Meanwhile

Yesterday the dentist told me my teeth looked good, which is something I don't think I've heard from a dentist in . . . ever. And all it took was fourteen fillings, deep cleaning, and a four times a day regime of brushing and flossing book-ended by Listerine. Isn't life too short for all that? Though I suppose it could be shorter.

One of the things reading about Victorian London has caused me to think about is the sort of comic precariousness of mortality. All these smug advice books from the period were telling people how to live longer while the air was filled constantly with soot (it was impossible to spend much time outdoors without acquiring some "black"), the wallpaper was often poisonous, the baby food was drugged, and the houses were usually freezing due to the inefficient heating system of the fireplace. Meanwhile a significant portion of the population spent every waking hour cleaning up after the other portion and were discouraged from reading novels or being curious. While those not of the servant class lived a precarious balancing act to achieve just the right balance of respectability, and it occurred to me that the happiest person would be totally undone by the indignities of aging which ends in death.

I suppose some of my anxieties about my own life may be feeding into this a bit. I've always had this vague feeling of being cursed never to "earn" a living regardless of how skilled, talented, or hard working I might be. I suppose this feeling probably comes from the fact that it's been true so far. So while I'm hoping I don't fuck up with school this time, I know that even getting a degree is hardly a guarantee of a career, and meanwhile I'm better off than most people, certainly better off than most of the Victorians.

I watched the second to last episode of Twin Peaks last night, which leaves only the final, David Lynch directed episode, which I actually found myself curiously afraid of which, I have to say, is a bit exciting. I only recently read about how most of the final episode was rewritten by David Lynch, though he took no screen credit for it. And I love how apocalyptic he made it--he took this quiet, proper, respectably unadventurous detective show the other writers had turned Twin Peaks into and bludgeoned it to death with the most nightmarish hour of television I've ever seen. I feel the shadow of doom in little things leading up to the episode, like when Audrey talks about the Savings and Loan secretly financing the Ghostwood project and I think, "Oh yeah, so that's how she ended up at he bank . . ." And I get a chill. I'm really looking forward to watching this episode.