Vienna
Dream
03-04-2003
I am in company with other people and a woman wearing a cyan-colored open dress. We are friendly with each other, chatting nicely.
The woman sits at a table, me behind her back in a high chair. She writes something for a patient of her, she being a dentist. I look into her dress and see her breast. She turns around, gives me a commanding look. I say : "Sorry madam", and go away.
She will take care of my teeth. Then I think about my dentist, having done something to my teeth yesterday, and has left some dressing into my mouth. I will have to explain it.
The bandage in my mouth, a sort of bubble gum, gets loose from my teeth, in the back, and I will have to pull it out.
Free Association
03-04-2003
When I was at about 10 years of age, I had a cyan colored bed. My father painted it, and I found it disgusting. Everything my father painted was ugly in my eyes, especially beds. Probably because he painted my Bambi away, years before that. The specific pale bluish green has been burnt into my mind. Apple-blue sea-green, my father called it.
About three years. The doctor had to come for my grandmother, the doctor with the hat I once peed on - or, Willy peed on, spouting up in the air, because that guy was fiddling around with him. Of course I was there too, but I could not help it anyway. It just happened, down there. This time they said I had a pain in my ear, and that it was necessary to look at it. The tower with the dark hat drifted in, and first my grandmother was in turn. But after that, they caught me and pushed me onto the bed. I violently floundered - what the hell had they in mind this time. But, I could not escape. My head was fixed onto the mattress, the doctor on top of me. He pierced something into my ear, something with a little light in. He was rough, and then he really hurt me. End of remembrance.
The picture doesn't correspond exactly with what I have in mind. The hat is too pale, and perhaps he was a little bit thinner and so, but later associations with Al Capone yield something of the affect I try to describe. Unfortunately we don't have an inner camera to fix old pictures in our memory, and to print them later on the internet to join the collective unconscious collection suggested by C. G. Jung.
The apple-blue sea-green reminds me of hospitals and doctors. Granny was ill all the time, The doctor came and listened with his stethoscope. She sat there topless, and he gently lifted one or her flat breasts to reach the tones of her heart. Less then three years of age and very fragmented memory. Aunt Bolly threw me out, because my intense gaze was beyond the normal, she found. Nothing for little boys. In fact I was not affected by the scene, I registered things as they were, without special feelings.
She once had a couple of giant ulcers in her armpit, a carbuncle, they said. Somebody came in to take care of it, and I looked at it just the like the other time. My grandmother never chased me out, always somebody else, and I always have the strange feeling that it was aunt Bolly. Perhaps it was my mother this time, I don't remember. What I remember was the observation. The emotions the others showed concerning the affair were completely obscure for me. They fiercely danced across the room, gesticulating in the direction of the patient being cared for, like in a madhouse. Granny had something, I saw, and there was taken care for it. She was there, and everything she had was good enough for me too, because she allowed me to have whatever I had, or lacked to have. I trusted on her becoming well again, or I hoped for it, and I would have been a pleasure to me to help removing the mess. Nothing for children, it seems.
To speak about something else now. I have teeth, and once it were milk-teeth. Bad milk-teeth, and later on bad teeth, they said. I had to eat (before my 4 years of age) a sort of yellow grains with chalk, the doctor said, to make my teeth a little bit stronger. They were not strong enough as they were, and so would fall out early. Dirty grains with a sickly smell and a crispy flavor.
Each morning and each evening I had to eat a coffee-spoon of them. The more, they were packed in a yellow metal box with a square cover hinging around an iron bar going in and out the box and the lid, as if it were sewed. The stuff, in the box, was packed in a bag, bah.
Milk teeth, yes. Once I had one in excess. Still very young, and it had to be removed. Stood in the way of the new one, which had to come out yet. They said that I was afraid of needles, and the dentist sent us to the hospital.
Again such a sickening mask on my face and put to sleep. I dreamed that I got stiff all over, tied up or walled in alive. There was a red balloon hanging over my face, and, out of a ring and pulsating on the rhythm of my heart, came a cylindrical tongue, in and out, made of balloon and red like blood. Bleep, bleep, bleep, it said all the time. I could not move, much more embarrassing than a needle, but, I could not talk about it afterwards, because they said that I had been put to sleep, and that it should be impossible for me to remember such things. It was just a bad dream, they said. When I dreamed something, it was never of any importance, because dreams are lies. And when I woke up terrified, then I had to think about the kermis, my mother told.
From the milk tooth to the milkman. Less than 4 years. Albert was the milkman coming regularly at our front door. He ringed the doorbell, and my mother then opened up. Look out, the milkman is there. Yes, yes, I already saw and heard it.
It was a mechanical bell, with a spring in it. When you pushed the button, a small wheel turned to the right and knocked a little metal hammer on a knob inside the bell, just like a bicycle bell. When you then took your finger off the button, it came out again and the inner wheel turned the other side on and made the bell ring for a second time. It was always ring-rang. The bell of my grandparents, next door, you had to wind up, turning the ball to the right, which tightened the internal spring. Pushing the button outside made the bell to go off, once, as long as you pushed, and as long as the spring was twisted up enough. From time to time the bell was belled up, and was not functioning any more. At my parents' the bell was mounted extremely high in the green door, in a cold hall, but at my grandparents' I just could reach at it, to wind it up - standing on something like a foot-bench, and there the hall was warm and brown. The mailbox in the green door was a slit with a hard metal strip to cover it, kept tight with a strong spring. Once your fingers got in between, it was practically impossible to pull them out again. In the brown door the postbox was mounted a little bit lower, with a lid which flapped up and down, and I could make use of it as if it was a doorbell when I wanted to come in. Flap-flap-flap, and then they opened up for me.
