5.8 Ruthenium
By Kees Dam, Vera Kopsky, Yvonne Lassauw, Huib Wijtenburg.
Poetic and light footed. Happened to be playing some of Beethoven's music and wanted to make ballet movements and pirouettes.
Heavy feeling in head, fullness, as if in a vice, nausea with eructations, must lie down which ameliorates but makes me irritable. Want to keep my feet high.
Making slow circular movements with arms and legs, but I don’t feel it, there is no weight, no body, ‘I am not there’ it is as if I am a fairy.
General feeling about the remedy: alternately light footed, floating (fairy) and bumping your head against the ceiling which causes a heavy feeling in the head; nausea, causing you to lie (the force of gravity gets too much). All strength has drained from your limbs. Also a pain in the inside of the left breast, squeezing, rhythmically contracting.
Sudden bouts of laughter. I am reminded of my aunt who did not pass her driving test until the eleventh attempt when there was no traffic on the road at all.
Later on in bed I feel as if I have got flu, weak, sick, like a wet rag, afraid that I will be ‘knocked out by this flu tomorrow’.
Dreams: lots of cats, very beautiful, they are all sitting very quietly in the window of a very exclusive shop. Some of them even have a delicate chain running from the inner corner of their eye to their ear. They are probably very expensive. Even the cheapest one costs at least a thousand pounds. They are beautiful kittens but their eyes are very sad. At the back of the shop is a section of antique books and erotic postcards. It was a very refined sort of erotic prints, something from the end of the last century. It showed a naked man lying on a sofa, the room bathed in the soft light of candles. He is covered by a delicate blanket of batiste and a woman is bending over him. She is dressed in fine lace, only her buttocks are naked. Later on everything becomes a bit eerie, something to do with incest. A dirty little man, like a thin old professor, did something he shouldn’t do.
A girl who doesn’t know the town [homesick, Ruthenium] wants to see some of the sights [Culture, Silver series]. I show her a big imposing department store [Silver series] which sells dresses that have large houses printed on them; enormous rolls of material, very expensive [Silver series].
On the outside of my right thigh I developed five itching spots. I also got some on my left leg later.
Today, while I was talking with a patient I suddenly saw my patient’s vagina [sex, Silver series], it was quite separate from her body, something which I should sing about [Silver series], or which should be painted in candle light.
During the next consultation I have a vision of my male patient lying naked on a sofa, covered with a fine batiste sheet.
A courtesan, lying on a sofa, holding a beautiful crystal glass filled with the best champagne, someone lighting a sigarillo for you, you lean forward for a minute and then sink back in the cushions, decadent, refined, but missing inner strength, the upper classes, ‘languishing’, yearning, everything is handed to you on a golden plate. But at the same time quite calculating, anything to make an impression. Exaggerated, languishing, poetic, lyrical, subtle tactics.
I am ascending, floating, I wish someone will go down on his knees for me, that someone will look up to me. Elitism, courtiers, paint glass windows, aesthetic, painting.
Image of a call girl, she has style, very beautiful but expensive, slowly building up the erotic tension during the course of the evening. The pain comes from not finding a buyer (the kittens), from being dependent on the higher aristocratic classes.
All sorts of French poets spring to mind: Guy de maupassant ‘les jeunes filles en fleurs’, Pascal, but not Balzac. I can only enjoy the music of the film ‘The piano’ when I lie down. That way I can fantasise and spin a story around it; great expectations, a higher plan, all my dreams will be fulfilled without any effort; all I have to do is to be inspiring, to be beautiful, to have lots of money and to wait until someone turns up.
Slept badly for several nights. Often awake from 2.30 am to 3.30 am, making plans for the holidays.
Dream: I was looking for a plot of land at the edge of a wood, to build a house. But most of the plots had already been sold, there was only one left. I was not sure whether I would be able to get it, but I desperately hoped I would (the theme of looking for a space for myself is very much a part of my own life at the moment).
Very ‘speedy’, nervous, restless, palpitations, but I achieved a lot; painted the practice rooms, cleared up, worked out many cases. I couldn’t sleep after 5-6 am, so I got up and did all these things. But I was very clumsy at times, dropping things all over the place. Looked at the moon. Was my sleeplessness caused by the full moon?
Dream: I am clearing up a very dusty old house. I hadn’t finished yet when I woke up. (It reminded me of a Carcinosin dream: a large tree near a house with three stories, of which the attic needed to be cleared). To my mind I was now clearing the attic of that particular house.
I woke up in a fright in the middle of the night. I looked at the fluorescent face of my alarm clock and felt that someone with bad intentions was shining his torch at me.
When I woke up in the morning I noticed that my alarm clock was facing the other way and then I suddenly remembered what had happened in the night.
During the first half hour after I woke up I felt as if I had a hangover: dizzy, light headed.
Burning feeling in my forehead, in the middle, above the eyebrows (I have some slight eczema there).
At 7 pm a terrible tickling cough (had been at the dentist in the afternoon to have a crown fitted).
Woke up feeling: I am a good doctor (or someone told me I was?).
Image: Jonah as a small child with earache.
Dream: I am at home and at the back of the house is an enormous pile of rubbish. Amongst this rubbish there are some beautiful motorbikes. I walk amongst this rubbish in my oldest clothes. Then my landlord appears accompa-nied by some gentlemen in smart suits. I don’t feel at all threatened because I am on my on territory (usually I would feel very uncomfortable in those circum-stances), but I do go inside to straighten my clothes a little, because I feel it will put them more at ease.
I feel ill at ease, ‘unheimish’ [Ruthenium], Didn’t sleep well, speedy. We did a lot today: decorated my practice room, I did not want it to be just functional, it also had to look beautiful from now on. I was much more decisive than usual.
Felt like dancing.
In the evening a terrible pain on the inside of my right knee, where I had had a meniscus operation in the past.
The next day a Ruthenium patient phoned to ask if I would read and comment on a book her husband had written: ‘The last year in freedom’.
A patient makes me say that I am the best father in the world.
Fishy smell in vagina and stinking feet.
Pain in right testicle (a few days ago it was the left one).
Dream: I was in a car with Ischa Meyer (A chat show host on T.V.) and he was in a hurry to find a house to buy. It had to be big and beautiful. He walks past several large, nice houses but he can’t get near them because there are low iron railing fences with spikes blocking his way. He is frightened of stepping over them so I drive him back in his own car. Then he gets very ill and says: I have so much pain, I won’t make it. There was a lot of blood coming from his anus (associated with a feeling of glass in the anus).
He had a dilemma: he had to choose some people to appear on television and he was afraid that his choice would be different from what everyone expected. This was the final blow for him [Ruthenium]. When we arrived in town he got out of the car and disappeared in the crowd.
Dream: there was a big meeting (Scientology?) in a large hall. I had bought a ticket and there were two duplicates which the organisation had kept for their own files. On the day of the meeting I turned up but realised I had forgotten my ticket. I put it to them that they could either look through their files to find proof of my payment, or they could trust me and let me through. It was very crowded, masses of people going inside.