Notebook - Writing Smoke

Notebook
My next artistic challenge is to smoke two cigars. I was given the assignment by my wife, who needs the cigar ash to spruce up the finish on my great-grandparents’ oak dining table. The trick is this: using a bit of cooking oil, a paste is made with the ash and then rubbed onto the table as a mild abrasive, which takes up the marks and stains made by glasses, salad splashes, and noodle-drips. What makes it an artistic challenge is, first, writing through the smoke, and, second, writing the smoke. Writing smoke calls for our best skills and interpretative powers as we render that which about us is hardest to explain: our unpredictable leaps of spirit, our sorrows, and our pain. Smoke is memory made visible. It’s the future in sinuous shades. Writing it down before it disappears is what keeps us uncertifiably sane.	Also by William Michaelian POETRY Winter Poems ISBN: 978-0-9796599-0-4 52 pages. Paper. —————————— Another Song I Know ISBN: 978-0-9796599-1-1 80 pages. Paper. —————————— Cosmopsis Books San Francisco Signed copies available Main Page Author’s Note Background A Listening Thing Among the Living No Time to Cut My Hair One Hand Clapping Songs and Letters Collected Poems Early Short Stories Armenian Translations Cosmopsis Print Editions Interviews News and Reviews Highly Recommended Let’s Eat Favorite Books & Authors Useless Information Conversation Flippantly Answered Questions E-mail & Parting Thoughts
Top of Page Old Notes Current Entry