In Times Which Seem Like Self-Psychotherapy He Says To Himself:
Oh, Vienna

Novel: Times 1–4, Chapter 42

Niet van der Zand
5 min readNov 22, 2022

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I spoke out loud to you this morning

Two weeks have gone by since the countdown began, two solid weeks of my waiting, and my longing, to see you; yet I note from my calendar that there are still sixty-one days to go to our meeting. My original workings, which came to eight weeks until our son’s potential move, must have included some error, or miscalculation.

Photo by Drew Bae on Unsplash

I have miscalculated many things; indeed for a more than competent mathematician, my human, social, and psychological workings-out, have often fallen way short of the mark. Impatience is possibly a major factor in my reaching fragile, unstable, or unrealisable outcomes.

I know that rushing leads to mistakes, yet when my blood rushes I don’t seem to be able to steady myself. You made my blood rush, you know that don’t you. You made my blood rush when we were close together. You made my blood rush when we were far apart. You still make my blood rush, you do know that now, don’t you.

What is it about my writing that stimulates my circulation, what is it in my choice of words that causes my internal excitement. How does my psychological excitement lead to my physiological excitement; is it of you, is it for you, is it all down to my crazy misaligned memories of you.

Did your writing to me similarly excite you; when you wrote that your bed felt empty without me, did that encourage you, to imagine me laying beside you in that bed, did you imagine we made love in that bed, did your words do that to you, did they.

Once again I feel myself becoming overwhelmed by my writing, I feel the writing holding my words back in my non-writing life; I am almost mute without my Story or my You words to lead me. I know, from our experience, how negative this is, how difficult it is for a loving relationship to be maintained; yet the writing is addictive, I don’t feel able, nor do I have the desire, to let it go.

I have a very loving, and an amazingly supportive partner; how nuts must I be to do anything which could destroy our situation; I can write that, yet I forget to deliver; I always forgot to deliver, didn’t I…

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