Failures

Of correspondences, sympathies and similarities. Voodoo, 'ware the voodoo. Keep your hair close, your blood too. And your less comical humors.

Your teeth! Your body's most puissant weapons, the swords in your head. Keep your teeth, above all other forms of fleshy jetsam.

(When I was 18, I had my wisdom teeth out. Sitting in the surgeon's chair, waiting for the lidocaine that would numb my mouth but leave me conscious, I wondered what my teeth would look like, out of my head. Only three-one was missing. After seven shots, I was finally numb, and they cut the flesh away from my three anachronistic teeth. Then I remember the surgeon bracing himself as he pounded away at my head with a hammer, and a chisel. Didn't work, they were in there too good. So they cut bone away from the roots of my teeth with a dremel. I still remember the smell of hot bone. I have my teeth, by the way. They're huge.)

I've been insular, uncommunicative. I think, perhaps, depressed. I decided not long ago that I'm moody. It's good to know.