TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: How are you?

CLIENT: Good. Somebody took the books out of the waiting area. I feel like part of my life the past week. And not in a good way. So, anyway, good to see you. I'm feeling just absolutely fatigued. It was all I could do to get over here today and I can't explain why I'm tired, but I am. So what I have been doing recently is, so we live right across the street from a cemetery. So, of course, we used to live right across from it. There was just a row of houses, so you'd go down to the parking lot to the gate. So, we're also right at the cemetery and you can hear the (inaudible). [00:01:00]

During the summer, winter times I've walk through it at times. In the summer time, it's just nice because you can just go lie out and listen to music. I usually go to white. There's near where you can enter and lap and walk across, there's this whites. It's a white burial area. So I lie there because it happened to be rather flat and I was aware of the fact that I was, but you can't help but be aware of lying on those people are underneath you.

THERAPIST: It sounds like by the whites.

CLIENT: Yeah. So, that's the way these cemeteries are. There are these plots for various families with these massive, ornate stones. So, I wasn't anything. I didn't know who they were. I don't know who they were, but I would tend to compare because it happened to be the sun is all around and it was not obscured by trees and it was flat. You know. Listening to music or whatever. I'm not taking it lightly, but thinking there's not that sense of reflection that kicks in because you are walking through a cemetery and you're lying and so I was having that feeling of thankfulness in some strange way thinking I am living now and I'm lying here and enjoying the sun and they can't. Right? You know. [00:02:45]

So, that has happened over the years. In the summer time especially. Now we live closer to the cemetery. It's nice we don't have to walk through anything. We just walk down the street and enter. It's right there. So, I fixed up. I have a racing bicycle, but I rarely use it because the tires are really expensive and I don't feel like buying new tires. You don't want to rework the tires because they're super expensive. So, I had set the bike in the basement which is sort of a hybrid bike. It is a hybrid bike. It's a nice bike. It's not a nice as my racing bike, but it's a nice bike. So, I spent a few hours two weeks ago just completely going through it. It has been in the basement so long and I cleaned it, cleaned it, cleaned it and degreased everything and then relubricated everything. I pumped up the tires and was happy to discover that they held air. It's still like a brand new bike. It was given to me by Barbara. I even left it at her house and then never returned, so I have never ridden it. [00:04:00]

The sun was out and I'm dehydrated. So, I thought well, I don't, I used to ride, you know, with the racing bike and the problem is traffic. I have had all kinds of instances where you can't live in the car so they wouldn't expect you to be going so fast, so you get pinched in to the curb when they turn right, because they're not expecting you to keep up with them. So, I thought this is just dangerous. It's not worth it. Of course, you get aggressive because you are so utterly defensive. It's just not a good space to be in. It's not a good space to be in. So, at first, I mean I don't want to ride around in traffic. If I lived in a rural area, I would. In the city, you always feel like it could be your last ride. Barbara, her thing is she takes these hour long trips through the arboretum, which is also near us, but you have to actually go through the town, which is considerable traffic. [00:05:00]

THERAPIST: She bikes?

CLIENT: She bicycles. Yeah. She has a mountain bike. So, that's her thing. So, she goes and does all the hills in the arboretum. So, she does that for an hour. Anyway. So, I had this. I had this bike and stuff. I don't want to be in the streets, but if I can go through the cemetery. So, last week. And, also it's like you don't want to be on the bike too long. You want to build up to it because just the posture of being on the bike and you sort of have things to establish. I would go to the cemetery which takes me all of 45 seconds to get there. Then I would just set my alarm in the phone for a half hour and I'd just ramble around and seek out hills and go up and up and up. Then find hills and go up hills and the alarm would go off and I would head back after a half hour. [00:06:10]

