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broken cycle
Friday, November 7 2003
I took a Unisom before I went to bed last night, partly to prevent tooth pain, but also to put me to sleep quickly before my thoughts began to dwell on my teeth. Even when they don't hurt, it's often all too tempting to clench them just to map out what is wrong with them.
When I woke up this morning, I was amazed to discover that my teeth felt almost normal. The deep sleep and painkillers provided by Unisom had kept me from clenching my teeth in my sleep and perhaps aggravating whatever problem I was having.
My teeth remained relatively comfortable throughout the day, and I was even able to chew a little on the painful right side, something that would have been impossible yesterday. My working theory for explaining what went wrong with my teeth is that some slight discomfort (and my teeth are often subject to these) became aggravated by the pain-relieving act of tooth-clenching, which (given the imperfect match of upper and lower teeth) further aggravated the teeth in a positive feedback loop of pain, particularly when done unconsciously at night. Unisom served to break the cycle and give the supporting tissues around my teeth a chance to heal.
For most of the day, when I wasn't off on two separate housecalls, I found myself listening recreationally to Queens of the Stone Age. The name is appropriate - sometimes it sounds like a bare-bones, primitive Queen that smokes a lot of pot. Similar to Clutch, there's a lot more blues in this music than I can normally tolerate, but (unlike Clutch) it's all done cleverly and creepily, and with virtuosic command of rock music history. Here a nostalgia-inducing 70's style vocal affectation (I love those!), there a ponderous Alice in Chains riff, and plenty of surf, punk rock, and glam in between.
Another helicopter fell out of the sky in Iraq today - I didn't even bother to mention the one that fell out of the sky a few days ago, right after I mused about the soft underbelly of a Chinook helicopter that flew over me when I was out on the Stick Trail. Things are going badly in Iraq, baby. I have a feeling another helicopter is going to fall out of the sky within the next week. Something has changed in Iraq, and it isn't for the benefit of the American occupiers. {I might like you better if we slept together.} I get the feeling that Iraq is gradually developing - within its chaos - an intelligent response to its American invaders. By intelligent, I mean the kind of intelligence one sees exhibited by colonies of ants. There is no leader driving things, there is just a similar feeling among a lot of people about a thing that is happening. Their response under the influence of this feeling is similar to that of an army under a brilliant commander, only there is no commander. They are really just a bunch of pissed-off ants, armed with millions of rocket-propelled grenades. Ouch.
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