Day 67: Dead Cigarettes
Sunday, November 12th, 2000 (12th day off Paxil). A journal entry:
This past year of my life hasn’t been measured in months or days. Not even the beating of my heart, as Kazantzakis might contend. Misery and numbness is more like it.
I don’t think it’s right that a human being should be allowed to live through as much as I have. I should be dead.
The whole lobby was empty. It smelled like fifty million dead cigars. It really did. I wasn’t sleepy or anything, but I was feeling sort of lousy. Depressed and all. I almost wished I was dead.
(J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye, page 90)
That’s one way to measure my life from this past year, in dead cigars and cigarettes. That’s exactly the description I’d give my life: fifty million dead cigarettes. Excuse me if I’m feeling a little lousy.