When I was in the eight grade and my friends began smoking I didn't feel the urge to follow. I couldn't see the excitement in inhaling smoke from a burning piece of dried tobacco. I had had enough second hand smoke in my life to know the taste of it, and though I liked the smell I wasn't sure I wanted to have it in my mouth, my throat. Perhaps that second hand smoking saved me from being a smoker myself. It may be that I had a state of matureness in my teen all immature state, but the hipness factor simply wasn't caused by a cigarette in my eyes.    When my friends later began smoking out, I wasn't as resistive.    Jon told me all about it. They did it abroad, on some island in the Atlantic. Those stories! Made me dream a bit. They had been smoking pot. I digged and said: "Was it cool?"    Of course it was.    And I inhaled the smoke which was bitter and lean in my throat. I coughed (not because I felt an urge to cough, but that was something you where supposed to do when smoking the first time) and inhaled again. There I was with my friends, sharing a hallucination of power. And it made me feel so weak. I wondered if I would ever be strong again.    I would.    It was then, during a vacation in Russia. That room, in Yalta, full of cockroaches. Big and small bugs, crawling on the walls. The lighthouse, hurling a cylinder of white light, reflected in the dark water over a vast dark space. I had felt fear then, standing on the balcony with mom beside me and friends just behind a window. Watching the powerful fusion of nature and technology in a time when nature is at it's most powerful, and the technology a striking contrast.    I felt so small standing there, several floors up, looking out towards an endless horizon. Only now I understood why they called it the Black Sea. The water was the dark color of ebony, and the lighthouse a voodoo priest casting an enchanting spell of light over the sea, and over al of us.    I felt genuine dread and excitement looking at the world and I first now noticed how small I was in it and how big the sea was. I like the sea, because as the large trees it's so peaceful and beautiful at day and so magically fearstriking at night. It made me feel alive, and that night I was mature in a way I've never been before. I didn't feel quite safe, I wasn't sure, because in nature you're never quite safe. It's so capricious, and older than all of us.    Later mom gave me a talisman, and I still keep it with me wherever I go. Nature, technology and magic, those where the primal things and I think I believe in all of them. Love is a for of magic and creates some of the most powerful spells conducted.    This was my infinite scream into the world, and I screamed into the night.    "What's wrong?" Everyone in the hotel room was suddenly there outside on the balcony with me. "You hurt yourself?"    I blushed a little, but faced those queering eyes with a smile. "No," I said. "I'm just alive."

robin

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