

"Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves" - Robert Anton Wilson. The Thinker is the non-language-based, right-hemisphere of your brain. Whatever it believes is true, the Prover, the left-hemisphere of your brain will seek to parse out of reality. Tim Leary called these reality tunnels.

All the way back back to Egypt: As above so below.

Mind precedes Matter.

"Every event in the visible world is the effect of an 'image,' that is, of an idea in the unseen world. Accordingly, everything that happens on earth is only a reproduction, as it were, of an event in a world beyond our sense perception." - Wilhelm Reich

The Primacy of Consciousness. An argument as to why the ultimate nature of reality is mental not material. Peter Russel David Bohm's Implicate and Explicate Order.

"Those who don't believe in magic will never find it." - Roald Dahl

In all my reading, I was pleasantly surprised to make the connection that magic is similar to meditation in that it's fascinating to read about or discuss, but you don't actually get any benefit from "believing" in it. You actually have to practice it. Over and over again. It's like getting a prescription from the doctor and reading it everyday instead of taking it to the pharmacist and taking the actual medicine.

If you believe magic doesn't work, it won't. You probably already live in a "reality tunnel" where belief in magic = superstition. That is the place I was coming from at the time. What's interesting about magic is that it doesn't require that you believe in it, it just requires that you actually practice it.

When you first start out practicing any kind of magic ceremony, you're probably going to feel stupid. You won't really "belive" that it's going to do anything. But if you "fake it until you make it" and stick with it a few times, and over time as you repeatedly suspend your dis-belief, what you're actually doing is practicing tricking your brain. And when you're brain gets tricked, you'll start noticing strange sychronistic events in the real world. Whatever the Thinker thinks, the Prover proves. Magic is the western-tradition of re-programming your mind.

Ever had the experience of learning a new word and then suddenly hearing it spoken everywhere? What if that happened with more than words? (Not just the Extreme song)

Be careful what you wish for, you just might get it!

TLDR: I burnt some paper, reprogrammed the non-language side of my brain, and felt better.

smoke — Smoky Maine goodness. Happy August 2012!

smoke — Bad monkey.

smoke — Smoker's Bench.

smoke — So much awesome in my living room it's unbelievable. Just a basic Wednesday night hang.

smoke — Effortless cool. Haha.

smoke — OMG. Back in the day, Leigh used to be out late every single weeknight in the Lower East Side - so much so that she became friends with some of the garbage men that had that route and they used to give her and her roommate Jessica rides home to make sure they got home safely. Haha. We got out of Lawrence's party and when a garbage truck passed us, Leigh hailed it like a taxi AND THE GUY STOPPED. Hahaha. Let's hear it for free rides!

smoke — You can put the cruise control on, light up a smoke...

smoke — Watch yer eye!

smoke — Woodland Creature smoke break.

smoke — Waiting for the 12:30am train!

smoke — We did a little pre-gaming on our front porch...

smoke — Who's classier than us?

smoke — Hahahaha! How amazing is this photo? "COLLEGE! WOOOOOO!" I pretty much spend the whole day sitting on the quad, enjoying the sunshine while Meredith caught up with old friends she hadn't seen in a while.

smoke — Then this happened. Then we got yelled at by the bouncer for our lack of subtly. Hahahah. I love this photo.

smoke — Leigh smoking in the elevator! (Rulebreaker!) This type of behavior is no longer a regular occurrence for either of us (well, at least not on Tuesday nights). We are getting old.

smoke — ...and they always sell cigarette brands you've never heard of. "Full Flavored" Gold Coast! Mmmm, mmmm!

smoke — Take two = Perfect! There's SO much amazing stuff going on in this photo: Brandon's doing a spot-on accidental impression of his brother, Monkey's smoking (a smoking dog!) and Alle's jamming out as Lady Sov. Hahaha. Happy Halloween (and Happy Official 10 Year Anniversary of this site! Whoa!)

smoke — I was trying to get another photo of Monkey "smoking" in this photo, but the cigarette fell out of her month (you can see it falling!) right when I snapped the picture.

smoke — At some point during the night, Sarah discover that if you hold a cigarette out in front on Monkey, she'll take it and just hold it in her mouth like she's a smoker! Hahahaha.

smoke — This photo makes me laugh so hard. I love how Monkey looks all stiff and fake like Sarah's holding some sort of "smoking dog" novelty toy.

