A couple months ago I went to the dentist — something I’ve been dreading for years as my last memory of such was of my last dentist. A Father Wonka type, extracting from my mouth very painfully, and with maximum guilt-tripping remarks about my dental hygeine, a medieval torture device called a bionator. This followed shortly thereafter by root canal.

This time, I specifically sought out the woman, acting off a years-old referral from a friend, in the hopes that I’d get someone who could deliver what I knew to be very bad news (that my teeth were literally falling apart) with empathy and compassion. And she was great. Not that she had to talk much. She spoke softly, and all the while flashing pics of cavity after cavity in front of my eyes like photos of bombed-out buildings. In the end, she told me that she’d help me rebuild the Sarajevo in my mouth, I said thanks, and she handed me over to the financial guy to sort out the details.

Depressoid after that. For about a month, I couldn’t even look at a Mountain Dew without cringing. This shit, this ubiquitous fucking caramelized, high-fructose crap that pumps fake energy through my near-diabetic frame, keeps me fat, nervous as hell, fucks with my self-image and rots out my teeth, and I’m hopelessly addicted. And it fucking has to stop.

All this being said, Tourette’s style, on a hiking trail in Delaware. Along with the typical through-the-teeth ranting about work, Washington, poilitics, superficial assholes, humanity, the scourge of technology even as it lures you in (and don’t look now, you’re soaking in it), and all the other work-week accumulation, scattering vitriol like animal droppings along the trail, up the hill, around the creek, down the hill … the droppings decrease … around a bend near a birdwatching stand, around the disc golf course … the seething chatter dissipating into the wind … and up out of the forest into a field, surrounded by flowers and butterflies, and all the fake energy, gone, replaced by a different kind.

As the weeks pass, the fructose, yellow #5, and gum arabic-fueled anxiety gradually makes way for a bug spray and sun block, cap, boots, daypack and walking sticks-fueled summer shimmering sun. And the pasty fat around the perimeter starts to give way and the muscles that laid dormant, open their eyes for the first time, like Han Solo coming out of the carbon freezing. That’s kind of how I feel as a whole right now.

A painted lady is pretty easily distinguishable from a monarch butterfly, when I was a kid I could recognize the difference in a second, but then again I was a bit closer to nature back then. They call painted ladies the thistle butterfly. As I started my hike yesterday, I was out in the field with my camera and I caught one, feeding away at the thistle’s nectar. I was so stoked. Slave to the nectar, ha ha, these painted ladies. Water for me, thanks.

Posted on Monday, June 18th, 2007 at 7:35 pm. Categories: Uncategorized. Click here to access feed for this post: RSS 2.0. Leave a comment. Trackback URL.