Edith
Dream
29-03-2003
1
Edith lives in a house with a renovated roof, with Flemish tiles. It's very windy, and she is afraid the whole business will be blown away. I assure her nothing will happen, and that we made it very solid.
2
Edith takes care for a little child, a girl. The baby is sleeping in the black mud of a canal, in the middle of a house, packed in a sort of bandages
3
There is an erotic atmosphere. Lieve tickles with her toes in the briefs of the baby, who turns out to be four years old after all. The girl is surprised, and asks if she may touch herself there too. She can, Lieve says. In a hurry the child runs into the room alongside and gets her briefs off. Lieve and I begin making love.
4
A child welfare nurse comes along to control the situation, and walks straight to the room of the child. She expresses her indignation with a loud yell, and falls over, flat on her back. She is carried off on a stretcher, a sort of plastic coffin, and a whole train with medical material follows, with the locomotive at the end, roaring down the stairs. A switch has not the right position, but it's all the same to them. The whole situation thunders past like a gulf-war.
Free Association
29-03-2003
On some of the old houses you find old undulated Flemish tiles, instead of flat French ones. Once upon a time we installed a dormer window in Edith's roof, and she walked around with a baby on her arm. She laid the child to sleep on a dirty couch, in the middle of some rags. On the radio at noon there was a program with farmer Boor and farmer Jack, going through all sorts of stupid things with cows and so. The walls of the house were so bad, that I feared for a total collapse of the whole construction. In the dream I comfort myself.
The child sleeps in the mud,
and seemingly does not bother about it. I never understood it very well. If babies are hugged enough and frequently put in the plush, comforted and tightly held, then mud and dirt apparently does not harm too much; although there are also snags attached to the need of conveniences and money, especially when the child has to look out for a spot to settle down. What has it all to do with me? Just when I was born, at the end of World War Two, all my family lived in the villa of a wealthy citizen of Brussels - as housekeepers - somewhere alongside the golf course. The story goes, that they stood looking out of the window, at the bombs falling in the golf, until the moment one of them was dropped a little bit closer and the windowpane was blown into their faces. Big panic and flight into the cave.
I often fantasized about that villa. If I was already born or not, I don't know, but it were always stained windows, or something with leaded glass. I also often went to that place to look at it, having a strange feeling.
They spoke about it. They pulled me, in my baby buggy, with great effort through the snow. But I did not bother and just went on sleeping... , as if I should have helped with the dragging.
A child lays in the mud, and also partly in the water of the drain. There are links to war and threat, and within a minute something erotic is coming on. The cheap perfume of dream Juul, some nights ago, still sticks in my nose, and I think about Piet (Willy), who had to be operated because of a fixed foreskin. What problem exactly it was, I don't know, and how they stumbled across it I don't know either. I lay somewhere on the floor, and there was a lot of talking and gesticulating about Piet. There is concern, and I feel threat. The next thing I know : I lay somewhere on a coffee table. A man comes hanging over me, the doctor I know now, and something is happening with Piet. I don't see what is going on down there, but I pee in the air, up to the rim of the hat, on the head of the doctor. It is as if it happens to me, and I have nothing to do with it. It is as if I don't have a body, but I know the drops of water are coming out of me, somewhere.
I don't know my age then, but I could speak a little yet, remember words. Next remembrance : I am in a hospital, an a nun takes me up. I am fairly stressed, and give her a blow into the face. She drags me along. I am lain on a table in a dark cote and held or bound down. Somebody has a round mirror on his head, a mirror with a small hole in it. The third eye, like a monster. A liquid is poured over a metal mask, which is pushed on my nose. I shout : "I don't like that smell"... and get asleep. Then I wake up while they are still busy and Piet hurts terrible. "My Piet, my Piet", I cry, as hard as I can, but they don't bother and just go on.
A mask like that is used to drip chloroform or ether on, put on the nose and mouth of patients for anesthesia. I don't think it was ether. When I look at the mask on the picture, I feel a sort of nausea. Ether is memory laden, but not nauseating.
