Going to the dentist was a great experience.

To most people this would simply mean that I had a good visit.

For me it means so much more.

Going to the dentist was enough to cheer me up for an entire day. Maybe an entire week.

See, I've come out the other end of my depression. I can't believe it. I look at stuff I wrote just a few months ago and I think: "Wow! I was really angry!" Most of the stuff for my writers group, etc... was good and even my blogs are good - but too much anger!

I've come out the other end of a long and violent storm, to use a lame metaphor.

Going to the dentist is a NORMAL experience. The whole day I kept pinching myself and saying to myself: "Holy...! Wow! It feels so weird to do something NORMAL." Wait until I go to Europe - it will be like going to another galaxy.

I forgot that dentists even existed. A dumb reality home improvement show was on the t.v. in the waiting room. I grew scared. This society! I'm allowing this society to enter my mouth and flood me with fluoride; or infect me with AIDS; or to drop Mad Cow prions into my mouth. The same society that produced this show will be invading my gums!

But then I got a good vibe from the doctor and his assistant and I said "To hell with Mad Cow disease! I'm ready! I want to do this."

I couldn't help but to look at all of the equipment he had in this office. It was hard for me to believe that we still have electricity and advanced machinery. In so many other ways we live in a profound DARK AGE. So they weren't going to pull my teeth out with wooden pliers?

DO YOU MEAN THAT THERE WAS A MODERN ERA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!???????????????

Really? Holy shit! I can't believe this! There was a time when people were still conscious of light, hope and progress?

Do you mean there was a time when discoveries were made? Einstein existed? Planck and all those others? Pasteur existed? Jonas Salk existed? Or was he just one of the Jonas Brothers?

I couldn't believe this! Wow. Going to the dentist has never been such a trippy experience.

Come on, doc! Hit me with the brain-destroying fluoride! It will be a fair trade considering all the insights I've gained! Normal humane life and safe, middle-class civilization still exists?

I felt like I was high.

Not only that, but the dentist must have been a good guy because he allowed his assistant to keep her German Shepherd in a side office. He is obviously a good man.

Vern Yip (one of the reality t.v. home design guys) is not out to infect me with prions? Great. Maybe I should trust society again.

I had a dream the other night that I was an inmate committed to a mental hospital. The Ben Kingsley character (okay, I did see "Shutter Island" recently) offered me a brew that made me feel better than I've ever felt before. After what Prozac did to me (thoroughly destroying years of my life) how could I have such a blasphemous dream?

Maybe I can more deftly navigate good/evil, right/wrong, society and the individual now.