Death To The Machines

I made this picture with Paint, about three years ago, after I quit smoking. I started smoking cigarettes in college, and kept it up into my thirties. When I got into telecom, I realized an entirely new plane of stress. My one-pack a day habit, doubled. The daily cash cost of the addiction was staggering.

When I made up my mind, I went cold turkey. True grit. Nicotine settles into nerve tissue, and must be completely swept from the body. For twenty years, I answered to a brutal mistress. That devotion had to be denied, the way one avoids an abusive lover.

A weight bench helped in the first few days. The cravings come in waves. The first impulse to smoke must be met with an exercise, a replacement habit. The cravings diminish very gradually, but I knew after three weeks that I was on my way.

This picture took about twenty minutes to make. The vast machinery of cigarette production is being overrun by bees. This simple insect, endowed with elegant programming by it's creator, overwrites the bad code, and recycle the used detritus. The area of the soul that once sought destruction, and isolation, and dis-ease, has been reclaimed, by those forces who cannot see the world, just the simple job before them. The organic sweetening of heart, and crystalline purification of the One with in Ether-nity.