or to put it another way -- when I started to see a therapist I thought that the process would help me to clearer see the strands between different, conflicting aspects of my life, and furthermore, that only if I identified these strands as they appeared in the sessions, and held them very clearly and consistently in my mind's eye throughout, would the entire process be in any way worthwhile. As a result what I feared more than anything (and often encountered) was a self-indulgent circumlocution, where free assocation just drifted, where I'd slowly become aware that I had no memory of what we'd discussed the previous week and saw no obvious overarching objective or narrative. The therapist thought this was a fear of uncertainty, and so would ask me Does uncertainty bother you, and in response I'd say Actually, No (after a beat -- I am good at feigning self-reflection), Actually no But what does bother me is being quite certainly within one opinion or feeling, then later realising you don't feel so strongly about or so surely inside that feeling. It belongs to another lifetime. And so you can't really trust yourself when you feel good and you can't learn from when you don't -- which is not the same as uncertainty, exactly, but rather a relentless pogo-ing between feeling one way about something and then the next week not feeling it, feeling a whole other aspect. So, in relation to my work which is obscure and makes no money: I dedicate my life to it and it's euphoric or I renounce it, it's pointless, a drain. And so on

I knew all of this before starting the sessions, or thought I knew -- I knew, or thought, that the place I wanted to reach was past these things I had spoken about already with myself and others. There were the strands, linking points, and there was the structural logic of them, and if I could understand the latter better I would foresee where points would come together and know or think I knew why. In organising my thoughts and works instinctively I would like to learn things about myself I didn't know I didn't know. The problem with the points where they touch is in their ordering. It's obvious when I write it down -- and what seems more obvious still is when I say that Things have aspects; Records sometimes come from unknowable places, shaped by happenstance, and they don't always line up. There is nothing special about how my records have unfolded but still I thought if I could lay them out in these diagonals and parallels, I could know them better / see the sense in them and then I could better present the context to others. It is another way of looking I am always changing, so I can find the middle point between trusting the instinct and trusting other possible, simultaneous versions. Success no longer troubles me I tell myself. But equally fine if it were to make no sense -- because at least then I could stop trying to see it all so absolutely