So, I'm aware that there are some people who are buried there who are of some note and yet I feel like it's strange to me to be, I don't like hagiography. I don't want to be sort of someone who goes and seeks these things out and takes pictures. I'm aware of writers being there, but I have never actually gone looking for their graves, but I have known they are there. So, there is a map at the entrance of the cemetery showing the other side of it. So, I went over there and looked at the map and saw the general area where a female poet is. So, then I just sort of ride around that general area. I didn't want to, I wanted to find it, but I wasn't going to work too hard for it. You know what I mean? Because I thought there are all of these other people around where he's going to be, so I thought if I discover it, I have to be able to contemplate or at least acknowledge the names of everyone who is nearby. At some point I will find a female poet. [00:07:30]

So, this and also the avenues are weirdly named. It's like everything is named after a tree. It's unclear. The signs are like this. It's unclear whether you are coming to the street or whether you're on the street. All of the avenues and half of them are named after trees and flowers. So, I kept thinking, you know, this map is reversed. It's peculiar. It's in at the Clark grave. His mother's last name was Clark. It says Clark and then, but I didn't know what it looked like. So, I set my bike down and I started walking around looking, not finding it. I think it's strange and I'm thinking why can't I read this map? Then, the next day, I rode around again and again started looking and was not finding it. [00:08:30]

Then, the following day, later in the day, after having done my little ride, Barbara and I decided to take a walk. So, we're walking along. I said I have been trying to find a female poet, but I can't find it. So, I showed her the map on phone and we're trying to figure it out. We're just kind of looking and going up and down and finally she and I started walking through all these graves and could not figure out where it must be and then we both walk up and there is the big Clark stone and then off to the side is a female poet. Just this little marker and people had left little pebbles around it. So, I looked at it. I mean there's satisfaction in having found it. There's the sort of gravity of thinking there is someone who I have some familiarity with and he's there. Then we walked off. We walked back home. [00:09:35]

Okay. Subsequently, I ride the bike and now it's like oh. I ride and I think oh. Then there's that sort of mental notes. It's sort of like hey, A female poet. It's like I know where he is. So, I ride and I ride and I ride. I thought well, what's the next thing? I think but don't try too hard. So, I'm roaming around and these places I have been before. It's all sort of like, it's so circular. I don't know if you have ever been there. It's sort of like Birmingham in the sense that you can easily get turned around even though you have been there many times. Then, looking at the map and I'm riding around. I'm up on this hill just riding around and riding around. I finally get off and think it must be down here somewhere. So, then I go and I see it. It's a big, giant thing and various people are buried there. Somebody had left a note which I didn't read. I didn't take a picture. I just sort of thought, huh. [00:11:00]

So, I went back home. I thought well, like I'm aware of both of these poets, but only in the sense of a female poet reading in high school and a female poet for Katie and her sisters. That great line that Michael Kane reads. They go to the bookstore and he's having an affair. He finds this book and he goes up to one of Katie's sisters. I forget the actress. She has dark hair. He reads this poem to her and one of the great lines is "no one has such small hands, not even the rain". It's such an amazing line. The idea of the poem that somehow that she, this woman who he's writing to, how went to work on his heart in these really delicate, delicate ways that no one wants to deal with. [00:12:05]

When I first moved here, I was with Belinda and then I met this woman, Vivienne, at a writing workshop. I was intrigued with her because she was writing this thing. She was talking about sex. She was talking about anal sex in this thing she wrote and I was like whoa. So, afterwards I talked to her. We got coffee and then I lived with her for two years. So, he was this inspiration for all these local poets. He, of course, was a major poet himself. So, he died when she was quite young. So, I'm aware of this poet through being with Vivienne and her family. Her mother is also a poet and then she remarried this guy who was a physicist. [00:13:20]

Her stepfather and I always had, I probably told you this story. He had a yacht and so in the summers, one summer, he wanted to revarnish. Right? So, he took me under his wing. He's this funny, old, retired professor. He showed me how to varnish. He would help me and then he would go inside the yacht and just take a nap and smoke a cigarette or smoke a cigar and take a nap. You know, I'm out there in the blazing sun, varnishing, varnishing, varnishing and then after he would wake up and I would have done, gone around the entire thing. It took a bit of time because you just stood over and lacquer, lacquer, lacquer. Many layers because of the salt. Then we would go get sandwiches. He would talk about life. This is the guy. He was at school when Einstein was there, so he had these great stories. Me, being what, 24? I would just listen to these stories. You've got her mom, the poet talking about people. Then you have her husband. So, at that age and then being with her daughter over.