smoke — Then handed off the second mic to some girl and turned her solo into a duet!

smoke — A little after midnight later that night, we headed out into the town to check out Houston night life. We ended up at a cool, divey bar that Tara had told us about, that had karaoke - but the wait to sing was really long...

smoke — And she'd even brought Hot Karla with her!

smoke — Afterwards, we bid farewell to Mike Doyle who was flying back to San Francisco the next morning!

smoke — Happy 31st, Jessy D!

smoke — Smokiest fire ever.

smoke — Later that night Meredith got all hussied up (again! who's luckier than me) and we decided to head to Misshapes!

smoke — Smoking. Eating. Drinking. No big deal. This was our last night in Japan, so over dumplings we decided to make the most of it by not going to bed that night!

smoke — Many of you don't know this, but I smoke when I nap.

smoke — Tinny smoked her little cigarette and practiced looking like an elf while admiring the view.

smoke — Troublemaker #1.

smoke — Maybe that dive won't such a bad ting afterall.

smoke — Hahahah.

smoke — Sleeping late means that I'd still be wide awake at like 6am in the morning. Rather than bother Meredith, usually I'd sit on her stoop for awhile chain smoking and listening to "trying to calm the fuck down" records and chain-smoking. And occasionally taking, "Whoa, I'm drunk," self-portraits like this one.

smoke — If you ever see me fixing you with my smoldering sex-stare, it probably means that you're about to get...

smoke — Where, for some reason, I randomly decided to start smoking again. (This was the first cigarette I'd had in years!)

smoke — Suddenly Amy was looking at Leigh in a whole new light.

smoke — Then the stage was cleared and The Raclones got ready to make their big entrance. But not before I managed to snap this awesome picture of Timmy Fifteen here smoking a doober on the street. Hahaha. I'm so telling your mom.

smoke — After some time on the dancefloor (where I repeated demonstrated my hungry boobie-zombie act on girls I didn't know) we bid farewell to Superbulge *shudder* and called it a night.

smoke — Hahahahahaha. Holy funniest photo ever.

smoke — Grant took this glamour shot of Leigh taking a "time out" in the office.

smoke — Scott offered him a smoke (he heard that helps with jaundice).

smoke — He then proceed to pull out a 14" glass pipe from under the driver's seat. Hahaha.

smoke — Tough-girl Stephanie.

smoke — Smoking.

smoke — What? Just two new friends chillin, that's all.

smoke — Note to all of Amber's future employers: She did not inhale.

smoke — Hahahah.

smoke — Some people just don't learn.

smoke — Here's Vin getting ready to light what he's betting me $20 will be his "last cigarette...EVER!" (Update: He managed to make it for six days before he had to hand over a Mr. Jackson.)

smoke — In almost matching outfits no less (again!)

smoke — Hahaha. Saturday I stepped outside and caught the Bobsey Twins smoking.

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original not copied to this machine yet

Vinay and Marco.

the fourth of july

July 04, 2003

vin ↗+

smoke — Somewhere around this time I noticed that beyond drinking a drink bigger than him, Grant was also smoking...

smoke — ...er, sort of. Upon closer examination I realized that he while he was holding a cigarette and even putting it in his mouth and puffing purposely, he wasn't inhaling any of the smoke. When I teased him, he goes "I've never smoked a cigarette in my life."

smoke — Me: "Oh, really? Why don't you try inhaling?"
Grant, drunkenly: "Ok!"

smoke — Vinay sneaking a smoke around back.

smoke — Here's us bidding Megan & Vin a fond farewell after walking them home to Megan's place. Right after this photo was taken (4am) I drove all the way back to my parents house in NJ so I'd be home to celebrate my dad's 55th birthday that Sunday afternoon.

smoke — I can't even imagine how many hours Tyler's had to put in in front of the mirror to perfect this "I'm A Carefree Rocker" glare. Damn, that's good.

smoke — No he's not waxing his lip, it's just a blond moustache.

smoke — When there's free booze to be found at a party, you'll also usally find a drunk Josh Tiexiera grabbing men's packages. This kid should just straight up come out of the closet already...

smoke — Uh-oh, she knows what's coming...

smoke — "Thug-shot" taken at a rest stop on our way north. This is probably the toughest photo of Vin and I ever taken. Looking at it, you'd never know that just minutes earlier we'd been listening to Madonna in my car.