Profound words indeed. You're right that this is all part of a larger challenge...balance and clearer perception - which may prove critical to "waking up."

How's the violin going?

Hi.

I wonder if the portrait of you smoking is still appropriate? I'm also wondering if you think quitting smoking would be easier now that you have stopped having orgasm? I realize you may have no interest in stopping, but if perchance you do it would be an interesting way to test whether or not the methods of getting off the dopamine bandwagon might similarly aid in other liberations.

I'm not trying to interfere with your free will by bringing this up, and I realize it may come across as conceited. I only bring it up because I am out in the boonies right now, living in an old spanish hacienda house with a long porch. It's close quarters here, and my companions at the moment are of a strange breed: An old paraplegic hippy poet member recently in from Berkely with his hot young attendants (lots of loud laughing and visiting emmanating from his room); a lonely paranoid woman who locks her doors for fear of getting software stolen off her computer, and keeps her cats reined in on a tight leash to prevent them from impacting the bird population, and last but not least the father of my best friends while growing up, a bipolar, schizophrenic, highly medicated, obsessive compulsive, chainssmoking, sweet and apathetic guy named Danny.

I took care of Danny for a year out here after I came home from Istanbul. Needless to say his smoking habit has worsened since I was last here, and he now smokes holding the cigarette perpetually to his lips as he stands spaced out near the trail, smoking as though it were the only thing that kept him alive, tied him down to this plane. Eventhough he actually does not want to live at all. He finds life mundane and tedious. I actually believe he is trying to smoke himself to death, with a dogged persistence that nothing can distract him from, except perhaps his daily kegel exercises, which he also compulsively does for fear that if he does not, his intestines will come out his urethra.

I've had to wake up for the past two nights to the sound of Danny's horribble coughing, which lasts about five minutes. Not a sickly rasp of a weak man, but a wretched contaction of some violently agitated lungs as they desperately try to jostle free the thick layer of tar clingling to them. After about five minutes, his coughing turns to a nasty gagging, before he is able to get a ball of phlegm out.

years ago when my sister confessed that she had started smoking. It just hurt to know someone I love was doing something so self-destructive. (She quit some years later.)

Those of us who have come to love you, Galileo, even in this limited way, will be really happy for you if you stop. Besides, it will leave you with more time to irritate your cat's ears.

A big hug,
Marnia

Oh, great! That makes me very happy to hear that you are not a smoker.

You seem very balanced and focused these days. Thanks for continuing on this experiment and sharing.

Sorry to any if my description was gruesome. Any smokers out there who have had success applying the principles in this site to quitting cigarette smoking?