Venturing Forth

As the post of Wednesday, January 6th, 2010, intimates, I am still recovering from surgery on my wisdom teeth. For the first time since Tuesday, I ventured forth from my home and attended church for two hours before scuttling back to my well-worn place on the couch and taking a well-deserved nap (of an equivalent amount of time to that spent at church - I have to make everything balance in my double-entry logbook of time spent awake and sleeping) to make up for all the time I missed being away from home.

And I had some crazy dreams during that time. The much-anticipated game of football between the Cardinals and the Packers was on, audio blasting. My subconscious incorporated the sounds while calling forth new visuals and plot in creative fury. My college, Scripps, had been transformed into a thirteenth-century castle with influences from the Spanish mission style; it was complete with walls and a moat. The game was a mock-battle played with what very well could have been a pig's bladder, and, per usual at sporting events, the ladies' restroom had a line up the wazoo. Someone important was being held hostage in the men's room; so many people so close, yet know one knew because of a porcelain wall.

The pain from the surgery has finally begun to abate, although sometimes late at night and in the early morning, I still feel part of myself missing. I still feel the holes where my teeth once were. Never again can I sing Chip Skylark's song "My Shiny Teeth and Me" in full fidelity; I must amend the line

"Why should I talk to you
When I've got thirty-two
Shiny teeth and me"

to

"Why for you should I wait
When I've got twenty-eight
Shiny teeth and me"

The stress is off, but at least it keeps the same number of syllables.

Perhaps some other day I will discourse on the reconciliation between believing in God and evolution, but not tonight. Tonight is reverence for individuals who have the courage and humor to post a story in a single sentence.

"My bathroom is too small for dancing."

'Two stitches and twenty years later, I still don't know why she threw the rock at me, but I'm pretty sure that she was lying when she said, "I was playing hopscotch and missed."'

"I don't really want to be an engineer but I REALLY don't want to be a failure to my parents."

'I cried when I read the note, in my step-dad's handwriting, and it said "our daughter."'

I can say no more, other than this is where the lines blur between art and life.


Claude Monet, half of "The Cliff, Etretan, Sunset"