I’ll seventeen forty-nine you!
I made a pumpkin lantern for the first time! I was originally going to carve something from a drawing, but decided to freestyle something. It turned into a fencing Pumpkin Head. Unfortunately the foil wraps around to a side you can’t see.
By way of debilitating medication and desire to read the newish novel by Jose Saramago, I grabbed the tattered copy of Blindness I received a while ago from a friend and began to read it. She had urged me to read it, I told her I would, and when I received the question about whether I had read it, I lied. After reading the back cover I came up with some vague adjectives and a phrase that could hold for any book. What I said to her went something like, “Man, that was crazy, really really crazy. The writing style was interesting.” To which she remarked something about the commas and I - having never looked between the covers before - blindly replied “Exactly.” And so I pulled off another fast one.
I am glad I did. For if I had read the book then, when I was completely unmedicated, I might not have had the same experience I had this past weekend. In the book, a town falls under an epidemic of blindness. It starts with one man who finds himself blind, helpless, and at the mercy of strangers. The blindness spreads from there, and slowly the town reacts by placing those afflicted and those contaminated into quarantine. For those quarantined, the good and bad of human nature grows into an inferno. I won’t go any further into the plot for risk of spoiling, but if you haven’t read this, I think you should.
Now, about my experience, I read the book while taking Amoxicillin and Ibuprofen for the first time in my entire life. The side effects I experienced from both these medications culminated into a fear that I might actually fall victim to the fatal allergic reaction ascribed to either of these drugs. This fear lent itself well to the fear of those in the book that might become infected by the white blindness sweeping through the town. Whether I would be okay from one minute to the next was constantly on my mind. I did self-test throughout, and found myself absorbing those fears in the book into my current dilemma. Fortunately, I finished the book before it got out of hand.
Ah, the commas are abundant, stylistically one should conclude(?), I can’t help but wonder if they are a device, maybe even tied to writer in the book? Or even better, the doctors wife! However, given the last passage in the book, it seems unlikely. Perhaps the end was changed or mistranslated. If you know what I am taking about, please comment with your thoughts.
Saturday stroll through Highland Park - my new favorite detour on my way to school.
A trip to the dentist today turned into quite an experience. I had to get my Upper Left 2nd Bicuspid extracted. I split the tooth in two several months ago on a piece of rice that was baked to a crisp at the Atomic Eggplant. The tooth came out without any hesitation, but I opted to have an implant replace the missing bicuspid, so I had to get bone implanted from a donor to prevent the exisiting bone from retreating. The process was relatively painless. The only pain I encountered was during the threading of the suture. The handle end of the scissors used to cut the suture pinched my upper lip! Ouch! The whole procedure drew in quite a crowd of dentists.
It began with a crew of three: my normal dentist, a dentist with more experience with this procedure, and an assistant. Soon a specialist was called over and overseeing the whole thing and chiming in once and a while. The head doctor also came in and watched sporadically giving his two cents. Finally the staff leader doctor came in, silently watched, and left a short time later, but at the end of the procedure she asked if she could have a look after “hearing so much about it”. At one point there were 7 people in the small room.
A few jabs were exchanged between the specialist and the dentist applying the suture. According to the denist, she could make 10 sutures out of one strand, but today her use wasn’t as efficient. Overall, the mood was generally laid back. At the entrance to my room, passing dentist would discuss my procedure and the latest literature on different materials and preferred methods. I realized this must be how astronomers sound when they discuss the literature.
Although I was uncomfortable at times - from the jerking and tugging sensations - I found that if I closed my eyes, I would concentrate more on what I could feel, like the gentle brush of the dentist’s gown against my face, the soft feminine voices and controlled breathing, and occassional concerned inquiry towards my well-being. With all this attention and stimulus, I found it easy to imagine I was being pampered at a spa.
