evidentiary:alchemy

Katie Poirier was working alone at DJ’s Expressway in Moose Lake, Minnesota, when a man entered the store, grabbed her by the neck, and dragged her outside.  A surveillance camera recorded the abduction.  Video Image Stabilization and Registration technology was used to clean up the tape, and it was revealed that the man wore a New York Yankees shirt with the number 23.  Thanks to the shirt, the kidnapper was later recognized as Donald Blom. 

All that was left of Katie were a few charred bones and one tooth –  found in a firepit on property owned by Donald Blom.  The damage was so extensive there was no hope of testing the DNA. But just two weeks before Katie disappeared, she had dental work on her lower left second molar - tooth number 18, the same tooth found in the firepit.  The dentist replaced an old filling using a sample of 3M Rely X ARC she had received from a dental convention.  Rely X Arc contained zirconium, and at the time, was the only dental adhesive on the market with that ingredient.  It was barely available when Katie received her new filling, so the chances were slim this tooth could belong to someone else.  At the trial, forensic odontologists positively identified the tooth, and therefore Katie. 

The more I read about this case, the more I am struck by this sense of identity being experiential rather than intrinsic - that it is not our bodies, but what is done to them, not our teeth, but the cement used to fix them, that will identify us. I also feel sadness that dental cement is more unique than the tooth - that I could dig through a whole pile of bones and never recognize them, were it not for a crack or fissure or scar, the chemical composition of an adhesive, the sheer dumb luck that such an adhesive could be new or rare.   

That we have to be broken to be restored.

Imagine: a body concealed in a trash bag and rolled down a steep hill.  Finally, the rolling stops, and the body lies still.  Mouth slightly open.  Face up.  Gums and lips and tongues begin to decay, and teeth loosen.  But instead of falling out into the bag, they fall inward, dropping onto the inside of the cheek.  Sticking there, planted.   And as that cheek decays, so do the skin and ligaments as well.  The scalp loosens and peels away from the skull, creating more space - more shadows - for the teeth to fall into.  And they fall.  Drift actually - pulled along by the glacial progression of the skin, as it twists and knots and peels.  Like shards and rocks and ancient spears, shifting through the soil.  Except here, there is no soil, only skull and dessicated tissue.   

The skull as archaeological site in its own right.

Later, someone discovers the grisly contents.  Scientists note the missing teeth.  They search the bag and the soil, but still, they cannot find the teeth.  So instead, they try a radiograph.  And there, in the X-Ray, they find them: planted at the temple, like seeds.  The teeth had drifted to the side of the head, a few inches right of the eye socket.

And isn't that the perfect image?  The teeth moved close to an eye, as if to say: see me, see me, see me.  See who I am.  Because I can no longer see. 

Literally, the missing face looks out at us with its teeth.

As if sculpted.  As if nudged and smoothed and cemented.  As if an art.  Intended.  A desperate clinging, holding identity close.