the woman who wrote herself into being

I once occupied an office at the National Film Board for a few days ... no one was using it, so I just moved in. I found a plastic bag full of cigars in one of the drawers of the desk there. I smoked one. I was so stoned by the time I was a quarter of the way through that I had to quit. I can't remember what I did with the bag, left it there I think.

One night I was playing poker with my poker buddies, same 4 guys for 35 years, out on the porch of one who lives in the country south of Montreal. It was a roofed porch, with a screen, no bugs, no rain. It was raining. We played poker furiously for hours. At one point during the game Dan hauled out a box of expensive Cuban cigars he'd just brought back from Cuba. He gave one to each of us. Wonderful cigars, perfect accompaniment to the softly falling rain, the summer air, and the furious poker. Later that night Dan was chortling about having won $35 playing poker. I pointed out that the 5 cigars cost him $150.

My last cigar was a small cheroot. I think it was at a poker game, yes, in October, in Montreal, in the back of Claude's HI FI shop, our poker table parked between a set of $40,000 speakers, while we played, listened to newly pressed vinyl (making a come back), and smoke cheroots, compliments of Dan again.


Back to work...

In a sunny bright coffee shop off the highway on the Sunshine Coast