Author: Vladimir Pyatsky
Translation: Natasha Tsimbler
One of the elderly men I cared for when I was younger was quite independent, so his wife only asked me to clean the room where they lived. Their room was, in a sense, a state within a state since the elderly couple lived in the apartment with their children and grandchildren. Their room was located in the middle between the others. Therefore, for example, washing the floor with water flowing beyond the room’s threshold was considered unacceptable, and the cleaning itself was done directly around the elderly couple, who frequently had to tuck in their legs or move from chairs to the bed and back again.
One day, they asked me to beat the carpet, but they didn’t have a carpet beater. Instead of a beater, they gave me the old man’s cane.
At that time, I was quite sensitive to dust, and beating the carpet seemed like a nasty task. The carpet was so dusty that just carrying it out and hanging it on the fence was enough to breathe in dust. The presence of the old man’s cane as a beating tool gave the whole situation an absurd touch and allowed me to recognize the unfolding scene as a dream with relative ease.
From this situation, I picked out a string of symbols – like mala beads – that allowed me to interpret it as a dream: the stale, stagnant air in the room from which I took the carpet out and later returned it, I distinguished as a sign of the mind clinging to the body; the cane, with which one could easily hit the carpet but hardly beat the dust out of it, I saw as a sense of “I”; the carpet represented habitual mental patterns; the couple hoping for a successful cleaning were like sacred images in a temple.
By maintaining this recognition, I avoided a severe bout of allergic rhinitis, which was my usual reaction to even a small amount of dust at that time.
Author
Author: Vladimir Pyatsky
Translation: Natasha Tsimbler
One of the elderly men I cared for when I was younger was quite independent, so his wife only asked me to clean the room where they lived. Their room was, in a sense, a state within a state since the elderly couple lived in the apartment with their children and grandchildren. Their room was located in the middle between the others. Therefore, for example, washing the floor with water flowing beyond the room’s threshold was considered unacceptable, and the cleaning itself was done directly around the elderly couple, who frequently had to tuck in their legs or move from chairs to the bed and back again.
One day, they asked me to beat the carpet, but they didn’t have a carpet beater. Instead of a beater, they gave me the old man’s cane.
At that time, I was quite sensitive to dust, and beating the carpet seemed like a nasty task. The carpet was so dusty that just carrying it out and hanging it on the fence was enough to breathe in dust. The presence of the old man’s cane as a beating tool gave the whole situation an absurd touch and allowed me to recognize the unfolding scene as a dream with relative ease.
From this situation, I picked out a string of symbols – like mala beads – that allowed me to interpret it as a dream: the stale, stagnant air in the room from which I took the carpet out and later returned it, I distinguished as a sign of the mind clinging to the body; the cane, with which one could easily hit the carpet but hardly beat the dust out of it, I saw as a sense of “I”; the carpet represented habitual mental patterns; the couple hoping for a successful cleaning were like sacred images in a temple.
By maintaining this recognition, I avoided a severe bout of allergic rhinitis, which was my usual reaction to even a small amount of dust at that time.
