Returning to the dentist

I have made it through bruised ribs and open sores saturated with rubbing alcohol and walking into an oak tree at full tilt and cutting open my cheek with the corner of a cinder block, but all these things are a puff of air or a walk in the park for me compared to a visit to the dentist.

I actually have good teeth. I have never had a cavity. I went to the dentist in my home town throughout my adolescence and early adult life. Then he retired. I drifted. Finally, I settled on a dentist in Brooklyn that was recommended to me by a friend. I went to see her with bit of pride and bravado regarding my unspoiled mouth. She dug in and picked and prodded and x-rayed and made me fill up her tiny drain with pints of blood, oozing from the openings she had made in my gums. And then the news:

I had a cavity. I couldn't believe it. I listened to her recommendations, but my mind was elsewhere. She must be mistaken. I was sure of it. That was three years ago.

This morning I returned to that dentist again. My wife has harangued me regularly about going back. She was certain that I would need a root canal procedure at this point, due to my neglect of this developing cavity. I believed, on the other hand, that the dentist was simply mistaken. It was some speck of something like teeth dirt or prairie dust that I would eventually be able to simply brush away after scrubbing this molar every night, as I had done religiously since that fateful appointment in 2005. The dentist went to work on my teeth again. She dug, and scratched and scraped with the same vigor as last time. Yet this time she seemed a bit more pleasant and optimistic. Was it simply that I had, after great and ceaseless attention to that molar, finally got that prairie dust to leave my mouth? I began to feel optimistic too. She finished up her scraping session and then brought my reclined chair into the upright position. She handed me a mirror. Suddenly, I knew I had misread her entirely. She shined a light in my mouth and made me look at the dark spots on my molars. It was no longer just one dark spot. It was now two. I stopped listening to her when she began to describe my options for filling the cavity. I believe it was something like aluminum foil or white gardening cement. I drifted again. As I was leaving the office, the receptionist forced me into allowing her to schedule me for a follow-up appointment. It's some time in September. As I see it, this means I will need to be back some time in April of 2010.

Mark Schwartz Murderered

For those concerned:

This is not me.

One More Round

Mugg's Ale House,Brooklyn 7:45pm

Man 1: I had her over on the first date and we watched "Spirited Away."

Man 2: If you really want to woo your date you have to go right to "Totoro."*

(*As told to me by my wife as we walked to the subway)

Totoro Reduxe

Boxes of Enlightenment

Uncle Larry, we kept the chairs that your wife refused to let in the house (they need to be restuffed). We kept the dresser from childhood (it's in basement holding seasonal items). We kept the Edward Hopper poster of "New York movie" (Elisa hates that painting). But no- the Norfolk Island pine did not make it. I gave it to a friend.

I watched it grow over the last ten years. Bill Clinton was still in office when I purchased it at that nursery on Flatbush. The nursery is gone. It disappeared one day. I don't mean that the store closed. The actual building disappeared. One day I came upon that space and all that was there was an empty lot. You rely on Occam's razor in these types of situations. It might have been the paranormal. It could have been the CIA. But it was probably the sneaky ebb of entropy, the imbalance of order and disorder, the natural state of affairs in the Brooklyn landscape. You take down one thing. You move one person. In the displacement of the thing, nothing is left behind except a hole in the ground, a fissure in the soil and concrete, and the dust that settles everywhere.

I remember the nursery like a thing melting into the periphery. Now my Norfolk is gone and your memory grows dimmer. I miss you, Norfolk; it's on this that I put everything. You spent my summers in the backyard drying out and soaking in. In the winters you dined on uninterrupted sunlight, warmed by the radiator. I will see you again, but it will never be the same. These are the things we tell ourselves to impose order on fragmentation, emptiness on futility.

Returning to the Neighborhood

Here’s why you should move to New York:

1. Kentucky Fried Chicken offers special New York City pickled eggs.
2. Neighborhood watch programs great place to meet fellow pickled egg enthusiasts.
3. 4 out of 5 boroughs on sinking islands with abhorrent rents, creeping corporate chain stores and an old and boring version of Lou Reed.
4. Pizza.

Leaving the neighborhood

In the throes of the debilitating process of boxing up our histories and memories in preparation of a move, it's good to be reminded of our most basic and wonderful instincts; the ones that are packed deeply into our brain stem about when to run and how to hide.

Leaving New York