On the classic BIC coloured mini lighter
In this kitchen with no gas, I do have my classic BIC coloured mini lighters to toast bread over the flame (as it used to be done with marshmallows). I love bread in this way, and it leaves a smell like a childhood weekend breakfast.
There’s a specific agony when the cigarette goes out (rolled with self-extinguishing paper), you go to pick up the lighter you had just left on the bed, but it has vanished from there like the cigarette’s ember and there’s no way to find it until five minutes later, at the very earliest.
The bed linen is black and white; and the lighter I’m using today is a black BIC with a whitish base; but the same phenomenon of camouflage and sorcery has occurred with lighters of all colours, shapes and sizes.
‘There are many good inventions on earth, some useful, some pleasing: for their sake, the earth is to be loved. And there is such a variety of well-invented things that the earth is like the breasts of a woman: useful as well as pleasing.’
Like the breasts of a woman, the vertical position of the lighter is both useful and pleasing. Not only does it look good standing upright, but it also serves a practical purpose: BIC lighters are young and sensitive to the slightest trace of moisture on the table surface, so laying them down risks them becoming unreliable when it comes to delivering their flame. Unlike a tweeter when he’s tweeting, it’s good for the lighter to be upright, and it is useful as well as pleasing, thus spoke Zarathustra.