Something must be done.

Funny thing about cigarette ash. It doesn't really matter where it falls... it dissolves quickly, it breaks into tiny particles that scatter on any surface in the slightest disturbance of air. It is a non-issue, cigarette ash, compared to the butt, which is a continual and ever-confusing issue, people up-in-arms and posting notices and inventing new smell proof containers for them. They are not biodegradable. They are ugly, they stink, they are disgusting when inadvertently mixed with water. Cigarette butts are the embarrassment of the Smoker proper. Even with no filter, when you and God both know for certs that the little bunch of tobacco and tissue thin paper will disappear during the first rain or trampling, Other people don't know. Or they pretend not to, or they just really WANT it to be true that the little non-filtered butt is an odious burden to society. Anyways. Back to the ash. I was smoking last night, alone on the porch...watching the burning glow of the tip as it changed, as it moved and breathed. And I realized how incredible it is that something must be done with the ash. It must be dealt with. It must be flicked. How many hands, how many billion times a day. How lame if it gets dropped on a shirt, or in a car. What a nice trick how you can lick your finger and then touch a dropped ash, ever so gently, and get it to stick until moved to safer territory. How stressful when in the car or on a very clean porch and you realize the ash does not have a near and present safe spot. The ash...is elegant. Gray, white, and black... Once burning and orange, beautiful and alive, it is now soft and powdery and waiting to be dispersed back into the land. Made of old trees and plants. Full of my breath. I was thinking in the back of my head before that it was kind of a chore, but last night I knew that I love having to decide so many times and so many times more where the ash will go.