TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO FILE:

BEGIN TRANSCRIPT:

CLIENT: How are you?

THERAPIST: I'm doing okay.

CLIENT: Would you like a sunflower for your two-day week?

THERAPIST: Sure.

CLIENT: (inaudible at 00:00:16) was a lot bigger.

THERAPIST: Whoa. Thank you.

CLIENT: I tried to get some of the (inaudible at 00:00:20).

THERAPIST: [Laughs]

CLIENT: [Laughs]

THERAPIST: Thanks! [Laughs]

CLIENT: They're really small. They're cute. I won't say (ph) any more.

THERAPIST: Okay. I'll put some water in there.

CLIENT: Okay.

(pause)

CLIENT: Water might be important.

THERAPIST: Yeah, yeah.

(pause)

[00:01:00]

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:01:02) maybe enough. (inaudible at 00:01:07)

(pause)

THERAPIST: Thanks.

CLIENT: I gave one to Morris...on Saturday night, and he wrote me this (inaudible at 00:01:44). He wrote me this long, (inaudible) (ph) e-mail (inaudible at 00:01:51) about...much I've impacted this weekend. [00:02:00] I think he had been-I think he had drank something, the way that the e-mail sounded. But both of us are usually pretty dramatic with how touched we are by each other. But his car had died and his wife, Ellen, was away.

Yeah, he made it seem like it was-it was really the last-at the last moment of hope that my sunflower came. It was very sweet.

But I wasn't eager to write back. Jeremy reminded me and urged me to write back. [00:03:00]

(pause)

CLIENT: Sometimes I don't...I feel like I don't like the person for a moment, as much, when they express how much I mean to them.

(pause)

CLIENT: Not always, but sometimes; like they aren't playing it cool or something.

(pause)

[00:04:00]

(pause)

CLIENT: So it would be a lot easier if you did that.

(pause)

CLIENT: Then I could have a moment of writing you off; and ignoring you. And then it would come back to some kind of better (ph) equal [at the end] (ph).

THERAPIST: I see. My instructions are pretty clear.

(pause)

CLIENT: Harvesting sunflowers is really...I don't know; it's just vivid. [00:05:11] (inaudible at 00:05:16) a vivid experience.

(pause)

CLIENT: We'll keep talking about it, even though you're not. The sunflowers are in a row, in rows, like everything on the farm. And they track the sun, so they're all facing the same direction. And they're huge. [00:06:01] And they get bigger and bigger as they age. Then their petals start falling off.

So while, as a whole, it looks like this homogenous, beautiful brown and yellow...almost like...like row of these really animated people, all facing the same direction. There's a lot of variability in each one, especially if you go to the older rows, which are the taller rows, which are always planted in front.

So I had a nice experience of dealing with the whole life cycle of... [over to some] (ph) to other times at the farm: harvesting sunflowers; digging up the plants, which are by that point five or six feet tall. [00:07:07] And there's bees on the farm; they keep bees. So there's bees everywhere: on the flowers, around them.

And then last is beautiful, little inchworms and...I don't know, other insects. Not as still and sterile as...it is when you buy them in a store. It's either dig up the plants, haul them to the compost pile, and then the ground gets worked for the next crop.

And then on another field, we dug holes. [00:08:01] And we...measured out five rows and planted more sunflowers. And the ones that take the longest to mature go in the back...farthest away from...from the barn, where we're eventually going to take them. And then the ones that mature earliest go in the front.

(pause)

CLIENT: And you can't harvest them with a knife or scissors; you...got to use these very sharp...I don't know, garden clippers. [00:09:00]

THERAPIST: Clippers?

CLIENT: Mm-hmm. And the diameter of these stalks is very big, so they're kind of intimidating; with the bees and the big, giant (inaudible at 00:09:15) and how heavy the plants are when you have to start carrying them.

(pause)

[00:10:00]

(pause)

[00:11:00]

(pause)

CLIENT: What are you thinking about?

THERAPIST: Well...

(pause)

THERAPIST: ...I was thinking that maybe the...what you were describing kind of...connects in here, a bit, what you described. [00:12:09] Like with your...landlord. In other words, am I going to react (inaudible at 00:12:27)...

