TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: So I was looking at a bunch of math books. I was leaving. They have new books. So a new book is Perversion: A Lacanian (ph) Psychoanalytic Approach and the title of the book is very suggestive.

THERAPIST: Can I see it? (LAUGHTER) This was at the library?

CLIENT: Yeah. Academy.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay. You were looking for math stuff. That's interesting. Yeah. She's... There's somebody else at Ducaine (ph) that's really into electronic spending. She must be like a colleague or something. That's interesting. [00:01:09]

CLIENT: In previous readings, a guy named Stohler (ph) that always pops up.

THERAPIST: Oh Robert Stoller (ph).

CLIENT: But he died. I want to say he died in a car accident.

THERAPIST: Oh. Is that right? I'm thinking of Bob Stolera (ph). Stohler has another name though. She worked with... I think he directed her doctoral dissertation. Interesting. (PAUSE) Interesting there.

(PAUSE) [00:02:00]

THERAPIST: That looks good.

CLIENT: Well, what do you think? (LAUGHTER) Well, so it's been awhile since I've read anything dense in this field. So last time we were talking somehow one of the fantasies might have been that, one of the fantasies might have been like reading a lot of math would build up the sort of level of abstraction in the ability to organize. So if I read something like this, I would be able to keep it at some distance and also just be able to look at it logically. But I think it's true. After having been immersed in math for so long and also seeing a library and actually looking at, you know, looking at algebra for forty five minutes and thinking about it and on the way out seeing this book. I picked it up, you know, to start reading. [00:03:09]

There's a sense of like okay, alright, just... I remember how jarring and dense it is and the end there's a certain stilted, there's a certain stilted tone sometimes where so far as you have to use French and German because those are, that's the terminology. But in the opening page, talking about Lacan's and thinking, well, works is a perfectly good synonym. [00:04:11]

THERAPIST: (LAUGHTER)

CLIENT: Now... But she's going to use that word which is interesting to me. Perfectly fine word to use but not the word that perhaps a math professor would use. Anyways, so... I don't know. Again, I've only spent ten minutes with the books and sort of, you know, couriered around here and there just seen things, you know, Robert Stoller, that's him. I remember reading something by him that had some sort of... I remember thinking surely he died. [00:05:01]

Anyway, so immediately one comes across just the... This is sort of the... I suppose the (inaudible at 00:05:19) thing to do by the peculiar spelling of things like mother, lowercase "m" capital "o." So you want to combine those two notions and the other terms of some structure and mother (inaudible at 00:05:39) I don't know. But just this notion of trying to create a new vocabulary. Unless you are initiated, forget about it.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Right.

CLIENT: So somehow I thought this would be in my name but I realized that it might be just so utterly depressing trying to make sense of. [00:06:03]

THERAPIST: Depressing. Yeah.

CLIENT: Well, in the sense that her really have to, you have to... (PAUSE) There's something... (PAUSE) (SIGH) It's easy, I think, on one hand to feel like it is the kernel of something and yet at the same time, there's some sort of essential dynamic. Right? Yet on the other there's a sense of because it's not rooted in anything seemingly objectively real, it is simultaneously extraordinarily abstract. [00:07:01]

Because you're always talking about the subjectivity of a patient and then the interpretation of it and when that's combined with this sort of stilted language, it has the sense of... (PAUSE) It has the sense of being quite removed, meaning the author is not actually connected to the topic, not connected to an actual patient, not someone who is going to watch The Simpsons and just sort of laugh and relax and drink a beer. That's not the tone. The tone is looking at subjects and staying in that world non stop and I think that there's truth in that because I think that one can just... [00:08:09]

I don't know. Maybe it was just me. But there's that... You're on a quest to find answers and you read to find and then you look at the footnotes and find more books and then you just read and you read and you read and you get to be removed from things a bit. Math can do that for sure. But there's always something grounding in it because you can always come back to something simpler which is verifiable and it's... So if it gets too complex you can sort of drop it down a notch and think more simply which is clearly true. Whereas this...

(PAUSE) [00:09:00]

CLIENT: I don't know. It lacks a certain friendliness, I suppose. But again, I've only looked at it for ten minutes.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Well, that's the kind of consistent knock on Laconians (ph) is that they're very removed and overly cerebral to the point where you don't really feel above a living breathing person. (inaudible at 00:09:37)

CLIENT: Yeah. There's something almost... (PAUSE) Since she creates words... I mean, what's the conflation of eviscerated and sociopathic? [00:10:01]

A sense of it's gutless. A sense that there isn't a real connection there and it's been removed.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: You're right. It's just... It's almost...

