Smoke or Die

I was just shut down. Smashed. Defeated. Or so thinks the self-assured young lady who did the trouncing.

The debate was smoking. Brittany, the young lady in question, had just been to a forum in which the student body discussed whether smoking ought to be allowed on campus. She held that it's a health issue and Dixie's pure in spirit should be free to move about untainted by cigarette smoke.

I disagreed, saying that some students who choose to use tobacco should have the right to go have a cigarette between classes. It's legal, after all, and though we're exposed to many things that affect our mental and physical health every day, we press on and live our lives.

Unfortunately for me, I was using painfully extended metaphors and abstract lines of thought she couldn't have hoped to follow. She really did school me, but not on the topic, which she was under-informed and over-opinionated about, but rather in her method of argument. I was lost, reacting badly, not able to defend my points adequately to resist her bulldozer-like rhetoric.

Her mother is obviously a strong-willed individual.

She was a heavyset girl, and I must've brought up the comparison of smoking to fast-food restaurants three times, but she said she can choose to go into a restaurant, but she can't choose to be exposed to second-hand smoke, which I thought was a lame excuse for not wanting to scoot herself over to the other side of the sidewalk.

But, you can't argue with a true believer, and she had religion in her eyes. Her point, which was that smoking is unhealthy and as few people as possible should be exposed to it, was a good one. But she was too emotionally wrapped up in whether or not I agreed with her to finish the conversation. I didn't learn a goddamn thing.

Unfortunately, the above point was her only point, and everything else hung on it, weaving a glittering web of flimsy logic and circular reasoning that i leaped through, pulling my string of unintelligible metaphors along behind me.

She even looked up the definition of diversity, which she defined as 'a differing of ethnic or cultural background'. She insisted that smoking isn't a culture and that applying the word diversity to a campus of smokers and nonsmokers was fallacious.

As I was trying to make a point about diversity, using our friend Chase, who is an extremely well-cultured young black man, as an example, I was labelled '...ignorant, rude, and not worth talking to.' She and her minions flounced off.

I like smoking, but that's not the point I was trying to make. Dismissing your opponent's argument merely because you disagree with them is dangerous. Dismissing anything because you have a morally superior standpoint is even more dangerous. Beware.

Maybe next time I'll pull the freedom card and see what happens.

Never Tread Lightly

Action is the answer. Getting things done is the answer. If you want to affect change in the world, take some action. Take a walk, say a word, hold out your hand, write a song and make sure someone hears you sing it. Never take yourself too seriously, but never don't take yourself seriously enough. You may only be one person, but you could be the person who says the right thing.

Thought I'd dig out this old thing. Writing this made me feel like I could make a difference to someone, somewhere.

Treading in the crosshairs
I once again allowed myself
To be mistaken for an easy prey.
I'm always following the marshlights
Into some self-created hell
I hoped that this time I could find my way.

You were a candle in the darkness
A symphony of strange refrains
Familiar as the earth beneath my feet.
I could see that you were drifting
Out on a sea of empty dreams
But still I've never tasted lips so sweet

I will close my eyes
So I don't have to see
The better half
Of what you've done to me
And if you have to be alone
That's just as well
I couldn't tell
If I was going wrong
And it's hard enough to sleep
Without having to dream

Stopping between streetlights
I have a drink and start to think
I'm waiting for a storm I know won't come
Another ending of an era
It's last call everywhere I go
I'm stranded on your street with no way home

I will close my eye
So I don't have to see
The better half
Of what you've done to me
And if you have to be alone
That's just as well
I couldn't tell if I was going wrong
And it's hard enough to sleep without having to dream.

I will close my eye
So I don't have to see
The better half
Of what you've done to me
And if you have to be alone
That's just as well
I couldn't tell if I was going wrong
And it's hard enough to speak without having to scream