THERAPIST: In Amherst?

CLIENT: Yeah. [00:15:00]

THERAPIST: Where is that?

CLIENT: Right at the intersection of this really great, fantastic building. Right across from the Baptist Church that has the red door. Now, there's the single off campus freshman dorm. It's beautiful. There are rounded turrets. Yeah. So, we lived there.

THERAPIST: It's right by my old building.

CLIENT: Yes, it is. Right behind it. In fact, we would go to that seafood restaurant.

THERAPIST: She lived in that, you guys lived in that building?

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Yeah. I know that building.

CLIENT: She was in to Van Morrison. She was bi-polar. She, like, it felt, I felt like it was good to be someone who wrote. She wrote. She valued writing. She came from parents who wrote. It turned me on. She, this is his second wife. His first wife killed herself by slitting her wrists all over this book that he was writing. Just bled out all over his manuscript.

THERAPIST: Whoa. [00:16:30]

CLIENT: Yeah. You know, he was much older when he married her. So, I'm looking at this grave. I'm aware of this history. I'm aware of the fact that she committed suicide. Somehow I like the poetry of a female poet. I don't know him well. In high school you know something about a female poet. Writing a poem in a class. Of course, Katie and her sisters. Anyway. Somehow you think he's maybe a happy guy because his poetry is interesting and everything's always lower case and he creates his own words, so he must be this interesting and sort of fun guy. I'm thinking no, it's this confessional. It's like oh. She killed herself. So, just sort of just being aware of that. [00:17:45]

So, it's a sunny day and I've got my bike with me and I start looking at her for all of two minutes. I pedaled off. So, that was a few days ago. Then, I thought well, I will go home. Right? So, yesterday I thought you know I should actually read a female poets, so I hunt around and read about both of them. Then I go to this poetry site and they have audio from all these great poets. So, I was listening to a female poet and after having read a bunch of poetry and also not really feeling it. I'm thinking I know these are random, but I'm not really feeling it, which I was. Then I listened to him speak and that's not how I expected him to talk. It's sort of this, in that classic. You know the actor's spoke that sort of stilted English in the 1930's films? It's not British, but it's not quite. [00:19:00]

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah.

CLIENT: It's that. That voice. It's that voice. Very mannered and dramatic in reading these poems of I think of it possibly being of some whimsy when it's not a whimsical poem. I listen to this and I am thinking that's not how I think of him, but his voice and these are his poems. Anyway. She's this beautiful woman and that's her voice. I'm aware of the fact that she, you know, went and put on her coat and got in the car in the garage and turned it on and killed herself. That's it. She was 46. So, I was listening to her. It's this poem about her mom, her own child. It's just complicated relationships and suggested abuse and it's dark and I thought this is why I don't read much poetry. This is why I can't do it. That is why I don't write like I used to. I don't want to be in that space. I do not want to be in that space. I don't want to read it. I don't want to write it. I don't want it. [00:20:45]

Anyway, and I thought, you know, both of these people, I am not sure how happy they were and she was clearly not happy. I mean clearly not happy. The female poet, I don't know. He doesn't strike me as some who was. I thought, you know, so here they are. They're in the ground. People in life are after something. They had these rich lives. Intellectual lives and we're wanting very much to communicate something. [00:21:45]

I thought not written as much and I'm not like they are in the sense of being, you know, but I know what it means to be in that interior space and to write and to take it seriously in to read. I take it seriously. I thought but I can't be in that space and so like there's a sense of whatever buoyancy there is, I want to hold on to it in some way. I don't want to be someone who is endlessly struggling like Anne Sexton. Even though what she has written is good. Good in the sense that it expresses what she is feeling. It's not good in the sense of making you feel better about things. Not at all.