THERAPIST: Really distant.

CLIENT: Distant. Yeah. Distant's the word.

THERAPIST: Interesting.

CLIENT: It's ironic because the discussion is on... (PAUSE) It's on sexuality and connecting... (PAUSE) Well, if you think of perversion, you think of something that's not being satisfying and something that's perhaps repetitive and something that is inexplicable perhaps to the person who has these behaviors and thoughts and orientations. [00:11:07]

At the touchstone would seem to be... The touchstone would look like this. Again, I've not read it. But the touchstone should be... Well, what is the ideal notion of how people connect and then distinguish it from the deviation. Whereas this, it's unclear... (PAUSE) I guess I shouldn't... Without having read it, I shouldn't jump on... I feel like it's my immediate feeling toward this and just the writing style as opposed to I think... [00:12:09]

Who did I used to read a lot? Rieff (ph)? Who wrote on it? R-I-E-F-F. Did something very humane and very, just in the writing, there's something very connected. You feel like they get it. Even if I don't fully get it, this person's a very warm and thinking person who is very well spoken.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Anyway, so...

(CROSSTALK)

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah.

CLIENT: Somehow like they're behind the glass out of reach.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah, yeah. [00:12:57]

CLIENT: Yet, of extraordinary interest, so much so the person spends I'm sure a couple years of one's life creating such a book and the hyphenated words and slash or and the... I don't know. It's like all kinds of things are in quotes adaptively and helpfully. It's like one of the scare (ph) quotes? I don't know.

THERAPIST: What are the... What's that?

CLIENT: Well, just like as if the English language is not sufficient. Normal standard English and using a robust vocabulary somehow fails this author so that words have to be in scare quotes are hyphenated or using backslashes, forward slashes or... [00:14:07]

THERAPIST: But it can take on a very kind of haughty kind of...

CLIENT: Haughty's the word.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

(CROSSTALK)

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: They're feeling utterly engaged in this that it's as if it's... I'm not sure if the intention of it... I'm not sure who it's helping. I'm not sure that the audience of the similarly minded people who are no doubt either going to agree nearly completely or be radically opposed to it and would be giving it some sort of... This will be the topic of some sort of polarization for in a very small realm. [00:15:07]

You know, it was sort of a topic for diatribes and friction and anger towards and angry letters and...

Maybe it's a worthy topic. I don't know.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah. But, yeah, the writing and the kind of the attitude it's a lot, the attitude of the writer, yeah. I mean, reading the... I don't know if she's like that or this is kind of the impression but it's a kind of a... There's a quality of neutrality or objectivism or something like that objectivity I guess.

CLIENT: Yeah, that's exactly... Yes.

THERAPIST: But it's anything but neutral. [00:16:07]

CLIENT: Interesting. Yeah. Well said. Hmm...

THERAPIST: Yeah. (PAUSE) Yeah.

(PAUSE) [00:16:59]

CLIENT: Well my next door neighbor died and his name's Darryl. His wife is Matilda. They live to our right and he's in his sixties and she's fifties and... So he had been on oxygen for a long time, as long as I've known him. He has COPD and then he was in the hospital. I didn't know it was this serious and... So I went to the funeral on Saturday and I was prepared to speak because I did not know her social network and I thought if there are very few people here, I will stand up and talk. It turns out there were a ton of people and... Because... I mean, he lived next to me. You don't know if they're... You don't know their social network. [00:18:07]

Although I guess being to my left, there was a black family and, you know, there were people coming in all the time. (inaudible at 00:18:19) They were always going off to church and people are coming from church and you can tell that they're really connected. They have a little station wagon and home health care worker would come once a week and they'd sit on the porch when it was nice during the summer. So I really enjoyed talking to both of them and he, he was very precise and he very thin, ponytail, had the oxygen can. [00:19:05]

