Smoking

I had a dream. I think it was last night. Not because I remember that it was, but because I slept better last night. I woke twice, once because of a kid and once because of me, but fell back asleep pretty quickly both times. Cap massaged my shoulders and upper back before I went to bed which was great. They were very tight.

I am reading One Good Turn by Kate Atkinson. She's a writer from Scotland who was recommended to me by Stephen King. She has a recurring character who is a middle aged ex-detective. Murder mystery type stuff. Also, she creates a web of characters, full of idiosyncrasies and flaws, who are disparate at first, but then end up intertwined by the end.

I read the following line this morning and my dream came back to me:

"Julia, now wan rather than flushed, came outside with him, where she smoked a cigarette with a frightening kind of purpose, her inhalations punctuated by rasping breaths."

Suddenly I remembered having a dream in which I was smoking. Inhalations with definite purpose. I still have muscle memory of such inhalations from when I used to smoke, for a period of time during college, and then again, the year after college, the first time I lived in Japan.

I don't remember anything else from the dream. This is not unusual. But, I can still feel the residual meditativeness. It gave me a feeling of being grounded, of calm, of strength.

P.S. I am bothered by the waft of someone else's perfume permeating my air space while reading this book, borrowed from the library. It's creepy. Not to mention perfume can give me headaches.