THERAPIST: She's communicating the struggle. [00:22:45]

CLIENT: Absolutely.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: So, yesterday I was just feeling glum. I was just feeling glum. I was reading this. It's this nice day out and I'm reading this and I'm listening to them. I'm thinking, you know, I'm aware of the fact that I have boxes and boxes and boxes of books in the basement and that's completely symbolic as well as literally true.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Anyway. So, yesterday after looking at her grave for two days or whatever it was, I know another writer is buried there, so I sort of again, not wanting to work too hard and I want to acknowledge the people who are nearby because I don't want to be one of those people who is like ignoring everything around and seeking out this one thing. It's like no, I just want a generally area and I will discover that entire region and at some point I will see his grave. Whatever that means. [00:24:00]

So, then before, I look around the area. I don't find it. I'm not working too hard. Yesterday I'm reading female poets. Then I read about the male author. I'm like Jesus, there is another miserable person. I knew that. I knew that, but then I was reading I'm like God damn. These people are just miserable. You know? He wrote all this stuff that is about people's flaws. It was so good. He won many Pulitzers and he won Nobel Prize. So, that's laudable. I mean by definition it's laudable. [00:25:15]

Anyway, so I read it and his kids are all messed up and he's depressed. I have not found the grave yet. So, this morning, I'm in the bathroom and I'm looking out the window, and from the bathroom window, I can see this statue of this woman who is in this sort of Greek or Roman gown. It was pretty prominent.

THERAPIST: This is in?

CLIENT: In the cemetery from my bathroom window I can see the statue. I'm looking at the stones nearby, so I thought I wonder who that is. Maybe I will go discover that. So, I took a picture from the bathroom window of that so I will go find that so at least I know what I am looking at and I will find the name so at least I can, when I am looking at it, I think it would be a shame to look at something and not know who it really is. I mean I have to show some respect in the sense of taking it seriously for a moment and remembering the names if you are going to see it every day. [00:26:30]

So, I go over there and I ride around and I go to that statue of this woman and I am looking at it. I'm looking for the names. Then I look behind and I see the writer. So, now I go back. I can see my bathroom from the writer's grave.

THERAPIST: Wow.

CLIENT: So, I go back after my ride.

THERAPIST: So, the statue is where?

CLIENT: No, it's just another grave. It's the front. It's in front of this. So, I go back to the bathroom and I look and it's like oh, it's him.

THERAPIST: So, you can see the writer from the bathroom?

CLIENT: Yeah. Again, you know, I looked at the stone. He was born in 1888. It's sort of like he wrote all this great stuff but yet his life was one of great turmoil. Yet, but these people are celebrated because of their work. Their lives, their actual lives. Anyway, it's one of those interesting things of like who is buried near him? Who is buried elsewhere? Because they are in that cemetery they had some means, so I mean clearly they were, in terms of society, they were there. [00:28:00]

Yet, like, were people buried nearby also people who wrote, but also found some happiness and because of that balance and perhaps not quite that level of pain and genius didn't become celebrated and yet they were able to know something that these others couldn't? They would have given up the fame or the renowned to have some happiness. So, I don't know. You can't help but be contemplative as you wander around. I also feel in this somber, it's somber. So, now I feel like. Like, today I got back from the ride and my next door neighbor, her name is Erin, she goes by Erin. I told her, I said there's this sense of going there and spending time and doing it every day. She said yes, my parents and I were just talking about this. She said we walk through there every day as well, but it's like a park, but there is something reflective about it. I said yeah, but it's not, it's more than that. It's more than just being reflective. [00:29:30]

I mean on one hand, there's the sense of me being a cyclist and seeking out the hills and just being this is a work out and being aware of the stones. Then there's another part of me that when I slow down and I think I'm going to go roam around in this area. So, then you're in a good head space, so your heart rate is up. Which probably countervails the negative because there is some adrenaline.

THERAPIST: It's the heartbeat.

