My teeth are dreaming, or haunted by someone like Dalí. I have toothache and the ache is singing, echoing around my mouth like the hum of a glass rim. I listen to the pain, but then my teeth all fall into my hands, simple white judgements.
The teeth turn into scrabble tiles. I sit them in my rack and shuffle for words. My mother and I are playing scrabble as though it is a tarot reading, shuffling the tiles and drawing our fortunes. Luck and the words in our subconscious are written onto the board in a joint statement of past, current and future intent.
The letters fall from the tiles and become a flurry of black. I realise these black nothings are all that I am. I am no longer a creature of flesh and blood, but something defined by my digital host, a wayward child of syntax and code. Each word is enabled by a sponsor, funded by advertising, I am flotsam on the economic river of language. The current hints and prods at me, keeping me on course, deep water and rapids. I pass some cultures and languages which are unfunded, inexpressible, dumbstruck on the bankrupt shore. What kind of self is this? I try to imagine being real again.
I am in an eccentric classroom with a boy, we are trying to balance a budget. The room is full of tables. He sits at a drafting table. I choose a small school table, flat white with blue rounded edges. I am tethered by my earphones. If I walk too far the cable pulls at someone else's earphones in the next room. I try to settle to the task at hand. No more than 30% of the budget for (places), same again for (people), we just can't see the rest of the distribution as clearly.
I stir and wake up. Nothing remains but the persistent song of my tooth. Damn. =)