The Black Box.

He hands me my coffee and I'm saying:  "It's quite nice that you get a different picture on your computer screen..." My laptop is open. As he sits down he asks me..so, is this part 3'? I tell the truth " Basically I'm out of my head again, today because I've got to get my assignment done by Wednesday" He asks me if I want to talk about that assignment? Me:  "No, no, there is nothing to be done, the words are all there. I just need to read them all out and make sure it makes a coherent story. Just I realize what a constructivist I am, meanings are all created through relationships, and I don't know what the person marking the assignment wants me to say; do they want a liturgy of possible things that could go wrong? Well I will do that, but basically people want to be accepted and loved and when they are ostracized they feel terrible" <my main criticism of reflecting and paraphrasing the emotional content of a person's narra...

A rather brittle hello from me Again, we speak in unison. And in the next part of our conversation I remember why I love his company - The flow, how our words dovetail and intersect.  It proves nothing.  I think it proves that we get on. It proves nothing? I make him laugh. Then the chink of coffee cups, and spoons and cupboard doors. Falling leaves of sound, deliquescing into a room full of heavy air. Full of potential and a silence as thick as woollen blankets. This is is an old house - Each time I arrive I look down at the steps that lead to the door. I put my feet down slowly and carefully in the worn out sagging stone, to match the memory of foot-fall, and wonder who else, who else? And how they were as they stepped as I step now. Happy, sad, in love - people alive, and people who are now  dead. He asks me if I'm warm and this sparks a conversation about water temperature. I tell him that water is now 8.5 degrees centigrade - from the tap. and he is mystified as to w...

Right now I'm in a room with the man I've told that I love, and I have no idea what he actually feels. He has not expressed his feelings about me, or about this situation.  And he is telling me that my feelings are missing!  It starts like this! Is there a difference in his hello? We speak in unison.  Coffee? The sound of cupboard doors, cups, the clink of the spoon. This is a strange session, I am talking about my identity . Talking about identity is what I do now (in 2024) with clients who feel that they are broken. I'm beginning to see it as vital, it is a key to restoring a sense of 'I am', because 'I can do x,y,z'. It is more than confounding the sense of ' I can't do anything ' into ' actually I can do plenty '. The question, 'tell me about you, what do you love ' often brings the answer 'I used to' - but in remembering, the past becomes present tense, the memories are breaks in the tragedy, specks of gold to be not...

  Well I wonder what it's going to be Progressive, regressive,  "I'm flattered" ? I'm sitting in the car watching people go by Listening to Nadja . Time to go... Luminous Rot by Nadja 3rd January 2022. His 'Hello, come in' sounds exactly the same as normal. No 'chit chat'...The sound of the spoon, of cups, things. Lots of stirring.  Spoon sounds in cups sounds... I'm talking about it being cold... He says the heating is on.  And so it begins. He tells me that he 'hadn't seen it coming' and that he hadn't listened to the recording until yesterday and so he had 'no idea'! Me   - "No, you wouldn't have, because I'm good at containing my feelings. It's an important skill."  He tells me that our conversation could  be potentially. difficult and change a lot of things.  I  agree - and divert it to focusing on what needs to be done, I really don't want to hear any theory... And as I speak, trying to e...