teeth

A few years ago while traveling around Mexico, I woke up in the jungle in Palenque with a cheek the size of a grapefruit. The pain went to the center of my brain.

“That doesn’t look good. You should go to town.”

There was no denying it, I needed to go to town, a little town comprised, mainly, of businesses dependent on the tourism to the massive Mayan ruins site nearby. I had to go to town and find a dentist, which meant leaving my campsite – a thatch-roofed palapa with a couple of hammocks hanging underneath. It had been pouring down rain since I arrived the day before. I was damp. Everything was damp. I was miserable already, mosquito-bitten and inexperienced at the art and joy of sleeping outdoors in “elements”. And I also had a toothache.

As good here as anywhere, I guess, when it comes to the act of removing a tooth. There are roadside stands for it all over the world. Dentistry is a popular field in Mexico, though, apparently. I got off the bus and there were at least six dentists from the vantage point of the street corner. I had to come up with some sort of criteria.

I’m pretty sure her name was Maria – it was her name, and that’s what I based my decision on.

Maria had the tooth out in seconds and sent me on my way with a droopy, numb cheek and some cotton. When I got back to my campsite, a friendly Canadian who’d been carrying around a single Vocodin for a desperate emergency decided I was it and handed it to me. But within hours it was as if a demon had been excised. The pain was gone so I, too, stored the prize pill away for a desperate emergency (once again, it would apply to a desperate emergency of my own, but that’s another story – to veer off into a tangent about running away from a beautiful-hippie-turned-crack-smoker boyfriend would take too long for all of us right now – just remind me sometime).

Anyway, it was a fully-grown wisdom tooth that came out – something I nor anyone else would ever miss, but still, I felt like I’d somehow crossed a line.

Eventually when I returned to Mexico on my way back up to the states, I smacked my face hard against the bus seat in front of me. Something happened but the pain subsided after a few weeks and I let it go.

I shouldn’t have, because eventually two pieces of tooth resided underneath that gum line, and eventually, they started to fight.

A year ago I moved to a remote place a few hours north of the Mexican border. I was told that it was too dangerous to go there for dental work, but here it was again, a new demon – so frightful and devastating I’d hallucinated. I had two options – cross the border or pull the damn thing myself.

I’d have done it if it were a molar – but it was not, and what I couldn’t do is make myself something temporary and mildly realistic that I could wear until my gums healed and cosmetic work took place.  So as it stands, I have this plastic that pops up into the roof of my mooth and there’s a fake front tooth on the front of it. It’s rather ridiculous, and I’m floored about it, but as much of an ego battle as it is, I’m exploring it. There is, of course, a story in it I need to tell while I have the chance to taste it fully. And here it is.

I very often take my temporary tooth out when I’m alone (and right now, I am alone – my partner is away for another ten days).  Now, I feel the strange new experience of my lips as they encounter the abrupt edges of the teeth surrounding this new space.

Just a month ago I was feeling the opposite sensation – that tooth began to rearrange itself when I had the wisdom tooth pulled and made some space. By the time I had it removed, my lip had been playing around with the idea of a tooth that overlapped it for practically two years. So had my tongue.

Now, my tongue encounters this unbelievably soft texture – only those of you who’ve placed your tongue on such soft a texture will understand what I can’t really describe. What my tongue now feels is the inside of my upper lip through that space. My lip is totally relaxed, without tension, soft as… as… It is quite a sensual, erotic experience and so I sit here in a private, private moment, running my tongue back and forth across the broken line of my front teeth, feeling that soft, velvety lip.

Next weekend I return to the chair across the border for the extraction of the last two wisdom teeth and the cosmetic replacement of this front one.  Apparently someone was kidnapped out of that dentist’s office a week before I went but to be quite honest, I don’t feel afraid.

