When I see the water in the near distance and the hills behind, my back against the house wall, I feel both a sense of remove and a sense of place. I am rooted in the chair on the balcony in the same moment that I am pulled towards the grandeur of space – a space I cannot touch but can smell and hear only in the most faint and inarticulate way much as I might experience a cloud.

Monday, October 25, 2010

Procrastination


I can feel the pulse of each heartbeat through the crater where my molar was four hours ago. This rhythmical throbbing pushes from below up and around the residual gum, circling it, then heading back down inside the hole where it pinches each time on the inner most edge. Two hours ago I was blissfully numb and didn’t have to worry so much about the coordination between not dislodging a putative blood clot forming in place of the former tooth roots and trying to swallow. Now I am acutely aware of just how numb I was as I swallow repeatedly the saliva that oozes out in response to the over-stimulation from pain, I presume, since there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of flavour. There does seem to be a kind of glow around the saliva soaked cotton gauze lump I have squished into the cavity that is reminiscent of a coolness still left by spearmint gum that has been chewed too long and thus expands my awareness of the space about a tooth wide on either side of the no-tooth and down into my jaw. From there the pain radiates to my chin, cheek, temple, ear and my right tonsil. I am due for another Tylenol 3. No matter how little respect I had for my former dentist as all dental work was accompanied by her continual banter with her dental assistant about American Idol and its ilk, I should have at least listened when she mentioned root canal.
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2 comments:

  1. brentonNovember 2, 2010 at 9:03 PM

    Hi Terryl,

    What an effective short piece! Your anecdote reminds me a bit of an Alice Munro short story - I don't 'get' the meaning of the title until the last line. Yours is a theme that I can really connect with - not so much the topic of a tooth removal, but the idea of procrastination costing much more than I think it will. … and much more than I would accept if I consciously recognized from the beginning what the final cost would be.

    I wish I could say, "Lesson learned ..."

    Brent

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  2. iris richNovember 2, 2010 at 9:41 PM

    I really enjoyed this piece. I could not help but feel the immediate connection to my many experiences with the "root canal". This writing is imbued with the existentials of temporality, corporeality, and relationality in such a lovely manner that it spoke to me all the way through. I too, was mystified by the title until I re-read the piece again. think I allowed my own assumptions of Procrastion to lead me astray. thanks iris

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