Mark's Pages

March 14, 2003:

Room 322, Westin Hotel, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida. A smoking room, polluted, impossible. The smell of old death, the tang of ash. You left a glass of water by the bedside; when you drank it two hours later, your tongue burned.

Cigarettes as American metaphor. We kill ourselves with indulgence, with addiction, mass-marketed, glossy, big. So big that along with ourselves we kill the world, with poison, and fire and ash.

Fire and ash. Your tongue burns. Next week, a country will burn. When they do, they'll leave behind them the smell of old death, the tang of ash.

Your tongue burns.