Stet!

For many weeks now, I’ve been writing and unwriting drafts for this blog, one of which was about Greek mythology and that half-man, half-television adventurer Bear Grylls on the tv show “Man vs. Wild.” I started an essay about “The Ninja Warrior,” too. About Jonas Salk. About Hosea and Gomer of the Bible. About Christmas letters and photographic memory. About that woman who is Bat for Lashes. About what I would do on December 20, 2012, when the world is supposed to cease being the world as we understand and don’t understand it. About winter and the many shades of indignity it paints on my front door each year.

So many ideas abandoned, as if I am an idea sorceress so careless with thoughts because I can summon them at will. Not so much I am a magi. Not so much.

I am, however, a smoker. That as much.

Starting this January, the headless seahorse of a state in which my city crawls has made smoking in any space where the masses huddle (bars, restaurants, bathhouses) punishable by spits, tiger attack, Dr. Phil, gang rape. For nonsmokers, this is well-deserved glory. After all, no one should be subjected to someone else’s lung soot. I get that. I accept that. For me, this changes absolutely nothing, as I’ve always preferred my smokes in relative silence, away from the pathological unkindness and self-righteousness of the healthy. Plus, nothing is more serene than being outside…in the winter. 

What strums my nerves is this term “disgusting habit” paddled to and fro by those who want to add their noise to this state-subsidized hypocrisy. And it isn’t the judgmental tenor of this term that irks me. It is the unoriginality of it. It is a half-ass, generic, shallow observation uttered or written by those who are old enough to have read enough to have picked up enough crispier-sounding put downs.

Filming “Jackass” (the movie and the tv show) is a disgusting habit for its provocateurs. Eating boogers is a disgusting habit for nose pickers. Not washing hands after using the bathroom is a disgusting habit for kindergartners.

Smoking, on the other hand, is a vice that is so much more indignant than it is gross. It is fatal. It is unhealthy. It is political. It is rhetoric inspiring. It is maligned. It is connective. It is provocative.

Under this new state law, I cannot spark a cigarette within 15 feet of any public doorway—again, because I’d be mauled by tigers or, worse, by Dr. Phil. It’s a fact that makes me smile. The booger eaters, however, are always welcome to pick away at any doorway or edifice of their own choice. Unless they smoke, too. In that case, they wouldn’t be called disgusting anymore; they’d be called serial killers.     

Stet is "let it stand" in Latin. In publishing, stet is a sharp sword wielded by both author and editor. Whatever the intention of whoever swung stet first, the word almost always

 slices someone. Because it is a mark of disapproval.

But it is also magical--this thing called Stet. You utter it, or jot it on a page, and you'll get someone's attention. In that sense, it's like any other four-letter word--love, hate, fuck, lust, cock, pain, snow, wait, sexy. After all, if someone calls you sexy, wouldn't you stop to find out what that's all about?

In my days of both magic and swords, I find myself saying "stet" a lot. My alarm clock blares, and I utter "stet!" I receive a letter from a long lost childhood boyfriend, and I think "stet"--and "shit, that's sexy." I accidentally add too much fishsauce to my noodles, and I shriek "stet!"

And I sit in the bath and the house is quiet and afar I know the galaxy is expanding, and I whisper "stet."

Hello. I'll start by saying why I'm here, and I'll be completely honest about my reason. It is Sunday, a boring Sunday. Not that there isn't to do. It's just that I don't want to be doing. And the list to be done is too long for any doing anyway. On a Sunday, a Sunday with sky like cement. Rain apparently will rake the pavement. And flurries will float sideward and floorward. But the natural progress of outside will not affect me today, as I and my little one are staying in, still swollen from the big feast on Thursday.

So here I am, tell me something. Or maybe I will tell you something. Maybe something borrowed, something blue, something billowy, something brave, something beautiful.

Here's something brilliant:   

Red