So he was an architect and... Anyway, so people who spoke, several of them were architects and talked about when a detail needed to be figured out and researched Darryl was the guy and I appreciate that. Right? A sense of a single material that's very important, a material needs to be worked with for a certain structure and he could think about that. So Greg (ph) and I were working in the back building this rock garden, not a rock garden but we wanted this sort of... So in the grass we wanted to cut out an area and fill it with stone dust and rock so that it would be heavy walked upon and pounded down so eventually you'd have this rock look and have a modern table on it and barbeque and so forth. [00:20:15]

So Darryl leaned over the fence. He wasn't violable at all but he was watching this and he'd say, "You might want to have it on a bit of a slope." He goes, "Just a two degree slope because you need it to be able to drain." He said, "You put the plastic down, fold it over to make a seam so that it won't just be overlapping to actual fold it and pat it down." [00:21:03]

He asked, "What kind of rock are you going to use?" He was very interested. Of course he's got the time because he wasn't working and his... You know? Because of his inability to breathe well. So he would just watch and then he said, "So, you know, are you going to have a truck deliver all the rock?" (inaudible at 00:21:29) "Greg has a station wagon. I have a station wagon. We're just going to fill up the back." He goes, "Think about square footage." He said, "I don't think your cars are big enough because it's going to weigh a lot." So anyway, I said, "Oh, we'll figure it out. We'll just play it by ear." Meanwhile, I'm appreciating this because I want it to be done right. So we go off and we find our rock, we find out stone dust and we come back and of course the cars are sagging and it's dangerous. We come back and just like, you know, these forty pound bags just many, many, many of them, you know, going back to the backyard, back to the backyard, back to the backyard. [00:22:15]

Pouring them all up, patting them down and realizing that two station wagons full of rock really only raised the level a half an inch. It was nothing. It was absolutely nothing. So I was just realizing we need a ton. We need really truly a ton of rock and stone dust to make this happen and so Greg and I are trying to figure out another solution to this expensive and... You know, so there's Darryl sort of observing and wanting it to be done right and it's...

THERAPIST: Yeah. [00:22:55]

CLIENT: Anyway, so architects talking about how it can be frustrating Darryl's level of detail and how things have to be perfect and then so in the letter at the end that someone went for Matilda and they showed this beautiful letter. She said, "Yeah." She goes, "Darryl," I'm paraphrasing, of course, "Darryl could be mad at me at times and I know that it can be taxing on other people. It was taxing on me. I know that the balconies and the porches on our triple decker are the most beautiful and also the strongest and the most expensive." (LAUGHTER) It's like, yeah. It took forever to make these things and of course Darryl was out there. Anyway, but the story I find, I found very touching was an architect... They wanted to build the library. [00:24:05]

So they were looking for an architect and so people who were showing the plans showed other similar large scale buildings that they had done on the scale of the library. Darryl showed his plans for this restaurant, small little mud and brick restaurant that he designed. The architect said that they hired him on the spot, said of all the things that I could have seen just the simple, simple beautiful little restaurant, he showed me that.

THERAPIST: But it sounds like even down to observing you and Greg, it's all a labor of love. [00:25:05]

I mean, actually I'm thinking in contrast to the book fair, the perversion book where there's not quite that feeling is there? A kind of feeling of...

CLIENT: Yeah. It's interesting. Yeah. I mean, easily connected with a place where people are going to meet and connect and it's full of life. So after the funeral and I... We neighbors are planning on going. He designed this restaurant.

THERAPIST: The building or the...

CLIENT: Well, this restaurant.

THERAPIST: Really? Wow.

CLIENT: Okay. So Matilda said we're all going to go there and she said, "If you can't go today, sometime do go because of all the things he designed here, that was his favorite." Anyway, she said, "I think if you go, you'll feel Darryl there." I had no idea what he... I knew he was an architect but I had no idea what he designed.

(PAUSE) [00:27:00]

CLIENT: (inaudible at 00:27:09) lived in New York, lived in San Francisco, lived in New York. In the summertime he had a big sort of summer wide brimmed hat and in the winter it was a knit hat and then so he was buried in the knit hat. So, you know, seeing him lying in the casket... Because he always looked, you know, not dressed up in a suit but, you know, just sort of blue denim button down shirt and an ascot in his knit hat and... So the story about this knit hat how he ordered it from Central America but he wanted it sent to this little tiny town in Wyoming because that was where he was visiting. [00:28:03]

Like he was at some sort of class reunion and he was really, really worried if the hat was going to arrive on time. So it's this lovely detail of the hat that had come from this particular place where he had been and it had to get to this small town in Wyoming which had probably never received anything from this country. (PAUSE) So Matilda is a social worker and her specialty is hoarding.

