Free association (part 25)

when i first started this blog i named at as "psychiatry for all"...the naming came into my mind in seconds and that was it. after a year i changed the name into "colors of mind" and that change was impulsive too. i generally accept my impulsivity in such situations like when naming something. another episode of impulsivity drived me to change the title into "skies"....
skies, why that name? i still don't know really....
by the title i think i meant to let you feel what you can see in the skies. it is like a mirror. it is a mirror. mirror of what? earth? us? God? heavens? i think it is better to say that skies are a mirror of our imagination. you look at the sky and see what you imagine. so, is my blog about imagination? mirrors?
have you heard that song of beatles of "imagine"? you might say i am a dreamer but i am not the only one, i hope someday you will join us, and the world will be as one, imagine there's no countries, it isn't hard to do......

mirrors. mirrors are metioned in a misterious way in the Sumerian and Babylonian writings.... was it linked to witchcraft? I am not sure but it was linked to some magical things.... mirrors...they are so much used by Iraqi poets... their peotry is not that clear for me.... my first contraversy when I was learning about loosening of association as a morbid phenomenon of psychosis is that it looks like poetry...

Do you like organisation? why i don't like it? i am little messy? if Freud is here reading what I am writing he would tell me that I am fixated at some psychosexual stage of development, and if his student (i think Karl Abraham) here he will add something to it....they got a great imagination..... imagine all the people....thinking like Abraham woho waho woho....

I don't like to make any agenda...I think it is not like Freud had thought....it is just that Baghdad is disorganised, and you cannot expect what will happen during a day, so how come you can expect what will happen in a month or so ????...

So.....can you see why I chosed Skies as a name? it is more open, more circular...oh yeah circular...something without a begining and no end...circular....cannot be "ORGANIZED" into something liniar....I remember somebody had said that western thinking is linear while eastern thinking is circular....well....it was a good saying that may stay in my mind but not so true....

Cigarettes in my headache empire

When my mind feels that i am little tense, it took a medival iron made crown and put it over my head announcing me as the king of the tension headache empire. my mind would put two sticks in my hands, in my left, a stick named "easy fatigability" and my right, named "gastric upset". And I rule my empire with poor memory.

Cigarette smoking is really a bad thing to learn. Really bad smell. But with tea, or pepsi, I can rarely resist it when it is near to me. The most bad thing is that when I am drinking tea or pepsi while another person is smoking next to me. I cannot resist asking for a cigarette, or at worst going out to buy some. Then when I will come back the tea will loose its flavor.

Liberty on the Walls

Baghdad was centered around the river Tigris. Tigris was the line around which baghdadian dreams and stories were centered. Baghdadian thinking was growing in circles gathering around the river. Now Baghdad is filled with walls. Walls that run in long lines. Baghdadian thinking is now liniar, in parallel to walls....

An artisit had drawn the Liberty Monument Symbols on one of the walls... (see the picture above), so that he make us able to imagine liberty inspite of walls...

My Last Day in Al Rashad

It was my last day in Al Rashad hospital. Next day I would take my papers that say that I have finnished training there. It was afternoon when I went to visit the rehabilitation unit to take a final look at the paintings there. I saw them finnishing there training on the theatre. The training nurse welcomed me and asked that young woman to repeat the last scene so that I can see it. She went back and started her highly emotional scene that ended in crying. At the end we started applauding but she stayed crying for few seconds then said to the nurse with some childish like complain: "you always make me cry by lettingme repeat this scene". They all laughed. She laughed too.
We went after that to the painting room to drink some tea. There were about 10 inpatients and 2 nurses and one cleaner and me. I looked at the drawings in the room and knew that I will miss so much those who draw them and those who could not draw them.
I wondered if I am allowed to take a picture to the room. I said "NO" to myself. But later at the house of doctors I saw this magazine with a picture of some drawings for some patients (the picture above).

I was looking at the young woman who did that scene, she was drinking tea while her gaze was really nowhere. She was not with us. Then she started crying again saying that she misses her son.

She told us to let her cry cause she needed that as she said. After she stopped crying she came next to me and sit in the nearby chair. I remember i prevented her once from going outside the hospital and gave her an ECT "ElectoConvulsiveTherapy" twice. She always remind me of these incidenses. She hold a pencil, a colored one and took a white paper. She wondered what to do. I was waiting to see but the nurse asked her to draw him. She agreed. I interrupt like a child who knows that he will miss all this and said: I want you to draw me something please, can you?

And she drew me this:



I asked her, like a stupid psychiatrist usually do: what is this?

She moved her shoulders up in an expression which I think means "what do you think? is it that difficult?" then said: "it is a flower, to you"

I asked: "and that lady is you?"
she said: "you can say that although I am not beautiful as her"

In my ordinary state I usually say: "dear you are so beautiful" but I don't know exactly why I didn't say anything. I just looked at the young lady with my eyes full of smile and love. She understood. I will miss them all.

At the eveining I went for a walk. I didn't inter into the ward, I intered only one. I saw these patients holding their ward's big cooking utensil and walking to the big hospital's kitchen. They will bring dinner to their ward. They usually don't greet anybody. They didn't greet me. I didn't greet them but I knew I will miss seeing them walking this way.



When I passed by Al Kindie group of wards somebody called me telling me that K want to see me. I went in, K greeted me with a real smile and said: "I knew that this was your last day here and I want to give you this pillow slep that I made with my hands since sometime"



I thanked him and now I thank God that he showed me the career that I really found myself in.

Al Rashad Wisdom

On the main door to the house of doctors in Al Rashad you find that one of the doctors had written what he called as " Al Rashad Wisdom":

The Monument of Liberty & Jewad Selim

I have mentioned Jewad Selim "or typed Jawad Selim" in my last post. I called his monument as the Freedom Monument, but I found lately that it is called as "The Monument of Liberty".

The monument is made up of 14 separate units and comprising 25 human figures together with a horse and a bull.




I found an article about the Munument of Liberty in the journal of Gilgamesh, the first issue in 1987. These following lines are taken from the article written by Jibra I. Jibra:

"He worked throughout 1960 on the clay figures. He sent them to Pistoia to be cast in bronze. Each figure was divided into parts in order to facilitate their shipment to Baghdad in carefully marked crates.
Late that year, Selim returned to Baghdad to supervise the installation of the figures on the complete frieze.
In Baghdad, the bronze pieces were taken out of the wooden crates welded together and raised on to the marble structure.
Selim never stopped supervising the work being done properly. He was always on site, together with his colleagues and a crowd of curious people watching the gradual unfolding of the dramatic figures.
He was busy supervising the erection of the second unit when he had a heart attack. He was hurried to hospital. Around his bed gathered the best doctors in town trying to help him pull through. But the attack was so severe that he died on January 23, 1961, not yet 42."


I found some interesting sites talking about Jawad Selim, and here are some links.

http://baghdadtreasure.blogspot.com/2005/09/treasure-in-baghdad_11.html

http://attawie.blogspot.com/2008/01/my-exhibition-salute-to-jawad-salim.html