CLIENT: No.

THERAPIST: [Laughs]

CLIENT: [Laughs]

THERAPIST: [Laughs] ...to your description of what it's like to harvest the sunflowers and be on the farm doing that or play it cool? And it seems to me that part of the...the...were I (inaudible at 00:13:08), and then you (inaudible at 00:13:12), makes me think a little bit of harvesting.

CLIENT: Hmm.

THERAPIST: In a way, when you felt like you could have harvested your landlord a little bit.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm; hmm.

THERAPIST: Which, I think, for you as you say is an ambivalent thing. Something, on the one hand, I think you want to do and work to do; and on the other hand, something that you don't want.

CLIENT: Because of his reaction?

THERAPIST: Yeah; I think you're ambivalent about his reaction. [00:14:00]

CLIENT: Yeah. But I think I really like it. I think I like seeing that I can touch (inaudible at 00:14:11) in that way, and seeing that I can touch you in a way (inaudible at 00:14:15).

But...yeah, there's some-there's a lot of saying goodbye on the farm, right? When you're harvesting.

THERAPIST: I see.

CLIENT: There's a lot of death and birth and rapid change. And rapid change on all scales (inaudible at 00:14:46) a seed; to a plant; to flowers; to flowers dying; to the next crop, all within the course of a month or two. [00:15:00]

So in some sense, harvesting Morris ushers in a new-some new thing; some new level of interaction. And...I guess I had that with a lot of people, over and over.

(pause)

CLIENT: That relationship is really nice, because it's...it's like this easel (ph) or a playground, where there's really absolutely nothing required. So...everything and anything seems new and special. [00:16:03] And is.

But we also share, like in an intimate way, space and are invested in...in this gorgeous house and (inaudible at 00:16:26). There's a lot that we depend on each other for, but it's...that part is...well, that's the part where I'm glad Jeremy is with me, because he's...very dependable when it comes to taking care of the (ph) property. [00:17:04] And I'm very dependable when it comes to taking care of people. So, yeah, it's a nice-plays on both of our strengths.

And they don't have children and there's this running joke with Jeremy that I'm the daughter he never had and Jeremy's the son-in-law he never had; not that Jeremy is the son he never had.

I almost have a sheepish or take a sheepish pleasure in...I don't know, just daughtering them up. [00:18:02] [Chuckles]

THERAPIST: [Chuckles]

CLIENT: Guess I do that here, too, sometimes. No?

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:18:19)

CLIENT: Yeah, I do. I did a very daughterly thing yesterday, which is my...someone, maybe me or my mom, I forget who gave my dad this gift certificate, but we gave him a gift certificate to this local, family-run spa in our little village in Virginia. And...he doesn't want to use it. [00:19:01] He has before; he has gone to the spa before and gotten a massage, but he's like, I don't know, "I don't have time. It's not really my priority. Someone else would get a lot more use out of it."

So my mom called and was like, "Please make an appointment at the spa on Friday. I'm going on Friday." And I, of course, was like, "Oh, well, I have some things that I want to get done, but I want to get them done here; I don't want to spend time at the spa and home. Can I make an appointment here?" Because sometimes, she'll just call and say, "Please make an appointment for some," such-and-such, like, "we want to treat you." Except they would never say anything like, "We want to treat you," because it's implicit.

So she writes back, she's like, "No, actually, we had a gift certificate to (ph) this place that Dad won't use." So I'm like, "What's his problem?" [00:20:01] She's like, "I don't know. You should talk to him."

So I get on the phone with him; like, "Dad! Why don't you and I get side-by-side pedicures on Friday?" He's like, "With wine?" Like, "Yeah, sure!" [Chuckles] "Okay, well, I don't know. Pedicure? Okay."

So we went back and forth about...why he doesn't want a full-body massage, he's just not up to it right now. And he's like, "Well, pedicures are good, because we can sit next to each other and-yeah, but they aren't really my thing. You have value for pedicures, so I guess it's okay." And I'm like, "I don't have value for pedicures. I've gotten them twice. I have more value for a facial or a massage." [00:21:01]

And he didn't say, "Well, why don't you just get a facial?" He said, "Well, we can't really get facials side-by-side, can we? But maybe we could get a chair massage side by side."