THERAPIST: Oh, yeah, yeah. You've talked about it. I remember you talking about it.

CLIENT: At the very end after, you know, a very moving celebration of life... I hadn't been to any, very few funerals. So I didn't know what to expect. [00:29:07]

So at the very end, she stood up and she's so graceful. She stood up and she just had this very just easy look on her face and she said, "Thank you all for coming." She said, "I think everything that was said will make Darryl very, very proud," and she said, "You know, I lead groups for a living." She said, "At the end of the group, I always ask if there are any burning issues." She said, "So you've been together now for an hour and a half. Are there any burning issues?" She looked around and she goes, "Going once. Going twice. Going three times." She goes, "That's a wrap. We're done. Thanks for coming." [00:29:59]

It's like what a class act. You know, I think so... I can see into the house. We can see each other, you know, in the evening because she doesn't pull her shades and we don't pull ours. So I see them lying on the couch and she sees us lying on the couch and there's a real intimacy there. So maybe it's her thinking she's going to come home after this and she's going to walk into an empty house. I know it's really over. I'm looking in, all these flowers on the dining room table. The TV's on but I couldn't see what they were watching because she had the thin blinds, not the blinds but the thin curtains were obscuring it whereas Darryl, those aren't pulled so I could see whether... He's usually watching History Channel or...

(PAUSE) [00:31:00]

CLIENT: Anyway, so I was watching her, this concern, would she be alright? Anyway, so yes in contrast a text like this versus Darryl who made spaces for people and Matilda who dives in people's lives and deals with hoarding and is just... They both have traveled and traveled and traveled. (PAUSE) Her seeming okay. [00:32:01]

And I talked to Barbara (ph) about this and Barbara says, "She's..." Matilda is no fool. She knows that Darryl wasn't well (inaudible at 00:32:11) she knew this was going to happen and so she'll be alright. She works, you know, at hospitals and she knows what's up. She'll be alright. That feeling like... I was like, "Yeah. I hope that's the case but the certainty with which Barbara said it. Like she'll be fine. Not, not, not dismissive. I mean, she is concerned. But in the sense that Matilda will have seen it coming and she's tough and she'll be alright and... [00:33:09]

Then something else came up not related to that, something else and I looked at her and I said, "You are the most unsentimental person I've ever met." She said, "Well..." She said, "I'm not... It's not that I'm not sentimental. It's just that I can't afford to be." She said, "People die all the time." It's true in intensive care.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: So it's like yeah. I know that about her.

THERAPIST: Yeah. [00:33:57]

CLIENT: Anyway, so, what is all this... I feel like... So last night something peculiar happened. So she received this gift from Stephanie (ph) and it's these two soft... You know, sort of like these pilates balls that you do crunches on, different versions? She got these little tiny ones.

THERAPIST: Okay.

CLIENT: So she... What they're meant for is reducing stress. So you lie down on a yoga mat and you put one behind your neck and it helps relieve tension in you neck or you put it behind your lower back or whatever, these two balls. So she is lying on the phone with me on the floor. Right? I'm watching the game and she's lying there and she doing yoga as usual and so I take the blanket that we usually put over ourselves on the couch and I just drape it over her to warm her while she's lying there. [00:34:59]

So there she is just perfectly flat, perfectly at ease with a blanket over her and yet there's the window and there's Matilda and just a day prior I saw Darryl lying in a coffin and looking down at him in this state of complete calm looking like she's in this...

THERAPIST: Corpse pose.

CLIENT: Corpse pose. Exactly. But not, right? A corpse pose would be like this. Right? But she has her hands like this, a blanket is over her, is perfectly calm, under her head so it's just the right angle and all the time it's like when I go to bed at night, whatever's going on all day long, more often than not, when I get into bed, I feel like my... I know I've said this before. [00:36:05]

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: But it's that sense of time passing and what is real and what am I doing and not doing and... (PAUSE) I don't know. So, you know, what do I do? I have the radio with my speaker in my pillow. So what do I do? You know, I immediately put the EI (ph) app on demand and so I don't have to deal with commercials and I will put on, you know, various segments from the day since I (inaudible at 00:36:53) I catch up on EI without commercials. [00:37:01]

