Saturday, March 10, 2007
It was my first time at the dentist in an embarrassingly long while. A new dentist, but they’re all the same to me, since all of them end up telling me that my mouth is fucked. Despite having a serious oral fixation and grinding my teeth every night, my teeth are nice and straight. Their appearance, however, belies the fact that they are older than they are supposed to be. The insides of my teeth are of a 60-year-old’s, but the outsides are of someone my age. Or something like that. My teeth are dying but they won’t. Inside my mouth is a contradiction.
There was a tiny stuffed koala clinging onto the edge of that harsh, rectangular light they set above your face. As the dentist proceeded to hurt me with her drill and her polisher and her bitter observations, I just stared at the koala, its face smushed against the light’s plastic frame. The octopus told me that you can kill koalas with fright. The octopus also gave me a tiny stuffed koala of my own, exactly like the one I saw at the dentist’s, but mine clutched onto a boomerang. My stuffed koala holds on to its death-object.
I hope the koala at the dentist’s is doing okay. It has seen countless others with ravaged mouths, longing to spit their blood out.
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Tagged by Twinkle. These book memes are relentless.
1. You're stuck inside Farenheit 451. What book do you want to be?
Norwegian Wood by Haruki Murakami
2. Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?
Justin Cobb from Thumbsucker by Walter Kirn.
3. The last books you bought were:
short story collections, those “best of so-and-so year” and “best new voices” deals, and Killing Yourself to Live by Chuck Klosterman
4. The last books given to you were:
Diary and Choke by Chuck Palahniuk (from Whammy) and What is the Short Story? by Current-Garcia and Patrick (from the octopus)
5. Three books that would have made more of a difference in life had I read them years earlier:
Still Life with Woodpecker by Tom Robbins, Diary by Chuck Palahniuk and The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
6. Three books I borrowed and don't want to return anymore:
I return most of the books I borrow right after I read them, so my mind is mush right now.
7. Three books I wanted to like more:
Choke by Chuck Palahniuk, Trainspotting by Irvine Welsh and
Kafka on the Shore by Haruki Murakami
8. Three books I pretended to have read:
--- (wushu)
9. Three books I am happy I bought last year:
those short story collections from question 3 (I’m an infrequent buyer, obviously)
10. Three books I wish I had written:
The Perks of Being A Wallflower by Stephen Chbosky, Everything is Illuminated by Jonathan Safran Foer and A Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
I tag: Oreo, Peachy, Kael, Eirene and Nante
posted by marguerite @ 9:55 PM
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