So...anyway, he has to work on Friday, so in the end, he was like, "Well, maybe I won't work on Friday; but I can't really tell you right now."

THERAPIST: [Laughs]

CLIENT: [Laughs] I'm laughing because I don't know where we left it (ph). I think we left it where we could get side-by-side chair neck and the shoulder massages; but he was wondering if there would be this wine, because-I was like, "Well, pedicures are more ridiculous. Don't you want to do that?" He's like (crosstalk at 00:21:57).

THERAPIST: By the way, because I'm glad to know there's someone more difficult than me. [00:22:00]

CLIENT: [Chuckles]

THERAPIST: [Laughs]

CLIENT: He is difficult. But he's so cute. [Chuckles] So pedicures are more ridiculous, so we're not going for them. Chair massages are more useful to both of us, but we don't know if we can drink wine; don't know if we can be side by side.

THERAPIST: [Laughs]

CLIENT: [Chuckles] But I'm happy because-

THERAPIST: There are so many considerations, my goodness!

CLIENT: It turned into Dad giving away this gift certificate without any fuss and now there's tons of fuss.

(pause)

CLIENT: So it felt like a daughterly thing to do. [00:23:00]

(pause)

CLIENT: There are people who are more difficult than you at times.

(pause)

THERAPIST: I'm sure.

(pause)

[00:24:00]

(pause)

THERAPIST: No, I meant, (inaudible at 00:24:24) was something like, "Oh, so that's where, maybe where it comes from." In other words...the way it can be sometimes with me from him. And what you were just describing, maybe [there's some reflection] here of that.

CLIENT: Of what part?

THERAPIST: The whole shebang. You're going to do the daughterly thing and sort of kindly and affectionately and in a daughterly way seduce him into using the thing. [00:25:06]

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And he's going to be sort of...pretend to be, in a way, a little oblivious of what's going on and just sort of particular about what he wants and a little bit like, "Oh, well, I don't know. I guess. Yeah, but can I do this?" A little bit childlike, I guess, about it. (Crosstalk at 00:25:30).

CLIENT: Like everything; a lot of things.

THERAPIST: And then there's this push and pull between you, which sounds very nice.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And this sort of a-he sounds like he can be difficult in the most wonderful way, I guess. That is how it sounded to me.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm. So I'm like him, here? Or you're-? [00:26:00]

THERAPIST: I guess it reminded me-like I felt like there are some echoes of that, here, where you're you and I'm him, and-

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: I'm not trying to say I'm difficult in a wonderful way; just difficult. But it feels...the way you go about it seems a little similar to what you described with him.

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: And some other contrast with the...with your landlord, who seems, in a way, a little bit easier to harvest.

CLIENT: He's so easy.

THERAPIST: As compared to your dad, who is sort of...not so. (Crosstalk at 00:26:59)

CLIENT: Yeah, he's not-yeah, it makes it interesting. He wanted a father-daughter dance at our wedding, which totally surprised me, because...I don't know. It's something that we would make a lot of fun of together. And it surprised me that he-I mean, it's didn't surprise me, but it-I didn't-I was unprepared for this question of..."Well, are we going to have a dance together?" And by that point this is two days before the wedding, so in the wedding, in the...well, he might have meant-he might said something months before, but he asked me, directly. [00:28:05] I was like, "I don't know." By that point, we (ph) can have whatever we (ph) want.

THERAPIST: [Laughs]

CLIENT: [Chuckles]

THERAPIST: [Laughs] What day is it?

CLIENT: I was so not feeling like honoring much more than what was already so structured; honor it in such a structured way.

