Salt, Water, Pain, Heat
Don't wait to get your wisdom teeth out.
I’ve been having so much fun with long-form that it’s been a while since I’ve written a traditional Ad Hoc letter. So, here we go! The categories of the week are A Pinch of Salt, Drawing, Hammer, On the Water, and Chipmunk Cheeks. I cover a lot of ground here…Lorde, my new hobby, Korean salt consumption, my favorite NY slice, raging post-op anxiety…I hope you enjoy.
A: A Pinch of Salt
Notoriously, I add salt to everything…yogurt, ice cream, hard boiled eggs, toast with jam, already-seasoned dinner plates…because it’s the ultimate flavor enhancer! Salt makes everything taste more like itself. It’s also in my blood: Koreans are reported to have the highest sodium intake in the world. This is not a good thing—excessive sodium consumption is linked to cancer, cardiovascular diseases, high blood pressure, etc.—and accounts for why strokes are so much more common in Korea even though obesity rates are much lower.
When I got sick as a kid, my mom used to tell me to gargle warm saltwater to soothe my throat. I thought it was a myth, until at twenty-two I was instructed by two dentists to do the same (to treat my problematic wisdom teeth, see section C). Saltwater rinses increase the alkaline environment in your mouth, which inhibits bacterial growth (they prefer acid), decreases plaque, and promotes healing. Saltwater is gentle enough to not disturb the soft tissue, so you can use it to treat toothaches, sore throats, allergies, canker sores, and post-operative sites.
Salt is probably the mineral I think the most about. It taught me that nothing is inherently panacean or toxic. Those qualities arise from the way we use it.
The best salt kind of salt is forgiving, texturally satisfying, and distinct in flavor. Fleur de sel is my favorite—it has a high moisture content that makes the crystals stick together in tiny clumps. It has the minerality of the ocean without being too salty or briny. I’ll sprinkle a little, and add more if I need to.
D: Drawing
In the bookshop under the Louisiana Museum in Copenhagen, I found a book called Learn to See, Learn to Draw that intrigued me because it claims that “anybody can draw by learning to see first.” I didn’t want to lug it in my carry on, but I took a picture and ordered it to my home.
I’ve enjoyed drawing since I was a kid, but besides art class in school I have never received proper instruction. I want to get better at technical drawing, and I hope this book will be fruitful! I will update you in a few weeks on my progress.
One of the initial exercises was to draw this guy sitting on a bench upside down, then flip it around when you finish. I outlined him in different colored pens afterward (on my own volition).
H: Hammer
I couldn’t sleep last Thursday night, so I decided to listen through all of Virgin for the first time at one in the morning. I plugged in my headphones, laid on my bed, and closed my eyes. When I’m listening to music, I find it impossible to comprehend the lyrics unless I’m literally reading them, so I only absorbed the sounds. Lorde is an expert at creating atmospheric, corporeal, life-affirming sensations through her music. In her interview with Vogue Australia, she reveals “I’m melody first always and try to bypass my brain and just listen for that feeling that’s like gummy candy deliciousness landing on the receptors.”
I’ve read criticism against Virgin that claim Lorde is at her most self-centered, writing about recreational MDMA use and sex and getting her aura read in Chinatown. They argue that by getting caught up in the New York scene, she’s lost the qualities that made her earlier work so addicting and universal. I think that artists are always going to write about themselves, and if you only appreciate Lorde when she’s writing about being lost and nineteen, it may be a reflection of how you are now having trouble locating yourself in her music. Art is a practice of empathy, and I’m trying to feel it, even though I recognize that Lorde has embraced celebrity, and her reckoning with its consequences is deeply unrelatable to me. Her pretension isn’t as endearing as it was when she was a teenager. But I keep coming back to the album, playing it over, reading the lyrics this time. I still get the waves of transportation.
O: On the Water
In Zurich, the water is so clean you can jump from the sidewalks and the bridges into the rivers that divide the streets. One evening, I took a walk along a canal filled with young people drinking, swimming, playing music, arguing, and kicking their feet in the water. I wondered how the water became so green.
In Portugal, we took a day trip to Cascais (a beach town an hour away from Lisbon) to celebrate Iva’s birthday. I am usually ocean-adverse (I cannot swim to save my life), but the sun was so unrelenting that I had to submerge my body every hour in order to regulate my body temperature. Luckily the water was not-too-cold and the waves were mild.
Last week, my friends and I picked up pizzas from L’Industrie and ate them in Domino Park, facing the Williamsburg Bridge. The slices were colder and softer than they would have been if we ate them standing up, hunched over the circular tables in the sidewalk shack across from the shop. But the setting was worth it. We had been walking all day in the heat. And as trendy as it’s become, I still think L’Industrie makes the best New York slice. Get the fig jam with bacon!
C: Chipmunk Cheeks
June was my month of dental hell. The day before my Europe trip, my lower wisdom tooth was bothering me, so I went to see the dentist. He told me I was long overdue for extraction; I told him that I was flying to Berlin the next day and wouldn’t be back for a month. I left the country a course of antibiotics and endured a few days of pain and inflammation. After two weeks, my tooth infection returned and I flew home early because I was paranoid and in pain.
I flew to New York on a Saturday, and on Monday morning, I got a day-of surgery appointment. The operation was the easiest part; I don’t remember anything past the surgeon sticking the sleep-inducing IV into my arm. The recovery wasn’t painful either—I didn’t need to take the meds I was prescribed—my jaw was just sore and tight.
BY FAR the worst part about getting my wisdom teeth out was the anxiety I felt around potential complications during recovery. I became obsessed with reddit pages and dental websites and TikToks of people recounting their experiences, sharing advice, administering warnings. I learned about dry socket, a very painful condition that occurs when the healing site is obstructed and bone becomes exposed. Every waking moment was consumed by my fear of dry socket. I am not being dramatic.
For a week, I did not use a straw, drink anything besides still water, eat crunchy/sticky/hard/chewy foods, spit, swish, sneeze, or exert myself physically. I left my house once to buy ice cream, but I deeply regretted the two-block expedition halfway through because when I walked, I could feel the tissue moving around in my jaw. When I thought I was getting an infection, I ate two raw cloves of garlic (a natural antibiotic, according to the internet).
Slowly, I was able to chew solid foods and sip from a straw. The swelling in my cheeks subsided. I felt immense relief that I had not gotten dry socket. And I was filled with gratitude that I will never have to go through this experience again.
Thankfully, I am back to normal now. LET’S CHAT in the comments!
omg in april i was on vacation and randomly got a tooth infection and had to get a ROOT CANAL on vacation😩😩 procedure wasn’t that bad but the pain beforehand was the worst
i did the exact same thing with dry socket last year when i got my teeth out !!! my sister in law got it and i was so terrified of it i ate soft foods for two weeks . GLAD YOU RECOVERED SMOOTHLY!!