“Wow! I’m really impressed by these developments. Your teeth are looking great — the crossbite is more or less fixed, and your bottom teeth will all be completely straight by next month. I’m happy for you, not just as your doctor but as your friend…”

Doc thinks he’s my friend but really he’s just some dude who makes sadistic and unprofessional comments about how he enjoys torturing me. But he’s done a good job and he means well. I like him despite his superfluous gender-based commentary, mostly due to this morning’s recent announcement that “You might have these off in less than a year.” What?! No way.

They got new long-sleeve t-shirts for orthodontal staff. They’re baby blue, and on the front they say something about a SMILE, and on the back it’s something about STYLE (no, not my cliche subject line. Some other kitsch phrase.)

My assistant friend D. looked ridiculous wearing it, and my opinion is the new dress code has in fact morphed the formerly commendable professional, high-end office environment into something akin to summer camp, possibly because all the assistants and secretaries are under 30. The doctor is the only one who wears scrubs now, elevating him to The One With Authority. I should mention something about this to him on my next visit. He likes to talk style with me, which is ironic since I sported my ripped, inherited leather jacket, old, uncool jeans and socks-with-sandals accoutre today. It’s amazing what kind of weird corporate respect you get when you succeed in pretending to be young, hip, or both.

For those of you who actually care about the orthodontal specifics: today they put those white-metal clamp things onto some bottom teeth in an effort to turn them into a straight position. They repeated this process for a top tooth that’s being pulled forward. The impacted canine (sigh) is still impacted, but edging ever more rapidly down to the gum line, plus [insert creepy music here] you can now fully see half of the tooth in the gum, i.e., it’s emerging up from the gum’s surface like a quiet white submarine. It can’t really grow down yet, as the FST (Formerly Sideways Tooth) is blocking it, but next month we’ll pull that one into position (the position it should have taken when I was seven years old) and, by Thanksgiving or Christmas, God willing, all will be well.

Much love to all my anonymous adult homies from archwired.com with orthodontal problems. We suffer together, people…though I’m gonna be eating steak again before all y’all.

This lady sells really good pottery. I recommend buying something from her, mostly for purposes of osmosis, so I can vicariously enjoy a new set of blue plates and bowls through your purchase.

I am so tired. Working at night is the pits. All I want to do when I’m not working is sleep. Preferably in my new flat, which I’m moving into in a mere two weeks, but the floor of my office is also perfectly sufficient, as I demonstrated this evening. I’m so tired, in fact, there’s no reason to write. Fall has swooped in like some kind of forgotten bird, and it’ll be gone just as fast. I’m trying to pay attention to its movement while it lasts. Which means being silent.

*Adem song

“Some say fear is the opposite of love,” the man said. “More and more, I’m coming to believe that’s true.”

We were in Dirkson, one of the Senate buildings, waiting in the hallway outside Senator McCain’s office. He walked by a minute later, but this conversation was taking place between an older white couple from Indiana who’d come on this human rights trip to lobby Congress members to support anti-torture legislation, and an imam, or Muslim leader, from our interfaith peace & justice coalition.

“Yes. Fear is an emptiness,” commented the imam. “It’s nothingness, and it’s self-controlled.”

“Absolutely. You have to choose fear,” the first man said, “just like you choose anger. We don’t just get angry; we choose to be angry. And we choose to be afraid.”

The context was post-9/11 anti-Muslim sentiments nationally, based on irrational fears of an unknown cultural and religious group. They were discussing how that fear arose, where fear comes from, and how it develops. It is, inherently, from a lack not just of understanding, but of love.

This was the conversation I overheard while waiting outside of McCain’s office at the Senate building today. The imam said other things, more poignant than I can remember or articulate in this feeble online reproduction, but he was an extremely intelligent man whom I could have listened to for hours, but we only had minutes, and I could only catch every other word.

On the plane ride home, despite the incredible turbulence which made me nauseas and caused lots of other people to puke in their seats, I sat and admired the night sky. I enjoy flying at night more than in the day, because once you get above the clouds, the stars are so clear. We flew east of the big dipper, and I watched as cities appeared and disappeared in the hazy orange fog below us while Adem’s “Ringing in my ear” played, well, in my ear.

This trip is over now, and I’m so grateful to be home I could cry.

Yeah, that’s right, I did. After twelve hours of helping facilitate everything AV at our mock trial (which you should watch online) here in Washington, someone handed me a phone. “It’s Amy Goodman from Democracy Now. She has some video questions for you…”

Long story short: after this trial, I set up my camera and filmed an hour of testimonies from Latin American survivors of torture while Amy interviewed him. It was incredibly moving, not to mention difficult for the people speaking. They were warm, strong, courageous men and women determined to tell their stories, despite what it might cost them, and despite what it’s already cost them. They were awesome, and it was certainly awesome to be able to film them. For Amy Goodman. For Democracy now. I’d love to shoot for them again, too. Which is entirely possible. We card-swapped. Very exciting. An exciting day! I just wanted to share that with you.

I also wrote about this on my human rights work blog, but Tapioca deserves to hear it too. After six hours of filming torture survivors giving their testimonies to my org’s human rights constituents, I marched to the White House with all the throngs of other people. The protest was huge — CNN reported at least 600,000 people but I think it was more like a million. Got to see Gold Star Families for Peace, and veteran groups, and many many other groups represented. The march was endlessly long; it’s too bad W has gone hiding. Would have been a lovely view from his office. At least the snipers on the roof got to enjoy the parade — via binoculars.