So...I don't know, there was some sense of he wanted to be harvested in that way at that time. I didn't really honor it; I appeared in front of him at some point, during the reception. I was like, "This is our dance, Dad." He was like, "It is?" [Chuckles] I'm like, "Yeah." And he's like, "Okay." And then we had it. [00:29:00]

And...if I go back and listen to the wedding mix which I do often and lots of people have asked for it; it's like the greatest dance mix ever, from the 60s and 70s, a little bit from the 80s. Jeremy spent...months on it. And, as very typical of Jeremy, spent months not working on it and working on it; and then, the night before the wedding, in the hotel room, actually put it together. He was really stressed about it.

So I don't remember what song it was, and I feel badly that there was this quintessential harvesting moment and I didn't really have the tool to do the harvest. [00:30:00] But there was plenty of other harvesting that wasn't conventional and that felt much more like me.

(pause)

CLIENT: I don't know, it suggests to me that there's so much unsaid from him. In the way you said that he's trying to be-or pretending to be oblivious in this nice, cute way.

This very stressful thing happened, also at our wedding, which has come up for me in the last couple weeks that I just remembered (inaudible at 00:31:01). During my four-hour henna time, which was the official start of the wedding, so Friday night where the wedding was Sunday. Jeremy called me and I can't answer the phone with henna all over, so somehow, someone put the-it's like, "Jeremy's on the phone," so I put the phone in my shoulder (ph) nook. I'm like, "Yes?"

And he's crying. He's very, very shaken up, because our friend Fernando...from college who lived in Providence at the time, for a year of our wedding had been taken into the hospital...against his will by his psychiatrist. [00:32:06]

And it wasn't actually like-I mean, that's the way I describe it, I'm not-because it's really complex. Basically, he was doing very badly. He called his psychiatrist and she explained to him..."You should let me...send an ambulance over." And there was something about how he should probably agree, where if he didn't agree...I don't know. Maybe there are logistical things that are really different if he says, "Yes, I need an ambulance," versus if it's against his will. Do you know? [00:33:00]

THERAPIST: [Sighs] Yeah. I guess, probably. I don't really know how that works. I mean, you can-your psychologist or psychiatrist can pink (ph) paper somebody, which means to...it kind of forcibly hospitalize someone. But I don't know what the logistics are; I mean, if somebody's at their house or whatever and he's-

CLIENT: Yeah.

THERAPIST: -going to send an ambulance there and they say, "Well, I'll be somewhere else," then you probably call the police. But I don't know exactly-

CLIENT: Hmm.

THERAPIST: -what happens.

CLIENT: So Fernando called Jeremy. He's at the hospital. They've taken away all of his stuff. He doesn't have phone. And Fernando's supposed to come to our wedding that day. And Jeremy and Fernando lived together for a year, the last year of (ph) college.

So Jeremy is really upset, because Fernando's voice is really hoarse. [00:34:01] And that was the thing that Jeremy kept saying, "His voice was so hoarse." And Fernando's like, "I'll be there as soon as I can, but I don't know what's happening. I don't know what's going to happen."

And I'm like, "Okay. Baby, you have to...you should call Diego (sp?)," Diego's the other good friend who's in Providence. "You should call Diego. Talk to Diego." He's like, "Okay, yeah. That's a good idea. I'll call Diego." "And then get dressed and try to believe the best possible outcome will happen with Fernando, because you have to come here now." [00:35:01] It's like in half-an-hour, he has to arrive. He's like, "I don't know. I didn't even know what I was saying."

[Sighs] So, I don't know. That was the last time. We didn't talk about it again, really, until...maybe Diego filled us in. We heard what had happened.

THERAPIST: Did Fernando hospitalize before?

CLIENT: No. But Fernando...he's been my like my worst fear realized, and I think a lot of the unconscious or sort of very fast anxiety that comes up is sometimes around what happened to Fernando, which is he lost control; he was hospitalized; all his stuff was taken away; and he missed the wedding. [00:36:10] And he has no family around him, though his family showed up really soon.

He had been scaring me before the wedding. And then after the wedding, when we got back, I was very stingy with my...level of openness, like emotional openness; not wanting to be moved or touched by Fernando too much; because I was feeling really bad and out of control. And it was like, "I can't see Fernando right now." [00:37:02] I saw him a couple times-I mean, he's the sweetest...he's really like one of the sweetest people I know, but he's very...he's very strong. He's a writer and he writes a lot about his mental health and other people's mental health and mental health in general. He's a scientist.

