inside car looking out – foto by Smith

I’m going to try to regenerate some firm flesh around the tooth my dentist ineptly loosened.

I’ve done one “maybe” body regeneration according to dead mom, and did a definite regeneration last year down in Mexico when my thumb tendon was damaged and I lost my ability to bend my thumb. It took three months, but I made it work again.

The “maybe” regeneration comes from almost-dead mom telling me I was circumcised back in 1946. Told her she was mistaken because I still have my skin hood. She insisted I was circumcised because it was on the hospital bill. (Did she misremember? Did she confuse me with my dead brother Jay or my dead brother Cat? Did the hospital bill for it but not do it?) So I asked my professional curmudgeon-poet-friend Jim Lang to ask his doctor friends where he works if foreskins can grow back, and they said it may be possible, while the online community seems to think otherwise.

So I’m going to attempt tightening my loose tooth flesh by using just my mind.

The tooth was firm when I went to the dentist last Saturday to get my broken tooth pulled; I know this because: 1) I had a dental checkup three weeks ago at the same office and they found one upper front tooth was loose but the rest were fine; and 2) I was constantly touching the broken tooth for the two days before they pulled it and the tooth next to it was not loose. The dentist had a hard time pulling it, kept jerking it back and forth and sideways while slipping off with the pliers smashing into my other teeth making me fear for more broken ones. And as soon as he was done, he casually said the tooth next to it was loose and I’d soon lose it.

Reality seems to have turned nasty on me lately. With the newly lost pulled tooth, that leaves 9 on top, with two of those loose and most the rest not lining up with any teeth below so basically I can’t chew – I’ve lost five pounds in the last six days (which is cool; want to try my no-chew few-teeth loose-teeth weight loss diet program?).

To add insult to insult to injury, this morning we tried to go out to have some soft pancakes for breakfast, and COULD NOT GET OUT OF OUR APARTMENT; the rod that works the deadbolt lost its connecting screw so the deadbolt wouldn’t unlock. By the time I disassembled it and finally got the door open, it was too late to go because Lady had a work appointment. So now I have to go out, buy a new deadbolt, and hope the installation instructions are clear enough for a mechanical malfeasant misfit such as myself to install.

Normally I’d ask our landlord to fix it, but he’s the drummer for the math rock heavy metal band Keelhaul, and they’re on tour in Europe for a month.

In addition, this is my 4th day of voluntary stonelessness, and my mellow level has fallen to zero while my edge is extra (it takes me 3-4 days to rebalance once I stop stoning). It’s as if reality is trying to drive me back to grass, but it ain’t going to work because I’ve decided to stay straight until I start remembering my dreams so I can judge how healthy my mind is lately (daily stones mean I don’t remember my nightly dreams . . . finally this morning I remember a few fragments of last night’s dream – it was about taking art fotos, so that’s good). I’ve been down since we returned to the States and I’m trying to turn myself around. Doing more creative work, exercising, and smoking less or not at all are three of my plans for lifting myself out of this depression.

To top off my misery index, Lady and I had a nasty tiff over money miscommunication last night, which my flakey brain that believes a dozen incompatible things all at the same time half thinks is what caused this morning’s deadbolt failure, even though there’s no obvious direct cause and effect. Not only did last night go badly, but after midnight when we were sleeping, a sandwich guy kept ringing our doorbell to deliver a sandwich to the person who lives beneath us who either wasn’t home or refused to answer her door. Seems she and we have the same wireless doorbell product and when either bell is pushed, both ring (so I’ll be buying a different brand of doorbell today as well).

A final disappointment is really shallow – I’m a Stephen King fan, have read all his novels and find 25% of them to be better than most the serious literature I’ve read, with his other 75% dependable mostly enjoyable time-killers. The past two days I read his latest 1,074 page Under The Dome and came away depressed. It’s a nasty book about nasty bullies and brought me neither joy nor insight. The only other even nastier novel I’ve read by him was Dreamcatcher, which he wrote while in excessive pain recovering from the car that smashed him to pieces while he was out walking.

There’s more of course, but this is already too much of more than enough.

This world is Maya (illusion), and since this it is the it it is and we all create our own reality, I gotta do some serious soul searching so I can get back to being able to walk on water.

So now you-all can chant, “Hey Smith, you want some cheese with that whine?”

(Actually, maybe I do; cheese is usually soft and I could gum it to death).

PS update – emailed my landlord and he just called from an underground subway-turned-club in Germany and said he’d call his wife and she’d install a new lock because she was a freak and good at that kind of stuff. So I guess I don’t have to see how good I am with the “manly” mechanical stuff today. This is good because I am a fine un-man.

~ ~ ~

Zen over Zero

Dog week later in mourning kitchen pouring
Coffee into my veins with a dull cup
A daze of morals and Moses
Whines and Rosicrucians
It’s raining cats and gods
And I am a fine unman

– Steven B. Smith

outside car looking in – foto by Smith