Fortune Cigarettes

There’s a Santa Fe tradition called Zozobra, in which old man gloom is incinerated, along with all his negative baggage. There are many other similar traditions aound the world. But here’s a way to bring that idea into your everyday life. Wouldn’t it be cool if when you smoked a cigarette you were burning negaive thoughts at the same time? I don’t smoke, but it would almost be worth it to ritually burn the things that bother me.

Enter cigarettes with extra printing on them, negative things that you conquer by burning them. You can buy the regular pack with random messages or you can custom-order with your own personal nemeses. Sure the custom ones would cost a lot more, but that alone might provide incentive to cut back, while making the occasional smoke a poetic act. There must be a brand of cigarette that markets to the black-beret crowd that would make a killing off this.

Plus, it would be a kick to write the ill-fortunes.

1 thought on “Fortune Cigarettes

  1. On days when there is so little wind as to be nearly imperceptible, some sailors will light a cigarette to see where the smoke drifts. Perhaps you could produce a line of smokes for sailors with sayings designed to bring more wind.

    We use incense on our boat, and recently we picked up a couple of interesting scents at the dollar store near the lake: “Kindness of Water” and “Winds of Change.”

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