The Pull of Cavities

I was reading some Anne Sexton about a week ago and I particularly liked this bit from her "Flee On Your Donkey";

Hornets have been sent.
They cluster like floral arrangements on the screen.
Hornets, dragging their thin stingers,
hover outside, all knowing,
hissing: the hornet knows.
I heard it as a child
but what was it he meant?
The hornet knows!
What happened to Jack and Doc and Reggy?
Who remembers what lurks in the heart of man?
What did The Green Hornet mean, he knows?
Or have I got it wrong?
Is it The Shadow who had seen
me from my bedside radio?

Halfway through, I was saying at the poem, "No, Anne, it was The Shadow who said, 'Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!' not The Green Hornet." And then of course she corrected it by the end of the stanza.

Shadow seemed to factor in nicely in the new Sirenia Digest--I read the first of two stories included in it last night, "TIDAL FORCES". One of the main characters being named Charlotte reminded me of The Cure's "Charlotte Sometimes", especially with the non-linear narrative that has become pretty common for Sirenia vignettes. But the strange black hole like phenomenon in the story reminded me of the Dirac sea angel in Evangelion. Though in this case, the strange shadow served to explore issues of intimacy between two lovers and Charlotte's difficult relationship with her body and/or identity as perceived by her lover. Good story.

I'm feeling pretty foggy to-day, as I have been for days. I think I'm getting tooth aches, though it might be totally psychological. I felt absolutely fine before I went into the dentist office last week, and now, because of that, it's all of a sudden affecting me? I seem to be drawing okay, and I won a chess game the other night. Even the ones I lose, I'm actually playing better than I had been, so maybe this is all in my imagination. It's certainly not interfering with my sleep, in fact I've been sleeping better than I have in a while.

I've been reviewing my own blog entries from 2006, the last time I had tooth trouble, and I see I went several weeks after my tooth exploded before it started causing me really obtrusive pain. So hopefully I can last a week until my next dental appointment.