See, I’m not worth anything, and it would take a while before anyone realized I was gone anyway – this is obvious enough. I contribute very little to the system., but this is all fine with me really. It’s all part of affordable dental health care. I’m glad I have the access to it while there are still plenty of teeth in my mouth.

it is and it isn’t.

it’s my world for a moment and it’s coming to a close. there are moments where i forget anything outside of this and moments, that much more frequent these days, that i imagine myself driving off in my car in a cute outfit with new boots on and new music blasting through the speakers as i hit the highway driving off into the desert, back to the desert, through the wind and over the asphalt – going, going, always moving toward a destination because it’s the moving that makes me feel alive. i see myself going and almost forget the destination, though at its end are beings who love me more dearly than anywhere.

but the going, oh, the going, the asphalt and the wind, heavy bass beats and girls with guitars accompanying my rebel yell as i fly across the west.

in between is some cold, wet work – the kind of stuff that makes me question what i’m really worth…  sogginess drives me to desperation which leads to ingenuity – or something like that. it is when my brain reawakens. every year i tell myself the same thing. this year will be different.

mmmm…  breaththrough.

this year, it most definitely will.

in fourteen years i can write about this…

fourteen years? why fourteen?

nearly six years ago, when i first encountered this world i’m in at the moment, i knew i’d have to write about it someday…  twenty years felt safe enough.  i figured in twenty years we would probably be living in a vastly different reality – i could write about this after many years of reflections. i could present it as a more fictionalized nostalgia, based on real events. a breach of no one else’s privacy but a story that, eventually, deserves to be shared somehow (in my mind, shared in a world that’s so free its inhabitants perhaps aren’t even aware of how hard others fought to get them there – like first wave feminists and women like me, say, who eschew the “feminist” label altogether in lieu of looking at a day when men and women are equal at the same time – oh, what a brand new paradigm)…

but for now i just live it. the microcosm of my social world here a phenomenon that inspires me to sneak off in the evenings to think through and document the interactions i take part in and observe. i am at a table of mirrors all day, every day. if i look across the table, what i love about the person i see is what i love in myself. what annoys me about them is something i should change in myself. it’s a lot of personal work (headphones and metallica are my other option). and there are constant moments of wondering how i wound up here walking through damp november forests full of mushrooms and tree sap, loud crows flying overhead (i sat here for three weeks before i discovered this place, just this afternoon).

i keep coming back to california, and it keeps sending me home, making sure i’m well-fed before i hit the road for the return trip.

this feeling of being satiated, of getting enough of what i need here and going home, it’s all new to me, and i’m enjoying it. home is still new mexico, and the longer i’m here the more i love where i live. it’s a different kind of beauty than this wet place – mine is the dry place, the one that weathers the skin a little. it is canyons and cacti, my hideout, because i can live and move there without bumping into anyone else i know for weeks if i don’t want to.

in california, i am fifteen miles from the northern california coastline, yet if i make the 45-minute drive to the nearest supply town, i will inevitably bump into someone i know in short order. it is crowded here, so i just don’t go into town at all. out here in the woods, my verizon mobile phone works in three minute spurts every few days or so, letting me know i now have 15 voice mail i can’t really access. i hope it’s nothing urgent. hope, perhaps, is also too active a verb. my daily routine is so routine now there’s no room for contact with the outside world – it would disrupt the delicate balance i’ve found, staying focused at every small light at the end of every tiny tunnel each and very small day. it is simply time to just get this done, and it’s almost done.

the next phase is fairly predictable too – i’ll get in my car and there will be some interludes of visits and shopping and then i will go home with gifts and new boots on. praise it all, the routine has been a vipassana of sorts and oh thank you, i’ve had enough for the time being – i’ve got quite enough to work with now until the next go-around, and i’ve also come to that part of the yearly cycle where i swear there won’t be a next one for me. this is it, i always say, and then i wind up coming back for the story, the endless story, and all its beautiful characters. it is because of the love of story that i found my way to pure experience, but i haven’t, and won’t ever, forget the story or its place.  as with every other thing i think i need to write about now or eventually, my biggest problem is that i just can’t see the end to it.