CLIENT: Right. Yeah. So, now, it's like, there's a feeling of like okay, I go beyond the cemetery. I can cut through it or I can go around it. I can actually go through the cemetery. On the other side it's Woodland Hills. There's the Woodland Hills Zoo. There's the Woodland Hills golf course and that's I'm sure just as nice to ride around in, but it's not graves. It's not graves. It's people playing golf. It's people going to the zoo. [00:30:45]

In either event, when you're riding a bike, you are observing because I don't want to be riding where I walk I can fill this in. Cemetery when I'm bicycling around. Walking, I find that to be disrespectful, so I don't. So, it's unusual that I would because usually I'm listening to the radio at home. In silence, that is another level, it's actually quiet.

THERAPIST: Listening to something else, yeah.

CLIENT: So, I thought, so today I thought do I want to avoid the cemetery for a bit because it's sort of doing a thing for me? I'm really getting kind of under, really feeling tired and bummed out or do I want to go to Woodland Hills or do I want to do what Barbara does and as I have done many times just go on walks? Just walk the bike through the cemetery so I don't have to worry about the cars and then just go throughout the arboretum which is not the golf course. It's not bordering the ghetto where everyone gets shot. Woodland Hills separates a nice area from a very bad area. [00:32:00]

THERAPIST: Which is it still, is it still?

CLIENT: No, it not. There's housing projects.

THERAPIST: Just on the other side. Yeah.

CLIENT: So, I go to the arboretum. So, in that case, you're aware of being in arboretum in the sense that the trees are there on purpose. It's a museum of trees. It's beautiful, but it's a museum of trees. So, it's weird because everything is on purpose. That's the thing, right? It's not like cruising through New Hampshire or whatever sort of like country roads. No. There's a cemetery which is highly organized. There is a golf course that is organized and active. There's a zoo, organized. There's an arboretum, organized. Right? [00:33:00]

Then, in the midst of it, there's a city. If I think past Riverside, I can go to well, you pass the cemetery. I can go to Radio Shack or I can go to Nathan's for its amazing hot dogs, which I have only had one and that was on the day I voted for Obama. I thought I'm celebrating a hot dog after voting.

THERAPIST: Nathan's?

CLIENT: Nathan's. It's one of the world's largest hot dog or longest or something or whatever. Of course it is, right? They all are. That's the big sign. It is a hell of a hot dog. So, there is a sense of you know, that's this idea of like, you know, last time I talked to you about it or maybe the time before, this film takes the cherry. It's this guy who is in the midst of death and yet he's the kind of person that he actually likes the taste of cherries. [00:34:00]

THERAPIST: He was up in the tree or something.

CLIENT: He was up in the tree. Then there's Nathan's. Talking about real life versus the serious.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: There's that element of like sitting in the parking lot between ATM. Everyone's black because all of a sudden it's (inaudible). People are in line getting hot dogs or going to the grocery store where there is no recognizable brand name which is odd. So, people going there to get groceries. There's just this big tarmac. It's just hot. There's no grass. There's nothing. Then you simply go down the street a quarter of a mile and it's Riverside Cemetery. So, anyways, I'm sitting there, you know at that one time, eating a hot dog and it stands out to me because it was a hell of a hot dog. I was very happy to have voted for Obama. I thought this is such a really great thing. [00:35:10]

THERAPIST: A good day to be alive.

CLIENT: Yeah. A good day to be alive. So, today I'm feeling my usual feeling of like I'm broke. I'm avoiding getting work. I don't even know how to begin doing it. I need to. I need to do that because I can't not do it. So, that weighs on me and yet it's a nice day and I'm just profoundly tired and so I went on my bike ride today to discover the writer and I can also see through the bathroom window is this big statue of Saint Francis of Assisi and I'm reading this book called "Trash Animals".

THERAPIST: What?