Last night I couldn't sleep, couldn't sleep, couldn't sleep, couldn't sleep. So I get up to take a Benadryl, thinking that'll knock me out but at a price because then the next day I'll feel groggy. It's like I can't stay up forever. So I'm lying there on the couch thinking, "Well, I can read a book or I can finish, you know, continue reading The Great Gatsby," which I'm reading or I can study math. But I thought, "You can study math to go to sleep because then it ruins it." So I'm like, "Well, I'll just lie on the couch." I was watching NFL network and they were just going over and over and over whether (inaudible at 00:37:39) should've been playing or Shanahan (ph) should have pulled him or Shanahan is a jerk. You know, just this thing. Go to ESPN saying the same thing. so finally I go to TLC, I think it's TLC, and watch an episode which I've never seen before of Honey Boo Boo. I don't know if you know Honey Boo Boo. [00:38:03]

THERAPIST: Yeah, I've heard of it.

CLIENT: Well, the girl...

THERAPIST: The little girl?

CLIENT: They're all just big. They're just these... (PAUSE) They're just all really big and it's in some little town in Georgia, I think and it was a Halloween episode so they were going to get dressed up and go trick or treating. So I was lying there watching this and being amused by it and watching them without the feeling of too much effort because I thought, you know, what they are is honest. That's what they are. They're just... I mean, talk about no pretense. (LAUGHTER) [00:38:57]

(CROSSTALK)

CLIENT: That's right. That's right. Yet, it's very real. So this guy, the father, I don't know what his disability is. I'm new to the show as of last night. For some reason he couldn't get off the couch and when he did stand up he was like four foot tall. When he was sitting down he looked like a normal sized person. So he got Mama Bear, that's her name, this Marilyn Monroe dress for Halloween and all the kids are sort of watching. "Mom, your tan lines are bad. You shouldn't wear that dress. You've got three different colored skin." He's sitting there, "Oh, she looks good. Your mom looks real good." I'm watching this thinking, man, it's really like... [00:40:01]

Shakespeare wrote it's always at two levels. Right? There was the low end stuff that made the cheap seats laugh and then the high end stuff that was poignant and some people didn't get. So looking at this thinking, you know, its not the sort of show that would be put out there for like best parenting practices or it's not for the Whole Foods crowd because last night in fact, Honey Boo Boo filled up a giant glass container with three jars of mayonnaise because her mom's afraid of mayonnaise. She was throwing mayonnaise around. Mayonnaise is going everywhere, spilling everywhere. [00:41:05]

It's spilling everywhere. You don't see it getting cleaned up and the house does look like it gets cleaned up. But it's like they're really uninhibited about it. "Mom's afraid of mayonnaise. Let's just freak her out." It's reality TV in a sort of goofy way. Not concerned about diet, unashamed about their lack of activity. They get stuck in a corn maze because they go out to a corn maze and it's just fart jokes and then she has to pee and then she's like, "I can get out of the corn maze to go to the bathroom," so she sneaks in the corn and pees and then all the girls are laughing about how she had to drip dry. It's sort of like nothing censored which is refreshing to see that. That's the appeal of the show.

(PAUSE) [00:42:00]

CLIENT: The house is right on a... I mean, right... It's literally on like thirty feet, whatever the zoning would be in Georgia, as close as the house can be to the railroad track. So these massive trains, right? Not commuter trains but freight trains come zipping by, you know, they're just all sitting on the couch as they often are. They're scream, "Train!" Then it just goes by forever, you know, because the length of the train. It's just many times per week they shout it out to state the obvious. Anyway, so I think of my own family, I guess. Right? I mean, in a sense, just that, not going home for the holidays. I'm having that sense of just you can really... It takes me awhile, in a way, but you kind of let down your guard and just sort of say whatever. [00:43:07]

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: You know? I'm always being funny... My sister always being funny and my dad always being, on the surface, a curmudgeon of sorts and yet... Not part of that my mom and sister dynamic but connected.

THERAPIST: Yeah. Yeah.

CLIENT: And then the three dogs and Katie's (ph) just sort of the wild card.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah, huh.

CLIENT: Anyway, so without precept...

THERAPIST: That neutrality without the...

CLIENT: Yeah. You can just... You can have biases and you can sort of state it. [00:43:57]

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

CLIENT: And not in any... Nothing's ever mean spirited but where people are exacerbated people don't go back.

