"lingual"

The term took on greater meaning for me today. The term is used to refer to the inner surface of the teeth, the side facing the tongue. I learned this during oral surgery. And so the phrase, "lingual pond," which I invented for this "thread" suddenly has greater meaning as well. The pool of saliva, blood and debris that had to be suctioned off continuously comes to mind here. I explained my calm to the attending dental students as testament to how deeply I could lose myself in their jargon. Much of it I can't remember now, because they were affixed to numerical terms for dental tools such as elevators... Their were other visual terms like "buccal" (pronounced: buckle) which confused me because I thought it referred to the flesh that was now sutured together over the space where the crown was, but apparently it is simply the cheek- or "facial" side of the anterior teeth (according to a quick web-search).

So, to continue this into the now. I am awakened by the pain which seems to come from that whole side of my upper and lower jaw. You could say my perceptual field for this patch of painful stimuli has zoomed out such that I can only distinguish pain emanating from the "left" side. I begin to wonder whether this has any correlation to the experience of mental anguish and whether it explains the conflux of mis-associations that develop during such periods, the appearance of information that conflicts with what we otherwise know about some given person or event. We zoom out to get that objective picture but consequently some elements are drowned out by other more intense associative elements and thus become "triggers" for remembrance of the proximal "pain." Truths become distal to us in this way perhaps, or rather we can become detached from a given truth of our own making, our own experiential beliefs. We alienate ourselves from reality, our culture, family, projected futures. And at the same time try to zoom back in with elitist terminologies, such as "lingual" or brief utterances such as "bites." Today I am simply amused that I can reunite with my self through singular vocalisms such as "ouch!" or "stop!"