I always loved the way the sun shined down on me through the cracks of the wooden floor deck. Something about the summer sun shining through those cracks, while I'm blowing hookah smoke in the morning sun feels like magic and nothing less. Year after year, the table on my personal patio at home has changed. I remember how I initially had a small, shitty wooden table three years ago. From the wooden table to the unstable metal one, to the one I have now. My current table is a beautiful collage of sea shells embedded in rock, supported by a steel frame. I look forward to reminiscing about the golden days, while I lean into the cracks of sun light from above as I smoke cigarette after cigarette, thinking about the things I might do today. The day usually ends the same way it began; with me jamming to my favorite radio tunes as the sun goes down. I'm not a big fan of the darkness, it's a bit intimidating and gloomy for my taste. So I usually head back inside, radio in hand as I figure out how to spend my time before I go to bed.
My fascination with this area grows, not just because of the sunlight, but also because of the setup of my patio furniture. I try to set up the chairs and the table in a comfortable way, but if there's one thing I know about preparing for things when it comes to comfort, it's usually a futile effort. This is because of the fact that whenever I'm making use of the patio furniture (or anything for that matter), I find myself moving it all around to fit my needs. Yet, it seems very disorganized and thus uninviting to me. Put simply, my wants and needs don't necessarily match and if I were to waste time trying to satisfy both prerequisites, I would never be able to sit down in comfort. I've spent countless times organizing and reorganizing the patio area, but it's never quite right. Since I generally prefer the outdoors, having a personal space that is comfortable is the most important thing to me. I have spent hours and days at a time (even during the fall and winter months), attempting to customize my outdoor area. Although I am rarely satisfied with the customizations I make, each one still seems to be as important as the next.
My personal outdoor patio area is quite small and can be difficult to work with at times. There is however, one goal I am trying to achieve in all of this; locating the sweet spot that I found in that area last summer where the morning sun shined down so brightly and perfectly. The chair (at the time), was angled so perfectly that it was exposed to both the sun shining through the cracks of the wooden deck floor and the sunshine on the left side, completely unblocked. It was a spot that took advantage of both areas and felt very satisfying to me. The chair was the perfect mix between complete sunshine and partial sunshine. It gave me a great view of the giant bush to the left while also making the opened space directly in front of me seem inviting and profound as well. As insane as this obsession sounds, it is actually quite comfortable and very much worth the hassle as well. It's exposed to just the right amount of sun and just the right amount of breeze. I honestly have no idea why I moved the chair from that spot initially nor do I recall doing so. This "sweet spot" I've been searching for is a perfect place to smoke, especially in the morning hours when the sun has been up for no longer than forty-five minutes.
Most times when I'm smoking a cigarette, I rush through the process, trying to get as much nicotine as I can in the shortest amount of time possible. While I'm in this particular spot however, I somehow find a sudden and unexplainable urge to slow down and just enjoy it. I remember how I used to sit down in that spot and smoke a cigarette slowly. I would take a long, delicate inhale from my cigarette, than exhale slowly and let the cigarette burn for almost two minutes before taking another puff. Somehow, the cigarettes really seemed to last longer when I was doing this in that spot. One time in particular, I remember listening to some Buckcherry while I was lounging in the spot. It was morning and the sprinklers had just finished doing their jobs. The grass was so green and vibrant, the cigarette was so full of euphoria, the music was so strong and beautiful and everything was so perfect. I could not have conceived of a single fault in the world, and I have often wished it would've stayed that way. Many times, the charm and appeal of the outdoors is extremely superficial and tends to fade when the harsher months come along. But the mood inevitably returns when summer comes back.
What I admire most about the sunshine in my personal outdoor patio is the fact that when I have my hookah on the beautifully decorated table facing towards the sunlight, a sort of rainbow collage shines through so magnificently and gracefully. Being the sentimental "genius" that I am, I sometimes just sit there and watch the rainbow colors attack my hookah with disregard for the fall ahead. I sometimes wish I could smoke the rainbows. How would they taste? What would they do? Would they be the ultimate smoking experience? Other times, I simply fall in love with the taste of dust, floating about the dirty backyard. It's the kind of thing that makes most people gag, but for an outdoorsman like myself, it is not just "natural" but it is familiar, it is home, it is the taste and smell that made me fall in love with Colorado in the first place! As Kilo plays the same generic rock and roll crap that I love over and over again, I'm faced with unpleasant thoughts. Thoughts like "If this is something a person could actually enjoy, does that mean having fun is a waste of time?". "Of course it is!" I respond back to myself, gearing up for a debate. "It's a waste of time, because it's not productive". "But isn't life ALL ABOUT being productive?". "No, if it was, your life would be a boring waste!". And on and on and on.
Wether or not I find the sweet spot, at the end of the day at least I had fun. I'm not always sitting in a chair, listening to the radio and smoking a cigarette. Sometimes I go for walks, sometimes I go out and eat, sometimes I go to the smoke shop and sometimes I watch TV. Tv for me is quite rare, if I'm watching a television show, it's usually online. TV is one of those things I thought I could never cut from my diet, especially when I was much younger. Somehow though, I ultimately discovered other forms of entertainment that made the idea of TV seem laughable. I could do nothing but take walks all day, and still I would feel happy and very much satisfied with my day. As a matter of fact, that's almost all I do most of the time; take long walks to reminisce about my past and think it over. Many times, I have questioned why I do this, why I reconsider something that has already happened and cannot be changed. Over and over again, I reexamine things, trying to make sense of my past. It's a funny thing how a man my age could have enough time to think about the past so critically and thoroughly. I would imagine this isn't something most 19 year olds have in common. I suppose if you were 19 and you were serving a life sentence in prison without parole, you might be thinking about the past as often as I do. At least in that scenario, it would make sense to focus on the past so intensely and analyze it so obsessively.
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