And, being troubled with a raging tooth,
I could not sleep.
I’m telling you right up front: I have no idea what this means.
Apparently, oneiromancers find it to be (by far) their most popular request: tell me what it means to dream of losing my teeth. They fall out, she says, and I try to catch them in my hands and I can’t. I start to say something, he says, and they turn to dust and blow away. He kisses you and they shake loose in your mouth and you swallow one and it catches in your throat. I spit them out one by one onto an empty plate and wake up in a cold sweat. —Wouldn’t you?
“Teeth represent our ‘bite’ or our aggressive/assertive nature. When we can’t get our teeth into something it suggests we have little control. Please contact me so we can discuss this matter further. If you dial +1866 286 5095, follow the prompts, and dial in PIN code 032, I shall assist you.”
I always feel a little guilty for not liking China Miéville more than I do. Maybe it’s because I’ve only ever tried to read Perdido Street Station, which comes off like Clive Barker on a Warhammer bender? —I should really try to read more, I think to myself, at least finish the thing, so I pick it up again after having set it aside for a good long while, ignoring for a moment the piece of paper that flutters out (I’m always using odd bits of paper as bookmarks—receipts, bus transfers, that sort of thing), and read “The hovels that encrust the river’s edge have grown like mushrooms around me in the dark,” and I sigh, heavily. (Oh, to rise above this to not smell this filth this dirt this dung to not enter the city through this latrine but I must stop, I must, I cannot go on, I must.) Well, ought, maybe. —That internal monologue comes to a stop soon enough, thank God, and the book settles into a third-person past tense that’s, well, redolent of Imajica. Sigh.
But I did pick it up just the other day, in an attempt to refresh my memory on certain points to be made later, and a piece of paper did flutter out, one of those things I’d tucked into the book when I’d last been reading it, and I picked it up and had one of those moments when the world cracks, when you’re presented with evidence of something you’d not so much forgotten as never bothered to think about again when thinking about the things around it. (Comes to much the same.) —I got on the train and went to work and heard the news and stood there, stunned, and shook my head; and then I went to the dentist. I had an appointment, you see. —Later, we bought newspapers.
Planes?
“Beware, not all tooth dreams are symbolic. Once in a while a tooth dream is telling you to get yourself to the dentist’s chair.” Sure, fine, but I’m telling you: I have no idea what this means.
not having had much of an intro to the steampunk genre, it was easier to get into PSS. but i have to say, Iron Council is a better read.
also, i didn’t know they still used the non-dialup card swipes in 2001.
Heck, they’re still using paper card swipes now.
the last one of those i ever saw was in mexico, 2003. i still find them strange, having the benefit(?) of youth