When I come home, a nurse has to see me for some days, Miss Catrice, a Miss see, and she had to cleanse something, and then, at the end, get the little threads out. I was scared, but there was no significant pain. There is a link between a miss, Piet and pain. Friendly icy missy. The whole episode can't have last longer than fifteen days, but it looks like it dragged along for a hundred years.
In the first nursery class a doctor came for medical check-up. I just remember fences with white fabric in wooden frames. I know Piet was inspected, to see if the foreskin could be pulled over the glans. With me that was no problem, quite a time after the operation, but, either is was painful, or it felt like painful. Afterwards, when I was home, I refused to pee, because it tingled. My granny powdered me with talc, and said it would not hurt any longer, but I refused all the way. Only some days later I ought to, and then dark brown urine came out, a large amount of course. In the second and third nursery class I went through the same ritual, and then I peed in my bed once. I thought it was because I sweated so much, wet from end to end.
It was not fimosis, depicted above, but a sort of adhesion, which had to be cut free. The visit of the doctor at school felt as if the hands in the picture should push the foreskin violently further, tearing things apart. I never found out how on earth they found out something was sticking together inside my penis, because they never looked at it afterwards. Of course I was washed from time to time, and then you would think ma should wash Piet's inner regions, but she never ever did it. Only years later I understood that washing there was necessary, because itching made me almost mad... and it was not clean at all. You should think, when there is pain when the doctor comes, they would help a little to show me how to practice? Hands off is the word.
Everything concerning Piet was trouble and pain. Obviously I fiddled with him from time to time, for I was at a loss about not speaking of it when I went to confession. Between my 6 and 12 year, between my first and my holy communion, I ever feared to die, because then I should go straight to hell. Impure. Indecent. In the last year of secondary school I learnt a word suited for the feeling: defiled. The feeling of having no worth, rationalized by me by thinking it all was my own fault, because I was such a pervert.
Behind our house, at my parent's side, when I was about 5, I played with Elian from time to time. She was a girl of my age. We played under a hangover, with wood piled up against the wall. We played father and mother. On a day I had to pee, and Elian, in one way or the other, was interested in my banana, she said. Then I did it while she stood there looking at me. Of course I was curious how it should be when she did it. She had something else, and that was Prune. She did not want to pee, no way, but she agreed with pretending, lowered her briefs and squatted down. That moment my aunt Bolly came from behind the scenes and asked what we were doing there. In a split second I saw Prune, and then the triumphant look in the eyes of my aunt. End of Prune.
Aunt Bolly passed the message to anyone who would listen. My mother told me off, and that I ought to have good manners. Elian's father came home from his work at night. They lived upstairs next to the house of my grandmother, until I was 4. In the ground level part there, aunt Bolly lived now with her awful man. That night I still was with my granny and went out for a little walk in the common garden. On the first floor, behind the open window, I heard the father of Elian, who's name I can't remember now, asking his daughter to repeat for him what she did for me. She refused, but he insisted until she gave in. I cringed with shame. We never again played together.
The train thunders down the stairs, it can't be stopped. The rails show the way. The basis for my emotional life is made of plastic, and obviously a switch points in the wrong direction. At the beginning of my own analysis, close to 30 years ago, I wanted to get rid of my embarrassing feelings, I wanted to feel góód. In the meantime I found out that it is quite possible to féél good, and that isn't a real seller in therapy, but in the long term preferable to the rest of all possible objectives.
-
Gebrandschilderd raam :
(http://www.inn.nl/honebeek/) -
Manneken pis :
http://www.urolog.nl/ -
Operatie :
(http://blick-in-den-op.de/herzklappen/operation/) -
Verpleegster :
(http://www.samhealth.org/employment/nurse_program.html) -
Broekje :
(http://www.tractorboy.com/show1.html) -
Fimosis :
(http://www.cirpedal.com.ar/fotfim.htm) -
Biechtstoel :
http://www.legendesvlaamsbrabant.homestead.com/
Brusselparlamoergang.html -
Drain to canal.
http://www.mcmullans.org/canal/images/
Drain_to_canal_small1.jpg
Copyright © 2003 A. Syberg