how do you find the end of a story without dying before you tell it?

separate.

i’m in and out of my element…  which is to say, i’m back in california. and i update this blog so infrequently these days that pretty much the last ten entries have had me somewhere different every time.

for someone who’s out of her element, i sure am here a lot, and a lot of the things that inspire me and motivate me, well, they seem to be here too – though whether they’re all positive or not, that’s something to think about. mostly, they are. other people do motivate me, though there are far too many of them in california.

what does happen for me here, more often than anywhere, is that i tend to gain new insights about myself in these situations, because they’re social, and as much as i love a gathering, i fumble through social interactions and tend to be the dark, secretive child with hair hanging in her face in the corner (this is, at least, unless tequila or whiskey is involved, in which case i can have a brief moment as the life of the party before disintegrating into the shadows again). i was, and am, one of those folks who does a lot of stuff alone – i kinda grew up alone, and my most impulsive decisions are almost always made alone, too. sure, i am gregarious and comfortable around my friends, but i tend to run out of conversation at parties and if there isn’t someone cute or musical to keep my lips or hips busy, that’s about the time i pull a french exit.

social experiences are what seem to propel me forward more than the isolation of my own home – home is for reflection, instead, and at those times when i remember that all i wished for was a loving home base i could go back to between wanders, i realize that right now, at this time, i do. i have that. i am wandering now, and soon i’ll be home again.

still, i have not talked to my partner in ten days and it is a bit disconcerting  – i hope the remaining chickens are alive. i hope my dog is alive. i hope he is safe and happy, and i realize how often we communicate over airspace and let it rest, say a prayer, stick my forehead back on the floor to stretch my bones and ease the aches in the knees and back.

i’m here again and i still believe that it’s revolutionary, educational and beautiful and i’m grateful for it and in the now. there is still so much excitement to come, so much to satisfy some of my deepest desires (obsessions? instincts? i must, i must move), but i’m at one with this and grateful that a friend loaned me a down comforter. i’m separated from my closest, most dearly-loved things, and i understand this for what it is. i love it, and i’m living it. everything i could want. so simple.i do wish i had my dog with me though.

my mother, visiting recently, asked me, “don’t you have any dreams?”

well sure, yeah, of course i have dreams. i’ve got one hell of a waking life, too. someone pinch me.

what does it say…

…that i hardly visit the internet for more than a quick check of social media sites anymore?

or that in the past three months most of my chickens, three baby chicks, two ducks (by way of slaughter, for killing the chicks) and one of my dogs passed on?

or that yesterday, i had to frantically contact my mother from some small town outside of Fresno and have her assist me with an $1100 repair to my car so that i could get a rideshare from craigslist to san francisco and then drive the rest of the way in the dark, in the rain, in a car without a back windshield and a new differiential and brakes i had no choice but to put my faith in, to a remote, forested place near the Mendocino coast? or that right before i left, i broke a gifted cuisinart that got used daily (that one bums me out almost most than the car).

exercises in non-attachment. and patience, because i guess i needed a reminder – my rideshare’s foot tapped the entire time we waited for the car repair, even though we were warned it could take five hours. i had a book to read and things to think as i reflected on my next month and remembered not to have any expectations.

the driving part of the journey is now over for a moment. i am  safe and sound in a beautiful, undisclosed northern california location. i am also very cold, damp and chilled to the bone from the rain that’s been constant since i got here. half-disconcerted and half-relieved to have arrived. change of environment always brings on the cranky, whiney child in me as i go through (however quick) adjustments, yet i find the process addictive and growth-encouraging and continue to put myself through it again and again and again, because it is one thing in life that makes me feel stronger and accomplished.

i know one thing – the dampness of this place is going to make the dry and bitter cold of my high mountain environment back home a lot easier to tolerate. plus, we’re moving the wood stove into the bedroom. i might just sleep my way through the winter months when i get home and after the drive i just had to get where i am, i feel like i could do that, starting tonight.