Reflections on a tough day off.

Yesterday, I did something I rarely do.

I took the day off.

I've been putting off a minor foray into dental surgery for about two years now--but in time, tooth 24 (front and center) had decided to bother me to the point where I had to do something.

The first dentist was the yanker. He took the tooth out. 

The second dentist was the filler. He put an artificial tooth in.

Along the way, I was poked, prodded, anesthetized, codeined and otherwise knocked out.

It wasn't exactly debilitating but on doctor's orders, I stood in bed.

So for the next few months or so, say till around Christmas, I will be visiting these various dentists. They're trying to grow back some bone so they can do a proper implant. But who knows if time and tide have obviated that potentiality. If, like an old gnarled oak, I no longer have the capacity for regeneration, and instead, will only grow more mottled and wizened as the months pass. 

We can only hope my jaw will heal itself, lest I stomp along or chomp along like Ahab on well-trod whalebone.

Speaking of Ahab, it does me good every-once-in-a-while, especially when it is 'damp, drizzly November in my soul,' to revisit Orson Welles, John Huston and Herman Melville and hear the trio and their rendition of Father Mapple's sermon.

That'll shake the cobwebs out of your brain, or the dust from between your teeth.