Bruges dream

	Bruges Dream [Up] [Door] [Town Council] [Development] [Television] [Vector-dream] [Juul] [Edith] [Chickens] [Jenever] [Vienna] [Two Dentists] [Bruges dream]
	Nederlands . Dream 04-04-2003 I drive our Kangoo in Bruges, in a narrow street. Beautiful old houses we see, but the street steadily is narrowing further, and I have to decelerate. When I am going to arrive at the square, a pole blocks the road, and I get stuck. I have to ride backwards - turning around is not possible. A police officer stops me, saying that it is not allowed to drive backwards in this street. He writes me a fine. I want to pay the penalty with a check, a little bit later at the police station. The man asks me how many days I am late, and whether it was not possible to be in time. I mention the fact that it was just now, today, that I got the fine. "Ah yes", he says. A great festivity takes place on a square in Bruges. Young people go on hands and knees over pulled up transparent plastic penthouses above the shops. They save up food by making a mélange of red cabbages and hamburger meat, a kind of pap, put in square tubes, sort of gun magazine. I taste a bit of the palest mix, and it is not bad.
	Free Association 04-04-2003 The beauty of Bruges. Also: "The Fools of Bruges" (see The Ship of Fools, by J. Bosch, and shown in Paris...), or, if you are living in Bruges, then you have to join in at the back of the queue... . All things said about the habitants of Bruges, while they themselves typically call the rest of the world: "Little Boors". I experienced it myself. In the dream I am boxed up in a small street while driving at the market place there. The memory goes down until I was less then three years of age, and is fairly fragmented and vague. Long ago there was a tram between Knokke and Bruges. I see some yellow tram somewhere at an impossible place. There where it ran until the end of the fifties, and then is rolled up. We would get in. Then the village itself. There is a railing and dark water. I see circles coming up, as if it was raining. I mention the raining in the water but not where we walked. It was a big mystery for me, and I never got an answer for it. Perhaps it just started raining, and nobody paid any attention to it any more once it began, or little gas-bubbles popped up from the deep, due to fermentation in the former open sewers.
	Behind the back window, at my granny's, it was possible to look at the court yard. Half of it had cotes: a concatenation of washing-cote, toilet and coal-cote, all with green doors and windows. In the toilet door had a hart shaped hole. In front of the washing-cote door there was a subsidence of the tiles, a hole, and when it rained it filled with water wherein you saw the droplets falling. When it rained bubbles, then it was for the rest of the afternoon. Then I was playing in the red canapé. There was a nice cactus on the windowsill too, and once I gently touched it with my hand. It was full of mean little prickles.
	Granny had to remove them with tweezers. Upon the canapé I could reach to the window handle. That handle manipulated an iron bar going up an down; old fashioned metalwork. Underneath the window there was a clip containing the bar to close the window, which could be opened by pulling up the bar out of the clip. I found out that it was possible to punch rectangles out of beer-mats by moving the handle... Just like the ticket-inspector in the tram, but bigger. The water in the hole, whereupon it rained bubbles, reminds me the water well in the story of snow-white, with pictures of Walt Disney. I should have had a box of blocks with a dozen of cubes, with a fragment of a picture on each of the six sides. Snow-white, the Booted-cat, Little-thumb, Little Red-hat, and an other two things. There is also the pit wherein Alice in Wonderland fell.
	There has been a period in my life (10—12 years) I frequently dreamed of falling in deep pits, or in free fall in a dark space. It was frightening and a pleasure at the same time. As if the falling never ended, or changed into flying. The frightening part may be illustrated by the sparrow once showed up in the stove of aunt Miss. I heard a sort of noise in the stove which was out and went to see what that might be. Something moved there. A sparrow just fell into the chimney pipe and was locked in. Just like me in the streets of Bruges, with my yellow car, or with the tram, in front of the water where it never rained. It all looked very deep, the more because they said I had to care about coming near to the railing: you never know. Perhaps it was deep and bottomless.
	In the corner next to the stove of aunt Miss there was a corner chair, having two sides to sit on. It's like a sort of two intertwined chairs. They called it "coin de feu". Once I wanted to name the object and called it "pain coupé". They all laughed about it, and it went along for ever. After that, I made many other slips to get attention. To stay a little while with the pain coupé (sliced bread): my mother sliced the bread with an impossible knife.
	I searched the entire internet to find such a dreadful thing, but no use. First I thought it would be common, but apparently it is not. I fabricated one at last myself, sort of reversed machete. Mother got the bread in front of her breast and sliced it off with the machete. My grandmother had a normal bread knife, after all. You can clear the job by putting the bread on a little board. Now of course we are at granny's an other time, and upon the red canapé, where it was warm. In the living room of my mother stood just the same red velvet canapé, but it is as if it never was there all the way. It should have been there, because I remember myself being in it while rolling marbles into the water groove underneath the window at the side of the street. It is a double memory fragment, or perhaps a crossing over of two elements. It is linked to the coin de feu, with one side looking at the warm stove containing the sparrow, and with the other at the living where aunt Miss gave me attention. The canapé looking into the garden at granny's and the one looking out on the street at home. Then aunt Bolly with her fiancé Nessie sitting into the same velvet some weeks before their marriage, and me angry about Nessie's mockery and things like that. After granny came over to stay with us, part of her furniture ware installed in our living, so, it is certain that the red canapé was there somewhere in the past, but, I don't remember two of them at the same time. We possibly see here an example of condensation and contamination: several emotional elements mix up in a vague cluster of memories, resulting in the impossibility to distinguish between them properly, neither in place nor in time. By the way, the experience with Bolly and Nessie there, I always experienced as being a sort of trauma. From the first time I saw Nessie, I could not stand him. It was him by the way who closed me in in the toilet, the one with the little hart in the door, and also he killed a nice little mouse in an trash-bin, beating it to death with the back of a broomstick.
