New Car

Given a new car, it has that smell to it. Will someone please hit me with a stick to enlighten me? I've been wondering for days about what happens to that smell if you never smoke in your car. I've been wondering about smoking.

Maybe this is why some monks douse themselves with gasoline and then strike a match. They burn quite happily. You wouldn't understand, unless you understood about "no pineapples."

I mean, is hunger in your body or where the food is not? The refrigerator has that new-refrigerator smell until something rots within it. This reminds me of set theory.

But set theory is silly!

We were talking about new cars and enlightenment. And smoking is just too enjoyable to dismiss. That first drag is so powerful. Who knows why more people quit? And why are they in my car? And what do they know, really? Except, perhaps, juggling, in theory. And isn't the desire to quit an act of God?

Such things are not difficult. It's like your mother. You never analyze your mother's personality to her face. She will always have that new-car smell and will hope you do, too. She doesn't understand set theory. She doesn't smoke, either. And she has a big stick to hit you with. You will always be a child to her.

But there is a trick to the new-car smell.

Don't live in your car and don't drive anywhere and it will stay that way forever. It's like your wife when you're first married. The marriage has that new-car smell. In response to this, I started smoking. I fished around for returnable bottles in the garbage cans along the street to buy cigarettes. I sold a piano. We had children. I went into the hospital because I developed a craziness (this was no one's fault and everything fed into it).

Was I angry?

You bet. Do I understand being crazy? Sometimes. It's like new-car-smell-enlightenment, where you trade up models of sanity from time to time. Do I understand women? Not a bit. When they drop hints, I run away. After all this time away, I am polite.

I go places in my car. I try to say what the truth is. I juggle with these silly observations, trying to say what I'm too embarrassed to say to anyone's face. I'm hungry for pineapples. Do you understand? They are not in the refrigerator! They are! Not in the refrigerator!

Like every married couple, we tried really hard, but we never got past the new-car smell. And I quit smoking.