CLIENT: I'm reading this book called "Trash Animals". So, it was a long day. It's this book on animals that are considered well, pigeons and squirrels and snakes, symbolically. Animals that people just don't like. For instance, rats. Exactly. Or flies or mosquitoes. I had never heard of the term trash animals, but I read. That's the other thing. That's like another thing that was floating around in my brain. So, I see Francis Assisi, so I know I'm reading this book. Thesis right. There are these things that people don't like and yet no animal is a trash animal. So, I read this. [00:37:00]

It's just a cluster of essays. So, the one I read the other day after finding the writers, while waiting to go and teach. So, I'm sitting in the car and I read this. It's this woman who was raised in north Florida and where there are a lot of diamond back snakes. Diamond back rattle snakes. They are the longest rattle snake. They can be five feet long or longer. She talks about how when she lived in Oregon it was very strange to her that there were no poisonous snakes there. She couldn't get used to the idea that she didn't have to be careful when she was out in nature. So, now she's back in northern Florida and remarried and she's told her husband and her family not to kill snakes. [00:38:00]

They, when they are around snakes they want to get rid of them and she says no. So, she sort of worked out a bargain with the snake she says. That if she sees a rattle snake, she's not going to tell the family, but she's also going to tell the rattle snake stay hidden and don't bother them. She's also aware that a rattle snake could kill her family. She's extolling. She's talking about the reality of being the snake. The rattle snake. She talked about the mythology of snakes being linked to women. So, the past two days and also while looking at Sexton, I thought is this the case? So, now there's this link between snakes and women and she talks about it for a bit. She talks about the snake as being this thin creature between heaven and earth, right? The border. At the edge of air and earth. [00:39:10]

She talked about how on Halloween a few years ago she dressed up as Medusa. She had all these fishing lures that were snakes and she put them in to her hair, this wig and she realized no one wanted to look at her. Especially men. She said is that why Medusa turned men to stone because they could not look at her because of the snakes? She said could women look at her? She goes was Medusa lonely and did Medusa talk to the snakes? Did they give her advice because there's also this notion that Cassandra gained wisdom by going to a cave and a snake, in Greek mythology, snakes always speak the truth, the snake whispered in her ear all of this is true. So, Cassandra could always speak the truth, but she was cursed, but no one ever believed her. So, speak the truth, but no one would believe her. She was told the truth by the snake because snakes tell the truth which is not how I think of them. Sometimes it's actually between snakes and women. I think what is the connection? What is the connection? Then, like the past two days, since reading this, I'm looking at every woman I see. [00:40:30]

I'm not thinking well, women do have smaller chins and therefore the eyes seem bigger and wider from estrogen and also just having a smaller chin, right? So, thinking men versus women. Women's heads, maybe. Just the configuration of the face with higher cheekbones and bigger eyes or sort of watching women walk. It's like okay, snakes are these rhythmic, curvy things and women walk and they're curvy. Is that the connection? So I keep looking at it. So, then she talks about I'm trying to wrap my brain around it. Well, thinking about the writers and so what was I going to say? And then... [00:41:30]

Oh. She said she goes there are studies that show that toddler girls are more afraid of snakes than toddler boys and there's this suggested that somehow because we come from Africa and there were lots of snakes we have this hard wired fear of snakes even though we went north where there were no snakes, but we still have that hardwired fear of snakes. We don't discriminate between poisonous snakes and the good snakes. We just see a snake and are afraid, but is that truly hardware? That is debatable. The study shows that toddler girls are more afraid of snakes than are toddler boys. With her take on that she said but is it that toddler girls, because they're girls, are able to discriminate facial expressions better than toddler boys? They see adults being afraid of snakes, so girls are reacting to the fear that they see in people. Where boys, perhaps, aren't seeing or aren't quite seeing it as clearly. [00:42:50]

So today this is going around in my brain. I'm reading about math. That's interesting. So, then we had the ceiling done. I said we, but Barbara, she pays for all of this. So, the ceiling is done and now we're waiting for it to dry so I can paint the ceiling.

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah.

CLIENT: My pen works. I'm not sitting down because he was putting it up because I was painting the ceiling. So, the ceiling's done. We have had people come out to look to remove all of these shrubs around the house. All these evergreens and we're contemplating taking out this rhododendron and then we have these giant trees that need to be dealt with.

