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ふーっと煙を吹き出して
今では喫煙制限に賛成する筆者だが、かつて紫煙をくるらせていた時期もある。
だから受動喫煙を忌み嫌いながらも、服に染み付いたたばこのにおいや、たばこを吸うときの愛煙家の物憂げなポーズに接すると、当時の若い自分が初めて味わった自由と反逆の気分などを思い出す。
Blowing smoke
Smoke: some we hate, some we love. Cookout smoke calls to my inner cavewoman (picture early Rachel Welch, okay?), smoke from incense burning at a temple is an olfactory prayer, and bonfire smoke is the cologne of summer. But if someone lights up a cigarette in a restaurant — and so often this happens just when my meal arrives — I am (pardon the pun) incensed. That kind of smoke trashes (a word with "ashes" included) the taste of good food, which is of course why so few people light up when their meal arrives.
I have solid grounds for advocating many of the new laws popping up in Japan, curbing public cigarette smoking. Both my grandfathers smoked, and died young. My Swiss grandfather preferred Gauloises, which he loved to tell me were made by sweeping detritus from the gutters of Paris and rolling it up in toilet paper. My other grandfather's story is a morality tale. He and his two older brothers were promised by their father 100 bucks, big money back then, if they didn't smoke before the age of 21. My grandfather's brothers collected their rewards and never smoked. My grandfather also refrained from smoking, but when he came of age, the Great Depression had bankrupted his father. Crushed, my grandfather took up smoking, and died long before his siblings, of lung cancer.
That should have been enough evidence to prevent me from ever smoking, but as my son loves to point out, as I fan away fumes in restaurants with my menu, "You did it too, Mom!"
This, I regret to say, is proof of why you should keep quiet about your early failings to your children. But my son is right. I did smoke in college. I smoked like Lauren Bacall, in black and white splendor, imagining someone desirable on the other side of my graceful plume of secondhand toxins. I was a magazine editor, and smoking seemed to suit the gritty, self-inflicted-heart-attack pace of journalism. I smoked when writing, too, using the burn time to reflect, to inspire myself with nicotine, to inhale the opiate of creation.
My senior year roommates, tired of being exposed to bad air, ganged up on my habit and bought me a 50-pound bag of carrots to help "ween me from the oral fixation thing." I chewed carrots like Bugs Bunny through the writing of my final thesis. I learned that cigarettes leave a yellow gunk on windows, stain teeth and fingers, coax out ugly wrinkles, and make you more vulnerable to colds. When one of my favorite authors, Raymond Carver, contracted lung cancer, I finally quit.
But here's the funny thing.Though I try hard to avoid secondhand smoke these days — the outrage of the reformed can be comically fierce — I still associate the lingering smell in clothing, or the languorous poses struck by tobacco-lovers with my adored grandfathers, with my first taste of freedom and identity, with back-alley rebellion and endless nights of searching for the slightly crazed element of artistic perfection. Which sort of stinks, but there you go.
- Blowing smoke
- たばこの煙を吐く(「だらだら話す、煙に巻く」の意も)
- Cookout
- バーベキュー
- calls to 〜
- 〜を呼び覚ます
- cavewoman
- 原始人の女性
- picture
- 〜を想像してみて
- incense
- お香
- olfactory
- 嗅覚上の
- prayer
- 祈り
- bonfire
- たき火
- cologne
- コロン、におい
- pun
- だじゃれ
- (am)incensed
- 激怒する
- trashes
- 〜を台無しにする
- advocating
- 〜を支持すること
- curbing
- 〜を規制する
- Gauloises
- ゴロワーズ(強いにおいの仏タバコの銘柄)
- were made by sweeping detritus from the gutters of Paris and rolling it up in 〜
- パリのどぶの汚泥を掃き寄せ、〜で巻いて作った
- bucks
- ドル
- siblings
- 兄弟たち
- in black and white splendor
- モノクロ映画の光彩の中で
- plume of secondhand toxins
- 受動喫煙のもとの有害な煙
- gritty, self-inflicted-heart-attack pace of journalism
- 骨っぽくて、自ら心臓発作を招きそうなジャーナリズムの仕事のペース
- burn time
- たばこが燃える時間
- opiate of creation
- 創造するためのアヘン剤
- ganged up on 〜
- 皆で〜を非難した
- ween 〜 from 〜
- 〜に〜を断ち切らせる
- oral fixation thing
- 口に入れるものに執着するという問題行為
- Bugs Bunny
- アニメキャラクターのウサギ
- gunk
- やに
- stain
- 〜にしみを付ける
- coax out ugly wrinkles
- 次第に醜いしわを生じさせる
- make you more vulnerable to colds
- 風邪を引きやすい体にする
- contracted
- 〜にかかった
- the outrage of the reformed can be comically fierce
- (元々喫煙していない者に比べ)悔い改めた者の怒りは笑っちゃうほど激しかったりする
- lingering
- しみついた
- languorous poses struck by 〜
- 〜が決めるけだるいポーズ
- back-alley
- 不良じみた
- slightly crazed
- いささか狂信的なまでの
- Which sort of stinks, but there you go.
- 少々クサいがそういうものだから仕方ない