Comments on: Toothy http://www.oleoptene.com/2009/12/18/toothy/ A blog for Mara Collins Sun, 20 Nov 2011 04:12:17 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.1 By: unreliable narrator http://www.oleoptene.com/2009/12/18/toothy/comment-page-1/#comment-22863 unreliable narrator Mon, 21 Dec 2009 19:47:35 +0000 http://www.oleoptene.com/2009/12/18/toothy/#comment-22863 I always think: teeth is the part of my skeleton I can see. The visible evidence that I am bones and a skull. They scare me more in their mirrored nightly existence, not so much in the dentist's chair—though I love this part in <i>Synecdoche, NY,</i> just a short scene, where the dentist or assistant or whatever is measuring out the gaps? and is saying in this droning monotone: "Five...five...six...five..." and only if you are over 35 and have gum disease do you start moaning in sympathy. But there are of course plenty of those tantric graveyard meditations, staring for days at a skull and just being with it, being with the fact of dying. And you did this in a modern-day antiseptic charnel ground. Being with dentistry. I always think: teeth is the part of my skeleton I can see. The visible evidence that I am bones and a skull.

They scare me more in their mirrored nightly existence, not so much in the dentist’s chair—though I love this part in Synecdoche, NY, just a short scene, where the dentist or assistant or whatever is measuring out the gaps? and is saying in this droning monotone: “Five…five…six…five…” and only if you are over 35 and have gum disease do you start moaning in sympathy.

But there are of course plenty of those tantric graveyard meditations, staring for days at a skull and just being with it, being with the fact of dying. And you did this in a modern-day antiseptic charnel ground. Being with dentistry.

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