Resident Alien. Part 14
Psychogeography. Part 1. (by way of introduction)
Once upon a time in Weymouth, Dorset in 1991, I had forgotten I had an appointment for a root canal surgery and instead I smoked an eighth of hash via the hot knife method. It wasn’t until after all the coughing had stopped and the final Lebanese nug had been forged in fire and the plastic blast funnel dropped to the floor with an arm gone limp, did I remember so too.
As the stage lights go up, Tommy’s smiling face emerges from the dispersing cloud of pot like a spirit making contact from the other side. His eyes were rolled back in his head, showing only the whites. His mouth was wide open and a loud dry clacking sound was coming out of it. The glint from one of his fillings winked back at me from a rusty molar in what appeared to be Morse Code, reminding me that even though I had moved my root canal appointment twice already, the pain was not going away no matter how much I smoked.
The dental surgery was across town and 20 minutes as the crow flies, but on foot it would take me twice that long. I’d have to weave my way through Weymouth's terraced backstreets, behind the seafront’s Victorian facades and through a maze of sleazy guesthouses, student bedsits and corner shops, where I'd make my turns. The last leg of the journey was uphill, at the end of a long steady incline at the edge of town. I headed straight out, Tommy would remain at the flat under the condition that I returned with a packet of pickled onion Monster Munch and a scotch egg.
I arrived at the dentist office late, but I still had to wait. The pain that I had tried so hard to stifle with drugs, made one last forceful return. It was as if my body, knowing that relief was imminent, dropped all its defenses and gave way to a full and glittering spectrum of a pain, so exquisite, that I disappeared inside of it completely until the receptionist called out my name.
I sat in the dentist’s chair with a mouthful of the dentist's fingers. As a cold thread of Novacane went in I shivered and stared up at the ceiling beyond the cross-fading lens-flare created by the dentist's head as it eclipsed in and out of the light. As the drill whizzed into action, I tried to astrally project into a large colour poster-sized photograph which had been thoughtfully pinned up there, on the ceiling, presumably by the dentist, for the distraction of his patients (and to my own unexpected delight). It was an aerial view photograph of Weymouth and by the quality of its colour it must have been from the late 70’s, or early 80's. "Transcen-dental", I mumbled to myself, as the dentist ground a latex knuckle into my numb lower lip.
As the dentist drilled I drooled. I studied the aerial photograph closely, trying to orientate myself within it until I found myself hovering like a seagull looking down on everything and I was there, suddenly, part of it. From this strange new bird's eye view, my seaside home looked wholly unfamiliar to me as I began to scan the coastline looking for local landmarks. Was that the clock tower? The Pavillion? The 24 hour garage where I was to buy Tommy’s munchies on my way home? I was sure they were, but not completely sure, I was a stoned seagull getting a root canal, after all.
This radical shift in the perspective of the familiar required of me to reach for my own personal experiences of Weymouth as my map and guidebook. Once I “found myself” within it, I could use these experiences as markers to navigate wherever I needed to go. Whenever I recognized a location, I found the memories that I associated with it seemed to already be there waiting for me to re-experience them, before pointing me in the direction of the next. This drifting psycho-geography was as real for me as the bricks and mortar of the places themselves.
It was in this way (and after I had climbed to a great height) that I began to then navigate my way back across town until I reached the street with the dentist's office on it. I counted the houses in until I found the surgery and I hung in the air outside, trying to get a glimpse of myself through one of the windows. And it was there that I could indeed see my own distinctive gecko green Gazelle classics and chocolate corduroy's as I lay back horizontally in the chair. The rest of me was obscured by the dentist who was hunched over, with both elbows sticking out and from the back he looked like he might be eating spaghetti off my face.
Stabilizing my position against a sudden updraft, I tried to see if the Simon on the inside was aware of the Simon on the outside, so I landed on the window-ledge and looked within. In the very moment I did so, the dentist shifted his position and my attention was suddenly diverted from the photograph on the ceiling to the gnarly seagull sitting on the window-ledge outside looking right at me. And, before the oral suction tube snagged my tongue, I could have sworn there was a moment of mutual recognition between us.
The dentist told me to take a pink rinse and spit and reminded me I would be numb for a couple of hours and I should refrain from "smoking anything at all" in the meantime. “No problem” I said, sitting up and swinging my feet off the chair and finding myself in a sudden standing position. “I really like your photograph, by the way”, I told him, nodding to the ceiling. “Oh thank you!” replied the dentist, “I took it myself when I was a student in Naples. My friend had just got his pilot's license and took me up for a spin. Are you familiar with Naples, Mr Kossoff?” The dentist asked. "No", I replied, but I was unsure now if this was in-fact the correct answer..
