Can
you imagine that? I can't. I can imagine feeling horrified, revolted
even. Though I don't have a fear of that profession or of the
instruments they use or of the chair you lay back in, but a cast of
my not-so-pearly-whites presented to me in a pretty box would suggest
to me that something was a little off. In my love for you I give you
a model of your teeth. Seriously,
who does that?
But
presumably in the imagined scenario you'd willingly submitted
yourself to it: this courtship and the cast being taken, for love,
for art rather than correction. Still, I'm not convinced anyone would
welcome their own teeth as a gift, no matter how finely executed.
It's a bit weird, isn't it? The girl in this case was happy. This was
love, reciprocal love. If Laurie Lee is to be believed and I do
believe him. Perhaps this is how they used to do things in Andalusia?
My
conclusion however is this: Dentists should date dentists or nurses,
or those with perfect teeth or teeth fetishes. They may like problem
cases but they shouldn't date one.
Now,
imagine a room of anger. Imagine being in a bad mood and having a
room you could retire to to work it off. In that room you could do
whatever you want: roll around on the floor, pound it with your fists
and feet; hurl yourself at the walls; rant, yell, sob; run, jump,
stamp; and if there were cushions to throw, throw them. That's my
kind of room. I want one. But to have one I'd need a palace, or a
wing of, like the king's favourite wife (she's one of three) in the
Ramayana, or at the very least a two-bedroomed apartment. But if I
imagine a second bedroom I see a study-cum-library – that's the
dream, always the dream – and so then I'd need a third room in
which to exercise my brain and body in anger, where darts couldn't be
made of pens, pencils and rubbers, and birds from books. Have
I ever in anger flung a book?
Almost, in anger with it and its author, but not quite.
Conclusion:
A room reserved for black moods stripped of objects that could be
launched as weapons would be less dangerous and maybe even fun. The
door to that room, though, would have to be kept shut to prevent the
anger released from permeating other areas, or windows opened to
allow that energy to disperse. That would be a sensible precaution
and yet in thinking of it I've gone right off the idea; I'm too
sensitive to draughts.
So,
imagine that same spare room – no longer an anger room but a
bedroom decorated red - filled with monkeys feasting from a fruit
platter on the bed and arguments breaking out as grapes are snatched
and run off with and stuffed in mouths. There are the elders, there
are the young, there are the cunning ones, with typical monkey ways,
there are the wise ones who watch and wait. There are the ones that
deal in cuffs, there are the ones that deal in cries. And there again
there are the wise. But, yes, think of the noise. Think of the mess.
Think of the smell.
Conclusion:
A room such as this is conceivable, but a monkey's rightful, no,
natural place is not a chamber in which one sleeps. Where would any
guests go? I guess they wouldn't come or would make some excuse not
to stay. No sleep would be had if they did, not with monkeys swinging
from overhead lamps or squabbling amongst themselves, and even if
quiet there'd be all those pairs of eyes, blinking in the dark.
Then,
imagine a creator. Imagine a sculptor fashioning an egg out of clay
or a weaver weaving a cloth on which there's a tree heavy with fruit,
or a painter dabbing at a canvas on which there's a giant man.
Imagine each and choose, without too much thinking or hesitating,
which to examine. Pick which intrigues you most, as to how the world
might have come about, as that is what these creators are depicting.
My choice is the painter and his giant man, from which the three
realms that today exist were once all said to come from.
I
chose the painter because painters, like translators, make mistakes.
Picture credit: Monkeys Feasting, 1620, Jan Brueghel the Elder.
For the story of the plaster cast see A Rose for Winter, Laurie Lee
