Level 0.137 - stage 6.

Like your cigarette ashes falling from a high window, gently towards your elderly neighbours exotic garden and into her favourite flower pot of amazonian passion flowers; you yell down an apology that rings in her hearing-aids, she hears nothing but "the passion flowers!" and abruptly responds by swinging her head around and stumbling backwards onto her stone lined garden pathway. A stone loosens and carries her foot into a plummet towards the brick-laden bench a few feet behind her and her head lands hard against its hard edge, blood comes out of her eyes. You move away in horror and guilt. Her family decides to cremate her and carry her in her favouite flower pot to the amazon which she most admired, and into the rich black earth there; Terra Preta, a life promoting soil unlike any other, made of charcoal and bones, which the gardener always wished she had. Her own ashes were placed in the soil, and her flower pot was filled with it and passion flower seeds. The family left happy. A few years go by and you are still haunted by the memory of your old neighbour, and every time you think of it you need a smoke. You decide to take a vacation to the amazon where she was laid, to relieve your conscious, tend to the flower pot, apologize in a softer voice. When you arrive, you find nothing but some strange tribal men, who speak English simply. One has her elegant flower pot on his head but a piece of it is missing, and approaches you with stern interest, appearing to be the chief. You tell him you came to visit your friend in the soil, and overcome by so many feelings, you say aloud how much you need a cigarette. The chief softens up upon the understanding of your loyal visit to your lost friend, and he has a smoke. He says they are the best smokes on the earth and forcefully thrusts it towards you. You accept it, impressed, it has a filter! And it was the best smoke you ever had, such a rich and robust flavour, so clean feeling. You boast to him that it is so nice and you ask him "why?". He says, while walking, it comes from the black earth; in their tribe they sift the local soil and add sacred elements to the tobacco they grow, they extract charcoal from it and mix it with fibers from plants to make the filters, which purify the smoke. They said it was the best batch of cigarettes they've made all year, they supported their tribe well with its value. He stopped and said "this is where we dug." And the piece of the flower pot was laying there. He explained that the elegant flower pot with plant fibers in it was above the soil they extracted from, so it is now a token of pride worn by the chief who mastered the product. By the time he finishes explaining this story, there is not much left of the cigarette yet there is a long ash because you were listening too intently to smoke it, while shock was slowly sinking in. A breeze flew by, the ash fell onto the churned soil where your neighbours ashes were buried, and landed on the piece of the flower pot left there. You stared at it, knowing you just smoked your neighbour and ashed on her flower pot again. 

It's like that.

Asomatous Clout