Anyway it sort of went into the depths of both mine and Jeremy's memory and it didn't...we didn't really talk much about it. Fernando had been hoarse because he was at a Vassar reunion and he had taken drugs and didn't sleep for four days. And all of this had precipitated-or caused the-whatever in the moment was happening at the time of the hospitalization seemed to precipitate out of the last week. [00:38:09]

THERAPIST: Yeah. He's had that (inaudible at 00:38:11)?

CLIENT: Yeah. But Fernando's very-I mean, he's a-all of Jeremy's friends who aren't his musician friends from college are neuroscientists. So there's five of them, including Jeremy. Jeremy's very reluctant to be academic about anything; but Fernando's very...he's very against the system.

So it's very hard to-it's just hard. It's hard to...he has so much resistance to psychiatry as a field and has read so much about medication and just how little we know about anything and has a hard time healing lots of pain and...on an intellectual knowing what these things are doing. [00:39:22] And then on a scientist level, what are the right questions that researchers should be asking?

So he got really caught up in Fernando's Fernando-ness. It's hard for me to handle.

So he went to some institute where all these famous writers have been.

THERAPIST: [I'm here five minutes] (ph). You mean...? [00:40:00] Are you talking about a writing retreat or a hospitalization?

CLIENT: A hospitalization.

THERAPIST: Oh, okay.

CLIENT: And he totally just took it up as his thing. He was there for two months, every day. It's the sort of thing where you show up and you go home.

THERAPIST: Yeah, a partial hospitalization. Is that Hoag?

CLIENT: Could you imagine that some famous writers have been there?

THERAPIST: There have been a number of famous writers (inaudible at 00:40:32).

CLIENT: He was at Hoag, then. So we saw him a couple times and heard all about this place and all about the Fernando version of it. And...yeah, it was...

THERAPIST: (inaudible at 00:40:50) like Cheshire. It's on the other side of Cheshire.

CLIENT: Oh.

THERAPIST: It's still, to me, the best psychiatric hospital around. [00:41:06] But its heyday was in the 60s and 70s.

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: It was a...sort of beautiful grounds. It's very scenic. A lot of wealthy people and successful (ph) artists-

CLIENT: Mm-hmm.

THERAPIST: -were hospitalized there. And then there was another hospital in town that was also in Frederick (ph). It was well-known more for people without money or...

CLIENT: I see.

THERAPIST: You know, a different social (inaudible at 00:41:39).

CLIENT: Do you have to pay to go there?

THERAPIST: I don't think now is different than any place else. They have some units there that are just self-pay, but it's really not-it's not different in the way that it was back then anymore. [00:42:04]

CLIENT: Mm-hmm. It's seems like it's (inaudible at 00:42:06) some of that (inaudible at 00:42:08).

THERAPIST: Yeah, there may be some.

CLIENT: Or maybe Fernando was needing that (inaudible at 00:42:19). He was supposed to have graduated from his Brown science writing master's program that week or something. It was very hard for me. But he's well.

THERAPIST: Good.

CLIENT: (inaudible at 00:42:51); but engage much. [00:43:00]

(pause)

CLIENT: I asked Jeremy if he had any lingering things from that moment a couple days ago. And we never really talked about this. He said he thought a lot about it around that time and hasn't...it hasn't been difficult for him. And I believe him. His sensing (ph) versus my intuition and (inaudible at 00:43:47) is become so clear to me; as is my perceiving him. [00:44:00] Versus the judgment one.

But yeah, Jeremy is very taking in the world as it comes to him and letting that form him. And meditation has-I think is opening up that side of me. But there's still very much this...these things are inherently good and these things are inherently bad. And it doesn't matter what the reality is, it's very hard to be in the middle of that. But I am. I'm just opening up to it. [00:45:00] I hope it changes; I hope I become more sensing.

(pause)

CLIENT: What time tomorrow?

THERAPIST: 10:00.

CLIENT: Cool.

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