The Corona Borealis.

I brought the fairy lights. Slender copper wire, and tiny, delicate white stars. He laughs, as I drape them gently over his bookcase... And then I'm giving him a card and his money in the card, and talking about how I feel I should offer him a white scarf in return for his teachings.. There is a poem, written in the card. It is the poem that I quote on the first page of my research project: Dust of Snow BY ROBERT FROST. The way a crow Shook down on me The dust of snow From a hemlock tree Has given my heart A change of mood And saved some part Of a day I had rued. He asks me why? -  Why offer a scarf? I say -  "Because that's how you do it, you offer a scarf to the teacher, and the money is in an envelope" I am  purposefully  missing out the obvious, that I'm treating him as a lama. He says -  "He mentions a crow in the first line. I forget the title of the book - I haven't read it, but I've heard two different programs reviewing the book and saying.

He - "How are you"? Me - "I'm fine..." And I would say " Fine! Hey how are you"?   But I don't.  I've been told that I'm tangential, and if I talk it will be labyrinthine; long, coiling, discursive.  Tangential.   His silence, is wide open waiting.  Even though I do this silence thing myself too, I feel obliged to fill it. I go full tangential - I'm talking about episodic and autobiographical memory, and the work of Tulvig  and I know that anything like this is considered cold, and CBT, and he will see it as  tangential to the relational work of therapy.  But I have assignments to write, and I'm chasing Evan George's statement that 'our' work is to help people create future memories. I love that idea, future memories! That we step through past, future, present - to find the better in the past, to place instances of good memories into a functional sequence, coherent and believable and possible. Using memory is such ric

This is the session in which I placed symbols of the four directions, at each of the cardinal points in his room. A stone in the North. A feather in the East. A candle in the South and The sound of the sea (I played a recording) in the West. Perhaps I should have dropped this fly-by intuition thing I was doing, perhaps I should have availed myself of his psychotherapeutic knowledge. But, he was my beloved. I had just an hour. And the terror of the Kohuts was upon me - that our laughing together, our getting on, was his deliberate construct - twin ship or some other reparative relationship maneuver.   Not real.  No actual connection.  Manipulation.  Only his illusion and my delusion.  And in this room, well our laughter, it felt real. But that question he asks himself, the 'who am I to the client' question and how he seeks to be 'who they need me to be'.   But I don't need him to be anyone except who he is! My North star is vanishing. Working out the directions in

NOTES 12th August 2021.  At the very centre of our dialogue The word  phantasy ripples through the air Condensing now into form,  Professor Couliano slumped,  a single shot  through the head. Metaphor, within a metaphor within a... bullet. That extinguished once and for all  the flame of his life. Lots of bullet songs in my life right now:  Filter - 'Hey man, nice shot'. Covenant - 'Time is like a Bullet'. Puscifer - Bullet train to Iowa...  "Going to be a while before we hit the ground"  And this connection that I'm imagining,  or longing for,  or creating,  or destroying? When the waves come  I am in bliss.  The session. There is a picture on his wall. I go over and take a good look.  It is Mediaeval,  a fayre or market, a festival day? And in the picture there is a big, stripy box full of people!  Are they trapped?  There is a ladder inside this rather large box,  has someone placed it there so they can escape?  No, that interpretation doesn’t seem righ

NOTE: 9th August 2021. Calm acquiescence. Really? As I sit here in a car too hot for dogs, radio on,  belly full of fluttering butterflies. I watched an old documentary about Eric Berne this morning. 1960s looked modern. Shock to see people smoking. Once so normal... And  People expected answers,  psychotherapy//Enlightenment! But mostly... I'm terrified why? Undertow Kit gives me back everything I give him He doesn't reply to my emails anymore.. What has happened? I feel his warmth, but I'm what? Stupid I guess. Getting to the point where I tell the truth. Just say it I'm in love with you ... And you must know this, feel it, see it? This session is almost too painful to recall and write. There was so much 'us' in it. It didn’t feel as if there was an agenda. We talked as if we are friends and equals. But returning to this session and thinking about it - I feel my heart break - because what if this sense of equality was nothing but a result of his  technique,