	Aunt Bolly always looked down on people (left), as if she were the queen of the bees. My mother, her sister (right), had the corners of her mouth turned down. Aunt Miss (middle) more looked like Snow-white herself, and for her I ever waited. Aunt Bolly, Miss and my mother. The resemblance is amazing. I think Miss was the model after whom I modeled the ideal picture of my Little Darling, very romantic, when I was twenty. Rare and untouchably beautiful, in the shadow of the queens changing themselves into witches when they were in the mood. When I was about nine years of age, I once tried to cut off the throat of the evil queen with the point of a dart when I was reading Walt Disney on the toilet, but the pin disappeared into my leg and left behind a nice little hole. Me screaming and jelling, until my mother came on to call me a stupid donkey. It was a sort of uncontrolled aggression coming up in me (thalamic rage), accompanied with the inevitable feelings of guilt, installed and maintained by my mothers eyes and voice. The penance has to be paid immediately, if possible yesterday for crimes of today. The biggest crime of all, after all, was that I had the idea of coming into the world via that narrow street between my mother's legs, or producing desires in the direction of the same street but belonging to other girls.
	The green check in my dream resembles a little bit the green cards my father used to identify his pigeons. Had the same serial number as the rings that were put onto the paws of the beasts. When I once played doctors and nurses with my cousin, we were caught by my father. He shook his head in disbelieving despair and waved his open hand alongside his face, as if he wanted to say: "Where on earth did I deserve such a son?" After that he kept silence, and began cutting corks to glide on the television antenna cables of the neighbor to make them more visible for his doves (the first antenna in the vicinity), and stop them from flying in the wires and break their wings or so... It reminded me of a small cut I remarked in the foreskin of my cousin. My father was manipulating the rings and corresponding cards, did not say anything, but gesticulated with that sharp knife all the way (I thought, saw, fantasized). And it was not because I had the idea to do it with his wife, but because of my dirty manners with an other boy, the neighbor. Again that double chair. For his doves he had identification cards and wedding rings, and he risked his life on the roof of the neighbors, but not for me. I felt guilty because obviously I disappointed him. I violated the law of the mother, which he was said to keep an eye on. I forgot telling that he caught us when mother was out of the house, and he preferred to chat next doors instead of babysitting. From time to time he came to have a look, and we heard him coming, whereupon we stopped our exploration of the human body to resume normal activities. I think he saw through that and got in as quiet as he could next time, like a spy, and got hands upon our crime. As if we tried to hide behind a transparent plastic penthouse to play forbidden games.
	Strange use for the Name of the Father here (Lacan). When I was 'naughty', my mother said that she was going to say it to my father. I then was afraid for his slap (he once slapped me). But in fact it was my mother who made the rules, and my father had to do what she dictated. Slap or control or, without his knowing, play bogyman. It was the Name of the Mother, in the name of the father, and I always knew it without wanting to know it.
	The witch with her apple I never found so witchy. Perhaps because she had a big pimple on her nose, a pustule just like my granny had. She at last tumbled from the rocks, in the tale, and was hit by lightning. After which Snow-white was kissed by the prince too, and everything was OK. Grandmother sometimes gave me red cabbages and sausage, and that also contained some applesauce, delicious. I still like to eat apples, good for health and against heartburn.
	The fact that my granny was ill in bed all the time, and so could not fight for me like I think she would have done normally, would have given me much heartburn in turn. Sometimes she came out of her bed, and sat in her reed armchair.
	I don't know what to think or feel about it. Now the armchair is empty and gone.

	References Market place Bruges : http://www.thedrumms.org:81/Brugge.html Old tram : http://members.lycos.nl/kusee/tram/ Bridge in Bruges : http://users.pandora.be/adorable/album/ Raindrops : http://www.acalanes.k12.ca.us/ahs/images/ raindrops.gif Cactus : (http://www.redlist.org/info/captions2002.html) Waterhole : http://users.pandora.be/wim.herten/werken/ Waterput.htm Falling : http://www.paloma.net/pic4.htm Pit : http://www.bellwitchfansite.com/bell_witch_pics.html Chair, coin de feu : http://www.jhcraver.com/images/chairs/S10.jpg Slices of bread : http://www.klootwijk.nl/ Machete : http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/asiapcf/9905/05/ e.timor.agreement.02/ Bread knife : http://www.vinnysknives.com/kyocera_cutlery.htm Snow-white : http://www.angelfire.com/movies/disneybroadway/ snowwhite.html Snow-white : (http://www.the-ex.com/images/snowwhite.jpg) Check - card : http://www.masong.freeserve.co.uk/hp/twine1.html Rural constable : http://www.xs4all.nl/~hoonhout/ Witch with apple : http://www.ibexgalleries.com/an_archive.html Red cabbage : http://www.vegparadise.com/highestperch33.html Kangoo, Japan. http://www.yomiuri.co.jp/atcars/impression/ mihori_kangoo.htm The Ship of Fools, Bosch, Bruges. http://www.mystudios.com/art/gothic/bosch/ bosch-ship-fools.html
	Copyright © 2004 A. Syberg Site Last update 05.11.2006