Pipes, Fire, and Philosophy

Tonight I successfully smoked an entire bowl of my briar pipe after one lighting. This was no light accomplishment. I have been at it for two months, ever since we performed the Taming of the Shrew. Vincentio, the brisk and kindly old man whom I played, desperately needed a good prop if he was going to convince the audience of his age, and so the pipe that Raymond Spiotta had generously given me, several months before, came out of my closet. Packed full, it produces a wonderful head of smoke, but I found I had to wait to light it till just before I went on stage, because it would go out after five minutes.

Up till now, it did no different, but a few days ago a simple and obvious thought struck me: what I carried in my hand was not a smoking mess of tobacco, but a fire. If it was to burn, I had to treat it as such. So with a little practice, I've learned how to pack the bowl so as to fit the greatest amount of fuel possible while allowing for air to flow easily through it. After all, fire works off of an exothermic reaction - biomass + oxygen + Heat = smoke, hydrogen + More Heat. So I needed more oxygen. After that, I learned how to breathe in gently, not fiercely, but fairly continuously, how to guard the heat of the bowl with my cupped hand, and of the importance of cleaning the pipe to rid it of moisture. Thus success. Hurrah!

Then it occurred to me that this very practical and obvious idea was the very same thing that explains what makes the pipe a philosophical thing, a thing of beauty and of delight, and that which made A. A. Milne write, "a pipe in the mouth makes it clear that there has been no mistake--you are undoubtedly a man." When a man holds a pipe he holds FIRE in his hand. It is the secret knowledge rescued by Prometheus, it is reason symbolized, it is that which Heraclitus thought to be the ordering principle of the universe; on the sixth day of creation fire was breathed into dust and there was Adam. When a man smokes a pipe, he communes with his own mind, which is the beginning of self-reflection, and thus the beginning of knowledge. What is more, the pipe is fire clothed, knowing good and evil, and it represents man redeemed in his fallen nature: upright, and unashamed.

I shall return only grudgingly to the naked promiscuous cigar, and even more grudgingly to the dim excuse for intelligence that is the cigarette.

I have some friends, some honest friends,
And honest friends are few;
My pipe of briar, my open fire,
A book that's not too new;
My bed so warm, the nights of storm
I love to listen to.

Robert W. Service - Ballads of a Bohemian