The milkman came with a jar and a pint. He held the pint above the pan of my mother, pored out of the metal jar until the pint flowed over, and dumped it in the pan. Sometimes mother took one pint, sometimes more. The the milk had to be cooked immediately to prevent it from becoming sour.
I liked milk from the cow, just like the milkman brought it in. Boiled milk tastes like boiled milk, containing strings and skins slithering in along your tongue. My grandmother liked mild with skins in and on. She specially fished them out with a small spoon and enjoyed them. That was something I never could grasp. Perhaps because I had a reference of my own for that detail, making a comparison possible with her preference. Without a personal reference there is only registration of the event, not more than that. Having had an experience with the 'thing', or having heard comments about it, you compare, or perhaps get a projection of your own feelings on those of the person observed. I hardly managed to let my grandmother having her own feelings, but I am proud of it anyhow. Most people have a little problem with affects of others not corresponding with their own experienced or adopted impressions.
Then the chewing gum. They sold it in a small shop on the other side of the block, alongside the market place. Often I was allowed to buy some candy. Four toffees for a frank. How many gums you got for that price I don't remember, probably just one, especially for those extra big bubble gums, to blow giant bubbles. They stuck to your face like hell. Once upon a time my father and I organized a competition, facing the mirror in the back kitchen, to go for the biggest bubble. He of course won, but in the end his bubble burst open, gum all over his face. He didn't manage to get it off immediately, and I laughed buckets of tears.
The mirror an other time. It was a small mirror above and at an angle with the sink bowl, next to the door. I could not look in it but standing on a chair, or perhaps in the bowl itself. It was a cold white ceramic bin with a copper tap on top.
At my grandmother's there was a tiny kitchen, with a very old and dirty cement bowl, showing small yellow stones eroded out of the cement and cluttered up with black stuff. Yet I preferred the old one until they said it was old and worn-out. There the mirror was mounted in the dining- living room. It depends on your point of view. In the front place, three and a half by four meters I guess, there was a bed, a stove and two cupboards. Also two rush chairs and a small table. A nightstand and a chamber-pot. At the other side of the double glass with curtains door we could eat. There were a table and four chairs, a Leuven-stove, a gas range on top of the shoe cupboard, an other cupboard, a canapé in red velvet and square cushions and the mirrored medicine chest next to the window.
The medicine chest was constructed different and had a small drawer underneath. My grandfather always shaved himself in front of that mirror. I could have a close look, but not touch a thing and not bump him. Much too dangerous. Sometimes he cut his skin.
The ceremony was as follows. Razor, shaving soap and brush were taken out, and also something to contain the water. A piece of newspaper, the sharpening paddle and strop. The razor was opened out and sharpened on one side of the paddle, then on the other smoother side, and finally finished on the Russian leather.
Grandfather rubbed the piece of razor soap on his stubbly beard, dipped the brush into the water, and brushed his face until the lather formed. He pulled all sorts or faces to stretch his wrinkles out. That probably was necessary to glide the sharp blade over his cheeks without cutting off some skin. He wiped the foam off on the newsprint. He did that just in front of my nose, and until now I see the stubbles he removed contrasting in the white lather. Black ones and gray. Strange smell.
After the shaving he applied the alum block, just like ice, freshly cut out of a frozen lake where you could walk on in winter, and glide and sit upon an ice-chair (sled). It had no smell. He sometimes needed it to stem the bleeding. I watched it in the red velvet divan, in front of the window.
My father shaved with a Gillette. By far not so dangerous, and not so exciting to look at. He shaved in the kitchen, next to the washing up bowl, in front of the little mirror at the wall.
Pa never directly rubbed his face with the piece of shaving soap, but turned his brush on the stick until the foam appeared. It smelled just the same, but yet it looked as if it was in black and white, not in full color.
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Green dress :
(http://fdncenter.org/grantmaker/rubinstein/grants.html) -
Hat : Photo D'hont, Knokke
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Surgeon :
http://www.partydomain.co.uk/d-commerce/page17.html -
Fistula : ?
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Milk teeth :
http://www.gaba.com/community/mother_child.html -
Needle :
http://www.btinternet.com/~fireballxl5/samples/samples.html -
Doorbell :
http://www.obsessivemom.com/julia/house/closeups.html -
Milk can, or pint :
http://www.cg-tinsmith.com/images/Photos/pinttankard.JPG -
Cooking milk : ?
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Blowing gum :
(http://www.communityparkdistrict.org/registration.html) -
Mirror-faced cupboard :
(http://www.grimesco.ie/departments/bathroom/bathroom.htm) -
Razor sharpeners :
http://www.knifecenter.com/sharpen/strop.html -
Shaving soap :
http://www.greengirlbasics.com/shop/images/10.jpg -
Razor : ?
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Shaving soap : ?
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Shaving Alum :
(http://www.whatshebuys.com/esh-90000.html) -
Gillette :
http://countryjoe.bizland.com/raz-1.html
Copyright © 2004 A. Syberg