THERAPIST: A lot of stuff. [00:44:00]

CLIENT: Yeah. So, this sense of like inside the house being dealt with. Outside the house being dealt with. Death across the street. Lives of turmoil of the three people who I have now thought about that are there.

THERAPIST: One thing that I just want to throw, put out there, is that I think it's very important like. Something that really stood out to me that is really important was this feeling of, this sense that it's kind of like entering in to the pain. Going in to that space of kind of pain and anguish and everything is somehow an avenue for some feeling of actually notoriety or importance and doing something that feels of substance in some way. Acknowledged as such too by the world and I was thinking how yet what it's also fraught with all this kind of do you enjoy life though if you enter in that space? What do you lose? Like you just lose so much. I was thinking about similar to the boxes in the basement. You open those up and you get contact with something important about yourself, but also, I was thinking is it going to kind of keep you trapped in that so you can't enjoy it? [00:45:45]

Enjoy it like the other side of life. The hot dog eating. There is some kind of, that realm to you has always represented something that can really engross you and kind of lock you in to something very painful and keep you from some other side of life that you really want to enjoy and yet you feel on the other hand being outside of it is missing something about what is in those boxes. Something important. So, if it's like the two. Kind of like we were talking about, way back when we were talking about moving and doing math and moving, were difficult to kind of go together. I was thinking so are those two things. It's not easy for you to kind of transition in and out of those spaces, just like those writers. It's like this sense that they were trapped in that. They did not take life with any kind of sense of whimsy or enjoyment. They were just talking from their pain and they were stuck in that. Yeah, it got them some feeling of substance and notoriety and whatever, but that was important. They did something substantial. [00:47:00]

CLIENT: But what is it? This is the thing. What is it that they did? I mean in the sense that whatever they wrote spoke to people because that is how they got their fame.

THERAPIST: Yes.

CLIENT: The thing is I just read this, well, you know a lot of it whatever. It doesn't matter. People are random. It's depressing.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I mean two poets who I like. I don't know what it is. Polish in translation. But or Bakowski. Okay, yeah, yeah, you read it when you're 19 years old drinking a beer. Great. I like Bakowski. Right? Of course. It's honest. It speaks to a life that a lot of us don't really have. It's the idea of sort of like fuck it and just like do what you want. There's something in that sort of Jewish sense that like getting earthy. It's sort of like how Bakowski seems as opposed to I don't know an Irish Catholic. Then he went to France and didn't seem happy there either. [00:48:50]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I think of my grandfather. Right? A female poet was an ambulance driver, as was my grandfather in World War I as a medic. Command drivers. Right. Pacifists all. Right? You know, my grandfather wrote and I liked what he wrote. I didn't read all of it, but what I did find is very interesting.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Thinking he went on and that's the thing right. He wrote. He thought about philosophy, but then he became a doctor and did good. Yeah. My grandma never really talked about in a real warm way, but talked about how much of an energetic guy he was and wanted to always go to the desert. He always wanted to go to Spain. Like, had this restlessness about him. Restless. Restless. Restless. [00:50:00]

But, you know, a surgeon and made house calls and saved people's lives. So at some point writing and writing and putting it aside that actually helps real people. Not that writing doesn't. Of course it does and that's why people leave rocks at A female poet grave if they genuinely, actually read. Sometimes people are just sort of like oh, wow, there's a rock there. If they really, truly liked his poetry, if he really truly speaks to them, good. I don't know.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: I mean it must speak to people.

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah.

CLIENT: I mean it has to.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah. We better stop. [00:51:00]

CLIENT: I see it in the context of this and I think it depresses me. Because that cemetery is such an early Waltham thing, there are all these names. Everything is so familiar. You know, it's like a name for every county in Connecticut and every hall. Houses. Arboretum. It's just like all these very, very familiar names and you're just looking at it thinking who was that? Is that where it comes from? Is that why the streets are named that? All of these names. It's like the names of Waltham.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Yes.

THERAPIST: Alright. Next week.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: How's the back?

CLIENT: Oh, yeah. I think it's just bicycle riding. I think it's just being bent over a bit.

THERAPIST: See you.

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