He did not stop smoking despite having had lung cancer, years after he’d started practicing meditation. Which since he opened his early eyes had frequently been hearing about it, with yoga, and their benefits, implying occasional miraculous healings to stubborn illnesses including cancer. He practiced it and experienced the effects as he’d been suffering a psychosis hindered him from consistency, work, and relations, this was before had been shocked by cancer. As he was receiving the diagnosis, with pride came the sum result, his entity was totally void of despair and pain.
He was coming out with his brother from the healing center after a quarrel with the medical staff, because of delaying the chemical session due to a claimed disrupt in the power generator, in a spot where general power cut is an indisputable tradition. With dark jokes and laughter, they were stepping out towards their car in the park, to find another irony, she was dead broke. It’s just second-hand news to say that laughter is immunity to a heart attack if not the most humiliating thing to death himself. Outskirts of town, no taxis nor busses, this was before the age of mobiles.
“Let’s walk,” he said, facing the embarrassment of his still laughing brother who hesitated a bit but there was no other clue. They walked joking with bitterness inside, after about a mile his lungs began their due, he slowed down gradually, stopped gasping, and bowed with his hands on his knees. His brother got furiously worried waving the few passing cars in any way. While his brother busy waving with both hands he felt a kind of sudden stillness, peace, sleepy, and yearning desire for a cigarette.
By the grace of God, a car pulled over. He was a folk relative working overtime as a paid driver in his car. Throwing the remains of his body on the back seat pretending sleeping while they commenced the usual loathsome conversation about the regression of medical services in town and how advanced are they abroad, and -sneaking back- how we should try, as though everything outside is free of charge. They did not stop, so then, he seated himself balanced abruptly saying, “you know, I’ve found an essential solution to my problem!” he paused wearing a mask of graveness, they turned with enthusiastic attention, “this time I’m seriously thinking about marriage,” they chuckled. His gasping smile relieved, “give me a cigarette.”
Scale Fixing 