THERAPIST: Huh.

(PAUSE)

CLIENT: My sister just being ever so funny.

THERAPIST: Your sister (inaudible at 00:44:31)

(PAUSE)

CLIENT: So I don't know.

THERAPIST: Lot of sentimentality there that's...

CLIENT: Yeah. I don't know. So while I'm getting in bed at night, I'm aware of... Maybe I'm able... I'm thinking about this more. Maybe the holidays naturally brings it out and it's always there, a sense of being far away from where I come from and who I really am. [00:45:15]

You know? I mean... I'm not being fully real with Barbara (ph). I don't know. Not being fully engaged in my current life in some way. In some way, I mean, it's obviously real. Right? I mean, what do I do? I mean, I... You know, I teach very part time and I don't have any real traction and I look and think I couldn't see myself being like that if I lived in Arizona because I would be doing stuff. I would have some sort of role. [00:46:11]

I feel like what toll... I don't know. This is no excuse. I don't mean it's not. But I do wonder thinking what sort of psychic or whatever the word would be... What price has been paid by being so far away for so long? You know? To not on a daily basis be around my family. So in my mind, I think about this more often, thinking what would it be like to just move to Arizona? [00:47:09]

I think what would I be giving up here aside from Barbara clearly which sometimes doesn't occur to me.

THERAPIST: Huh.

CLIENT: It's more the sense of giving up the idea of here, the idea of things that I do. I'm not sure what it is I really do when, you know, a day like today. Go to Cavit (ph) and, you know, you can't go to Cavit Library if you're living in Arizona. Right?

THERAPIST: Right, right, right.

CLIENT: But...

THERAPIST: Something about...

CLIENT: Does that... I mean, does being able to study linear algebra or functional analysis really matter too much?

(PAUSE) [00:48:00]

CLIENT: I mean, you know, Darryl. Right? Darryl tried to spend a lot of time thinking about how things went together which is what I do as an (inaudible at 00:48:21) and... But he had Matilda and he had a son although his son was... Who knows family dynamics but everyone was saying positive things and I feel very positive towards Darryl and Matilda and after I went and had spoken very well about Darryl and humorously and the careful words and were saying it's the way, I suppose, you know, architects have some sort of way of looking at things and they craft words and they mean something to them [00:49:01]

So well spoken and his son gets up and says, "Well, thank you all for coming. I wasn't really close to Darryl."

THERAPIST: You said that?

CLIENT: He didn't really know him that well.

THERAPIST: Biological son.

CLIENT: Biological son.

THERAPIST: And raised by...

CLIENT: Well, so he was married before he married Matilda. So his son was raised by his biological mother but could not be more different from... I mean, Darryl is just very thin and this was before the lung... It was just... You see pictures and you just see this very thin guy with the beard, hippyish. Right? But well groomed. [00:50:01]

Very well maintained hippie. (PAUSE) I sort of like, sort of like the loss of those to (inaudible at 00:50:23) and dresses well taking sort of the best of his travels. That's Darryl. His son just not refined in that way, not careful... Who knows the dynamics? Who knows why a son... Who knows what. Anyway, Darryl was his father and so I think my goodness. I've mentioned this before. [00:50:57]

It's not like I, I'm consciously thinking about it and yet, I am aware thinking, "I am not married. I don't know what I really do in terms of career which baffles me." I don't... I don't have kids. Like how have I gotten to this place in life where all the benchmarks of normal development have seemingly been missed or delayed and I'm thinking, "Well, at some point you can't say 'someday.'" So, on one hand, you want to live the moment and be without judgment and think, "Well, every minute's a new minute. Today's a new day," and be content and do your best to... [00:52:11]

I think but what am I postponing? Certainly I'm not doing my best. Although doing my best in some ways but for a purpose. Right? I mean, intellectually I'm thinking about things and I feel like that's become sort of my purpose in a way. Anyway, so I think what would it be like to live in Arizona? What would I do? Who would I meet? What would I do? And then Barbara last night... She's looking at a house yesterday at a showing yesterday. [00:53:01]

