stream of consciousness

a subject walks into a bar

The wooden table beneath your pen

is the same as it always was. Only the time, place, and feelings are different.

To your right is the Gestalt Therapist Poet speaking of the challenge of trying to conduct therapy on a screen.

“Conduct therapy”

—is that what's going on here?

Would it stand to reason that he is a conductor of sorts? a conductor of emotions, perhaps, or maybe a conductor of memories—

memories are electricity, right?

but no:

Gestalt Therapy is about the here and now.

It's never any different than it always was.

Why do we keep trying to name The Thing?

Is it ever any different than it always was?

The here and now. Live in it.

Open up the dark side of your brain:

Breathe—breathe in the air.

Pink Floyd reigns supreme, forever “Gentle On My Mind.”

Hello, Glen Campbell. I didn’t expect to see you in here:

That makes me tend to leave my sleeping bag
Rolled up and stashed behind your couch

a subject in a bar

We grasp for words. We grasp for each other.

Is this not one in the same?

The structuralists say there is no world without language, but do they believe it?

That's not actually what they say, at least I don't think it is.

A joke: what’s the difference between a structuralist and a Structuralist?

It’s merely a question of capitalization.

How much of what we say isn’t really saying anything at all?

Sit down at the wooden table and listen to the goings on at your local cafe,

or in your local diner if you're American.

The diner might very well be the last truest bastion of democracy, or at least of something resembling that prideful American culture we used to hear so much about.

But maybe that’s not fair. Go to New Orleans if you no longer believe in American culture.

What do I know about American culture these days, anyhow?

I’ve lived thirteen some-odd years in the petri dish that is the City of Light.

I know nothing.

It's just a feeling.

The heart understands what the mind cannot know.

It's why whenever I get back from the Good Ole USA, I have the sense that I've escaped something awful, some impending primordial shift that hasn't happened yet.

Primordial shift might be the wrong phrase,

But I don't think it is. I can just feel it.

I can smell it in the air. A return to chaos.

What’s in a culture, anyway?

An entire world, at least according to Frantz Fanon.

I eavesdrop on the Gestalt Poet’s conversation just next to me:

two men have sat down with him. One of them is an old friend who’s come to Paris to reminisce. Both of them are related to each other. They are father and son.

According to them, they are both practicing psychiatrists who work in the same office and even share the same waiting room.

But don’t worry Not to worry, the father says.

Who’s worried these days? the Gestalt Poet asks.

Most practicing psychiatrists in Canada are worried, according to the son.

A question: when a psychiatrist needs psychiatric help, do they look themselves in the mirror?

Where might the father and son go?

Neither the father nor the son consider their shared psychiatric office a problem.

The answer is simple enough: they off-set their appointments so that they rarely finish conducting therapy sessions at the same time.

The electricity is brimming now. The conductor relents.

The son reiterates: we might work in the same office, but we rarely see each other.

An awkward silence follows.

I wonder what this means.