Really though, it’s been pretty cool. Lots of work, but I bought comfortable shoes to handle all the walking (and am now reluctantly endorsing Earth shoes for their ridiculous level of comfort and quality) and fortunately it only drizzled during the march so we didn’t really get wet. Plus I was only present for part of it.

People are mad. They’ve had it, and the inspiring part is there’s a unity being developed here…there are so many issues now — oil, the war, Katrina, poverty, everything blatant. Everything’s in your face, everything’s obvious. W can’t hide anymore. “The emporer is buck naked” read one sign I saw, and it’s absolutely right. The thing I liked about this protest were all the groups of people — old people, very young people, familes, students, veterans (my age as well as retired), men, women, people of color, white people, Americans, non-Americans, Muslims, Christians, you name it. There were a lot of signs about love — my favorite was one I didn’t get on camera very well. I tried to shoot it with my phone camera but it was blurry. It was of a middle-aged man carrying a small piece of cardboard on which he had written: LOVE YOUR ENEMIES.

That was my favorite part of this extravagazna. I’m actually proud to be a democratic American today — able to speak out, able to unite with strangers over issues we care about. I hope the feeling lasts.

I loved my time in Baltimore. Got to see a favorite old pal, who’s like my surrogate twin — but a hotter twin, sharing only height and weight and hair color and eye color and bra size. Also got to hang out with her hilarious boyfriend, who’s not my twin at all, though I kinda wish he was. He constantly says “That’s the stuff titties are made of” to describe just about anything he likes. Or, instead of “cool” or “awesome”, he’ll say “tits!” Priceless.

I did, however, get all freaked out by the fact that, like so many others, these pals are so grown up now — for instance, they’re both getting their PhDs; they have a nice, big flat, new furniture, quality kitchen stuff, two cats, and a working car; they even have an ipod dock, and marriage and kids aren’t too far away. It was pretty cool in a weird, alien, domestic cool kind of way. I’m very happy for them.

So I spent most of my time walking along Bond’s Wharf and eating French pastries. We also ate tappas Friday night, followed by the best Slavic food I could ever dream of on Saturday. I mean seriously, if you’re ever stuck in Baltimore and dying for Eastern European cuisine, gimme a call. I can hook it up — fo’ shizzle. The rest of the time was spent playing darts with T. and walking miles past many bread factories. I had a couple moments of zen, including one five-minute span of time in which a butterfly flew directly in front of me for the length of an entire city block, until it finally disappeared into an abandoned industrial lot, overgrown with weeds. It was over 80 degrees in the city and I walked, taking in this butterfly, this lingering heat, these cobblestones, that harbor. Life goes on and on and on, and many things change…and other things don’t. That was my Baltimore zen realization.

Zak Smith, currently my favorite urban artist, is having an exhibition at the Fredericks Freiser Gallery, which you should all go see, in Manhattan, preferably with me, preferably October 22nd.

My cubicle is filled with papers and laptops and random AV equipment, memory cards for digital cameras, books, pens, handmade mugs, photo albums, blank cds, random half-broken office furniture, and a large cardboard box containing really old files that I’d rather not deal with.

I’m the backup IT person at work, which I find humorous, seeing as I have no IT expertise, just an interest in the field. Today we had a meltdown, initiated by me installing Windows Service Pack 2 into someone’s networked computer, and so I’ve stayed late here to fix the problem. I’m the second to last person here. The sky outside is black now, as if it were February, which is approaching much faster than we think. I’m leaving for DC in 36 hours and I’ve got a tremendous amount of work to get done before that happens. I’d also really like to eat dinner.

Two of my coworkers from my department are pregnant, due two weeks apart from one another. We banter about nausea and homeopathic balony, and I act as if I’m the authority on all things prenatal based on the mere fact that my friend HH lived me with during the course of her pregnancy. “You gotta buy avocado oil in your last trimester,” I told 23-yr-old E., who’s married and two months pregnant. “For what?” she asked. “Massage techniques to prepare for birth!” I said. “There’s a technical word for it, but I forget.” They had no idea what I was talking about, so I tried to elaborate using hand gestures and monosyllabic descriptions, which only succeeded in turning my coworker’s face beet red and sending her into uncontrollable giggles. Whatever, man. It works.

*** [LATER]

Question: Why is it that sometimes when I bike up the hill on Ibbetson Street, I make it up very quickly and with very little sweat and conserved energy, and other times when I bike up the hill on Ibbetson Street, I end up soaked and barely able to breathe by the time I get to my house? Why is that? Where do these reserves of energy — or droughts of it — come from? Is it the heat? Coming up the hill tonight, my energy completely preserved, I reached the top and looked up at the sky. It was a clean, slate grey-blue, empty of everything but stars. Really, you could actually see the stars tonight, even here in the city. The air had that crisp awareness to it that it gets in fall. It made me think of farms and pumpkins and childhood and the future.

Tonight E. did some hippie energy pressure-point type thing on my head. Usually I like big dudes with big muscles to pound out the knots on my neck and shoulders, but instead, this incredibly light pressure and simple touch was crazy effective. The whole time I felt a tingling in the base of my spine, which was probably the root of the problem. The moral of this story is metaphorical, people, and the metaphor is this: you have to be quiet to be able to hear things. Sometimes, what you think is deeply buried is really right there on the surface. You just have to be still to become aware of it.

Thus ends our moment of zen.

I love the beauty of urban gardens. Something about the dichotomy of flowers next to pavement. Maybe I just love the idea of simplicity.