All Dead Since 1859!

Time...is bizarre...it slows to a crawl at some moments...at some moments, you feel like centuries are passing as you sit in a chair or on top of a desk...

...I had such a moment in my room. I had listened to music for...four hours straight? And in doing so, I learned what music really was. I couldn't move. I wished the song would just keep playing, for ever and ever, and I would lie there immobile.

But then some men in yellow suits came in to my room and started pulling it apart. They replaced a table with a sandwich. They threw my old blue chair with a stain on it out the window, and in its place they left a lightbulb.

Then a police man walked in to the room.

"I have reason to believe that a serial killer resides in this very room!" he said.

"I'm not a serial killer!" I said.

"I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about your TOOTH!"

"My TOOTH?"

"Your TOOTH. Every night, while you're asleep, your tooth rips itself from your jaw and goes on a murderous rampage. We suspected the tooth of Andy Partridge for a while, but it turns out that his tooth was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. YOUR tooth, on the other hand, is most definitely a deranged killer. I'm arresting it. I'm from the FBI, by the way, which I was had a marker."

I wondered what "I was had a marker" was supposed to mean.

I looked around my room. Trouble was, it didn't look my room anymore. The men in yellow suits had altered it beyond recognition.

I suddenly understood that my life, the lives of the men in the yellow suits, the life of the FBI agent, and the life of Andy Partridge were all tumultuous roller coaster rides, and it was of this that I thought as the FBI agent pulled out my incriminated tooth. It seemed like years passed as my tooth was slowly yanked from my mouth by the pliers. The pain reminded me of a tree in my backyard that came close to death twice. It got gasoline. It broke. It's still alive today, but it has open wounds and it's gushing and it's in pain.

It is in these moments that we come face to face with eternity.

Eternity spends most of its time hiding from us, or looming just out of reach--a high ceiling or perhaps a creature in a wooden box that bangs and screams and distracts us.

My tooth betrayed me.

The illusion unraveled in the electric fan.

It's all so awkward.

Like a coffee stain on the ceiling. How the hell did it get there?

No food or drink in the auditorium.

Even now, years later, with my tooth safely locked up in a high security vault, I still think of the auditorium. I still think of sitting on the desk.