From: Paul Szabady <#?????????????????????>
Subject: Pipe Smoking As An Art Form

Perfectly smoking a perfect pipeful of tobacco can be one of the 
greatest and most satisfying experiences one can have.  Alfred Dunhill 
didn't idly call his book "The Gentle Art of Smoking."  But like all 
arts, there is effort, experimentation, error, discouragement, growth, 
and learning as one moves through stages of beginner, apprentice, 
craftsman, and finally - an artist of pipe smoking.
   The perfect pipe -  An autumn evening. The wind rustling the trees.  
>From afar, a subtle smell of burning leaves.  You light a fire in the 
fireplace, watch out the window as the golden slanted light of the sun 
warms the room and illuminates the air. You light your pipe, watch the 
smoke rise and become transfixed in the shafts of light.  You pass the 
bowl of the pipe under your nose and smell ITS nose, a warm mellow aroma 
that evokes memories and reveries.  The feel of the pipe in your hand, 
its deep color, its pattern of grain bubbling up like some hidden secret 
signature of things.
   The pipe has smoked through its top third and now the combustion is 
easy and assured.  The smoked tobacco has baked and cured the tobacco 
under it in the pipe and now its flavor becomes richer, mellower and more 
concentrated.  You breathe slowly through your nose, pipe in mouth, 
puffing as slowly as possible because you know that there is a perfect 
temperature where the tobacco and pipe will yield all their aroma, all 
their taste, all their pleasure.  You find that ideal realm and the 
pleasure becomes more intense.  Your thoughts slow and then stop -all the 
distractions end: it's just you, the room, the fire, your pipe.  Time 
seems to stop, the pipe seems to smoke forever.  As Rimbaud once said: it 
seems like the pipe is smoking you!
    Not you're about 3/4 through the pipe.  Run a pipe cleaner into the 
shaft, remove and re-tamp.  Now you know why you smoke pressed-flake 
Virginias because now the pipe moves to its climax - a zone of aroma 
richness, mellowness and flavor that almost causes you to doubt that it 
can be possible.  Now you know why the Indians considered tobacco the 
path to the gods.  And it is a simple act, a gentle act - a skilled 
physical act, to be sure.  But it is mostly a mental act - an act of 
concentration, an act of awareness.
    True pipesmokers will recognize the experience; beginners and 
apprentices need to know that it is possible and is worth pursuing.  
Sometimes it comes out of the blue and you don't know how you did it. 
That is why the craft of pipesmoking is important.  It's frustrating to 
do it by accident and not to be able to do it at will.  In my 20 years of 
off/on pipe smoking I have been a beginner and apprentice many times, a 
craftsman erratically, but I have achieved that art enough times to know 
that it is worth pursuing.  Worth pursuing with a passion.  Tolkien once 
said that he loved waking up each morning because it meant another day  
of pipe smoking.

-Paul Szabady

[ A worthwhile note for beginner and expert alike, Paul! Thanks! -S. ]


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