Sadhu Tooth

I caught the train with my friend Nicole the other morning and updated her about the teeth. The extra time involved, the crazy torquing of the left side of my face, and my bewilderment at the fact that my ortho has still ignored the one molar on the upper left side of my jaw. This tooth has had no bracket, no wire, no attention at all since this process has started. From day one my doctor has always said that he will get to that tooth later. It is pure rogue.

"It's your Sadhu tooth," she said, laughing. When I asked what a Sadhu was, she said that they are wandering mystics in India who wear saffron colored robes and have chosen to live a life apart from regular society to pursue their own spiritual practice. I read on Wikipedia that the root of the word "Sadhu" comes from the root sadh which means to "make straight" or "reach one's goal." (I got a chill when I read that--could it be any more appropriate?) Sadhus focus their attention solely on the fourth and final Hindu goal of life which called moksha, meaning liberation from samsara, or the eternal cycle of birth, death and rebirth.

I have said many times that I go through a monthly cycle. First, my teeth get tightened and I am left feeling exhausted, ugly and diminished for at least a week. Then I feel the teeth move and settle into their new place. Then my strength and power and invincibility return to me in my final week and then those feelings dissolve once the teeth get tightened again. It is my own dental samsara of sorts. I suppose when my Sadhu tooth is finally bracketed and wired, and reigned in to return to the fold, as the final piece of this process it will signal the achievement of orthodontic moksha and then I will experience true liberation.

Is it possible that enlightenment can be reached via braces?

Upping the Down

20 months.

My ortho, for the third month in a row has placed yet an even stronger wire on my top teeth and made it his mission to turn my back right molar a full 90 degrees. Yes, it hurts as much as it sounds like it does.

You may have noticed that the countdown clock on the right side of the blog has gone from 116 to 177 days left. That's because, when I pressed him, my doctor said that it would look more like 6 more months than 4 to complete what we need to do. (I told him I needed to mentally prepare for how much longer this will really take.) To me, 2 months more won't do much and the work that needs to be done will probably take me to the end of the year. I would love to be proven wrong, but I'm trying to be realistic. The disappointment I felt when I convinced myself that this would all be done in 18 months is something too crushing to revisit.

I just finished reading A Visit From The Goon Squad and in that very well done book (which just won the Pulitzer!) it is time that is the eponymous goon. After my appointment today, I can attest that time is indeed a goon.

But if we're going to break it down, "Goon" could also be read as "Go On." So go on is what I'll do.

Toothmares

I had a nightmare the other night, which I rarely have. My company is in the midst of consolidating its office space, and in my dream, all the cubicles were the size of milk crates, in neat, perfect, white rows. These clean rows, in the name of progress and efficiency and all that is streamlined, were too small and compressed. Somehow I realized the office was in my mouth, and all these rows of offices were really my teeth, and they were all too close and constricted even though they were perfectly aligned. I woke up, with my teeth hurting. (I must have been clenching them in my sleep.)

I looked up symbolism of teeth in dreams, and this is what I found online:

"Teeth" in the dream world are most often an archetypal image of the dreamer's sense of confidence and competence in the waking world. Dreaming that there is something amiss with my teeth usually points to insecurities about my ability to "get my teeth into it," or maybe I've "bitten off more than I can chew." Ironically, the very fact that you remember such a dream is a reliable indicator that the you, the dreamer, can deal creatively and transformatively with the problems that life presents. If this were not the case, you would not even have remembered the dream. All dreams (even nightmares!) come in the service of health and wholeness, and no dream ever came to anyone to say, "Nyah, nyah--you've got these problems and you can't do anything about them!" The more emotionally charged, or urgent the dream, the more likely that it points to a creative possibility previously hidden from the conscious mind, in response to a pressing waking life problem.

I feel that with these braces I experience on a daily basis the feelings of not being able to sink my teeth into the things I would like, as well as feeling like the whole process with these damn braces was biting off more than I can chew. (Ah, chewing! I can't wait until that no longer feels like a triumph.) I'm getting nervous, as I usually do, in the days before my next tightening (which will be Tuesday), and I want to be comforted and petted. I want salvation and deliverance. I want corned beef on rye.

Depending on where you get it, corned beef qualifies as a transformative way to deal with braces. Who's down with trying Mile End with me?

The Compass of Pleasure

I am always tickled when a new pattern starts to occur in my daily life. A though or a concept seems to get underlined in everyday conversation, and I start to pay attention like a star student in a classroom. I went to my friend Diana's housewarming party on Saturday night and met lovely people amid bubbly glasses of champagne, homemade meatballs and ziti, a fantastic 20 pound turkey from Prime Meats, and more cakes, cookies, tarts and pastries than you can shake a stick at. I got into a wonderfully intense conversation with one of the party goers who said to me, "It is our obligation to follow our pleasure. That is where the answer to all questions can be found."

I loved this idea. I was so struck by it that I was tossing it over in my mind as I lay in bed long after the party ended.