We looked at a house (ph), perfect house, nice house. I'm surprised that she didn't really care for it. It's a great house. She says, "I want something new." She goes, "We have a place that's a hundred years old and we're looking for places that are a hundred years old. Even though it's all brand new, new windows it's still a hundred years old because it's Waltham." She's looking at a place in Cambridge (ph). She goes, "What about Cambridge?" I said, "Well, I mean, I've been to Cambridge a few times. I mean, there's... I mean, it's nice. It's upscale. She's looking at houses. She's like, "You get twice as much and it's new." She goes, "Well, what's it like to live in the suburbs?" I said, "I don't know. I mean, I guess I lived in the suburbs as a kid." I said, "I don't know. I don't have an opinion one way or the other. I feel like pros and cons." [00:53:57]

And Barbara goes like, "What does that mean?" I mean, in my brain, I'm thinking my next door neighbor spent like happy years at nineteen when she was next to twenty one when she was at a very progressive neighborhood. There's Cambridge and there's Arizona.

(PAUSE)

THERAPIST: It's one thing that's been kind of... One thing I've been hearing that you've been saying is that, is that there's something you really miss about, you know, seeing your family as if it's... It's not just seeing your family that's significant. [00:55:01]

Of course that's part of it. But also that it kind of gets you more in contact, back in contact with something very important inside of yourself, some important aspects of who you are. I was thinking how in being in Waltham, there is some, in moving away from your folks, there was a purpose behind that too an attempt to get some distance from them and part of kind of like your heritage or something, some way to kind of move, in a way to move away from them in a way that because it felt kind of limiting or trapping but there's a kind of way you feel also removed and removed and distanced from something inside of yourself at the same time. I was thinking in some way you're trying to... You don't want to lose one or the other. [00:55:59]

I was thinking in some way actually of Waltham and even I would say not completely but something about being like a med student or an MD or something would kind of be a way of escaping that kind of home life, that kind of home situation. But it also means that you're kind of abstract from something important inside of yourself too. I mean, it's a mixed back getting distance from that, from your family, getting some distance from your family and your roots in some way. They can both seem sort of limiting. Your connection with your family can somehow seem, at points in your life, like an escape from them, a good escape, a feeling of escape from all that. [00:57:11]

But, at the same time, it means you lose something important about you. I don't know if that hits any kind of (inaudible at 00:57:25) (PAUSE) We need to stop in just a minute or two.

(PAUSE) [00:58:00]

CLIENT: There's something... I'm thinking of two things sort of (inaudible at 00:58:37) There's the public self and the private self. I feel like just in a crude general way I feel like being in Waltham is more of my public self, more of my aspirational self. Whereas my private self is back there. Then just geographically. [00:59:01]

Like here, it's a big city and you always are a little bit on guard and there are lots of things that you really don't know. I mean, of all of the time we've spent there are many more buildings that I have not been in than I have been in and you walk by and there's that sense of I don't know what's in there. Small town, however, it's a sense of like I've got to get out of here but it's also nice thinking, "Oh, there's the building for the newspaper." That's it. There it is. That's where the newspaper is. There's the school. There's the library.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: It's not a system of libraries. That's it. That's the building. You walk in. There's the librarian. That's it. It's not like one of thirty libraries in Waltham. [01:00:01]

So the idea of being known and knowing in a small town, even if that small town symbolizes things you don't like and things you (inaudible at 01:00:15) it's the result of leaving. It is all these possible negatives. But if you remove all of that balancing, it's just... You can look at it perfectly positively and think, "Yeah. There's a single Starbucks and I know the guy behind the counter." It's not one of fifty Starbucks and the baristas are coming and going and you don't know your neighborhood. You sort of know your neighborhood. Arizona? The Starbucks? (inaudible at 01:00:57) The neighborhood is the city. They are one like. [01:01:05]

You know? There's one Walgreens. There's one CVS. There's one Taco Bell. There's one Kmart.

(PAUSE) [01:02:00]

CLIENT: (inaudible at 01:02:03)

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: People were very afraid of the first ferris wheel. There's that book Devil in the White City.

THERAPIST: Yeah.

CLIENT: Yeah. Chicago...

(CROSSTALK)

CLIENT: That's where they did do it. People were very frightened of the idea of getting on and then it was the greatest hit most people started getting on it.

THERAPIST: Huh.

CLIENT: I don't know. That's the... We can be afraid of things in life and then once you step on and you start going it's like, "Oh. It's okay."

THERAPIST: Yeah. [01:02:57]

CLIENT: And you can see things you never would have imagined. (PAUSE) Alright.

THERAPIST: Next week.

END TRANSCRIPT