At the Rubin Museum of Art tonight, I attended a curated discussion between chocolatier Jacques Torres (who could not have been more charming and entertaining!) and David Linden, the author of The Compass of Pleasure which explored the ways that pleasure is processed in the brain. Linden said that the pleasure response in the mind causes the same reaction to our vices (eating fatty foods, drugs, alcohol) as it does to our virtues (exercising, giving to charity.) The mere anticipation of pleasurable experience is enough to set off our pleasure response as well. (To illustrate the point, we were given two pieces of chocolate from Jacques Torres to see what our response was to different blends. I can assure you that as the plates of sweet yummies were being passed, the anticipatory energy was downright palpable.)

Linden also said, which I found fascinating, that the pleasure response can also be activated by our denial of pleasure or our abstinence of pleasurable activities. He said that this may be how some of the ancient Buddhists found their path to enlightenment. I think of Siddhartha who had every sort of earthly pleasure imaginable, but it was only until he cast it all aside that he could find his true rapture, and his true nature.

The last question of the evening was "Why is the title of the lecture 'The Compass of Pleasure?'" Is it truly our pleasure that should be the measure of our direction? Will pleasure show us our true north?"

I loved this question, mostly because I would like to think that our innate pleasures constitute the deepest expression of the soul, and that if one follows one's bliss, then one can never be led astray. The only way everything can be all right, is if we answer yes to the questions our souls ask.

This weekend was filled with pleasures. Parties, friends, challenging yoga, overindulged eating, and the sweet anticipation of my trip to Morocco. And to top it off, I came across this quote to boot: Johann Wolfgang Goethe said, "We are shaped and fashioned by what we love."

I get it Universe. I'm listening. I'm underlining pleasure in red Sharpie.

Spring Mourning

We've reached 19 months.

I thought things were really moving last month when my ortho put a stronger wire on my teeth, and they looked and felt better than they ever did before. I saw the light at the end of the tunnel. Spring was in the air, it was warm and I felt like I could take on the world. But last week, my doctor put on an even stronger wire and I feel like I've been smashed with a sledgehammer on the left side of my face. I've been off my game ever since. I feel like my teeth are moving too fast and I feel them moving every day. Though it might seem like that would be a good thing, my inadvertent mantra has become "It's not normal!"

But then again, Mother Nature is off her game too. The calendar says that it's Spring, but the snow which came last week, and threatens to arrive again tonight tells another story. I think Spring rushed in so fast that it needed to put on the brakes, regress, and move back to the strange "comfort" of complacent winter. No one is happy with arrangement. We're ready for warmth. We know Mother Nature can bring it to us. So what's the hold up? Why is she hiding the best parts of her when we so very much want to see it shine? Where are my beloved cherry blossoms that are yearning to show their pink finery in April?

I love this poem by Izumi Shikibu, as much as I love the soon-to-bloom cherry blossoms in my back yard. Everything changes, always too quickly and not fast enough.

Nothing in the world is usual today.

This is the first morning.

Come quickly—as soon as these blossoms open, they fall.

This world exists as a sheen of dew on flowers.

Even though these pine trees keep their original color,

everything green is different in spring.

Seeing you is the thread that ties me to this life—

If that knot were cut this moment, I’d have no regret.

Sleeplessly I watch over the spring night—

but no amount of guarding

is enough to make it stay.

Oliver's Twist

This Note From the Universe was delivered a few days ago:

"Sometimes that which you don't understand is drawn to you so that you will understand it. But never because you needed the lesson, and not because all must be so initiated, but only because there had been earlier thoughts of awe, wonder, or criticism. And such thoughts, as all thoughts, must have rearranged your life."

This has been sticking in my mind, and I've been tossing it over in my head like a shiny new penny in one's palm.

I was reading the latest O Magazine and Martha Beck's column highlighted Mary Oliver's poetry, which I've also turned to over the years. In the column, she remembered the poem pieces here:

When it's over, I want to say: all my life

I was a bride married to amazement

And who will care, who will chide you if you wander away

from wherever you are, to look for your soul

Maybe it is because earlier thoughts of awe or wonder or criticism that I am quite utterly amazed by things that are happening lately. A four month old baby was found in the Japanese rubble alive and unhurt. I was embraced and kissed by an Italian stranger in the street yesterday while on my way to get a salad for lunch (!) The temps neared 70 today and all thoughts of winter and blizzards were immediately forgiven and forgotten. And much to my surprise, today I heard "Dear Prudence" by the Beatles for the first time--ever. So I will quote the Fab Four and wish you much amazement in your own day:

The sun is up, the sky is blue

It's beautiful, and so are you.

Nom Nom Nom

The Nom Wah Tea Parlor in Chinatown was today's destination:

Our waitress showed real surprise at the amount of dim sum we ordered, skeptical that we could finish it all. I wanted to title this picture "Nom Nom Nom" while my dining companions wanted to entitle this "Why White People Are Fat." Both work.

Just to bring the point home, this was what we had as an appetizer, not a dessert:

I mean, come on! Little Italy was right there! We had time to kill! How do you say no to Baba Ricotta just taunting you?

I don't think I can keep blaming my weight gain on the braces...