I don't know anything

I was in a factory, using tweezers to assemble tiny pieces from piles of parts all around.

Working with armatures, o-rings, and shiny, brand-new springs, I somehow knew I was constructing components of what would become enormous machines.

Then there was a giant iun, sleek and black.

I must have left the factory already, though my new surroundings seemed unremarkable, almost blank.

I only remember how clean and perfect the iun looked; it even smelled new, like freshly pressed plastic and oily steel.

The iun hovered across from me, just above a basic folding chair.

I found it funny how its chair and mine were exactly the same.

We were two dots at opposite ends of a circle with no clear perimeter.

I believe we were all there was.

It was as if we were talking, and I was its therapist.

And as I awoke, I heard the sound of Ray’s voice, though I could not make out the words.

I mentioned my recurring dreams of what seem to be whispered family secrets.

Yet this was different.

I had the strangest impression Ray’s words were important, and their meaning would suddenly become clear if I could just recall the right piece of something said already in session.

After laboring over coffee, and checking to find I had no messages, I spent the first half of my morning in bed, reading through all my notes on Ray.

I did not come across anything particularly revelatory as I read, though time spent committing my Method’s findings more to memory is never wasted.

I made it to the office just before my late-morning appointment with Bing was set to start.

Bing was actually waiting for me when I arrived.

By the mere glimpse I caught of him on camera out in the waiting room, I knew immediately something significant had changed.

He stood so tall and straight.

His face seemed to radiate with unprecedented positivity and enthusiasm.

It occurred to me that something must have gone very right with Bing’s therapy.

As I watched him duck the frame of my door to enter, he sported a smile so large I feared its weight might wrench the earth off its axis.

I saw an obvious, quiet determination there in place of whatever had once caused the big man to want to shrink from view in all circumstances.

Actually, he was funnier than I remember him being—not manic, flighty, or zany, but calmly cheerful in a catchy, contagious sort of way.

In truth, I am not at all sure how many times Bing and I have met, though it cannot have been more than a few.

Regardless, I believe our remaining sessions will serve as punctuated stints of encouragement.

The transformative work is complete.

I might be able to help him stay as hungry and efficient as he now seems; I hope so.

Yet I am sure you see my obvious dilemma: Bing’s therapy worked—my Method must have proven successful yet again; though this time I have no idea how.

A breakthrough unaccounted for is no breakthrough at all, either in the scientific sense or the sense of giving me something good to sell.

Bing is an Outlier in so many ways, yet I cannot tell him apart from Rolma—

I mean, I cannot tell him apart from my Normals.

Sorry.

Really, it makes no sense for Bing to be an Outlier lest his very nature invalidate the decades of comparative data I have amassed via the use of my Method thus far.

And now he has reached his Sticking Point as if on his own…?

Impossible, right?

What am I missing?

Bing wants to be a comedian.

I do not believe I have ever had a comedian client before.

Could comedians be Outliers that mirror Normals to make their humor more universally relatable?

If so, then Bing must be a truly great comedian.

I can at least be fairly certain about the direction of the discrepancy—that he is an Outlier mirroring a Normal, and not the other way around.

A Normal would have no compelling reason to pretend to be an Outlier.

Well, perhaps if a Normal were raised by only Outliers…?

Yet a fake Outlier-Normal should be far easier to locate on my spectrum than a Normal-seeming Outlier like Bing.

Bing only further confuses things.

Yet what is it about him, specifically?

How might I have helped him?

How might he still be lying to himself?

I honestly cannot see it, yet the answer must be there.

Why?

I am reminded of how sure I was this morning that Ray’s indecipherable words would make sense if just fit to the right context.

I feel distracted by such rabbit holes of shady comparison.

I also feel I must admit to myself how truly exhausted I am, running on no-to-little sleep.

Even as I now attempt to work, my mind is dulled and cluttered by still-frame images of giant iuns floating above cheap plastic chairs.

I see a speckled collage of massive-edged cups that cannot help but spill.

In general, I know I have been allowing for far more introspection in these notes after recent sessions with Ray.

I have to accept that I can never keep my Method from working however and wherever (upon whomever) it works.

For lack of a better way to say this: My Method seems to be choosing me as its subject more.

The cup and iun dreams should be obvious—they stem from my lack of situational self-efficacy in being unable to tell my Normals (and Bing) apart, unable to hold clients, unable to fight the free therapy from iuns I am threatened by, etc.

Such felt inabilities manifest in unconscious visions of chaos and randomness.

Yet even as I write, I am allured away by the same quiet, distant sound of Ray’s voice.

Bing mentioned a dream in which he failed to keep himself from floating up and off the stage while performing.

What could that have to do with Ray?

Though this installment is fast becoming a note-to-self-style journal entry, I am again mysteriously compelled to believe some deeper connection would appear if I could only happen upon the right recorded words from Ray in session.

Yet as I said, I read through all of Ray’s words again this morning.

How fitting for my tired mind to choose Ray as its means of sending me on a deluded quest for some mystical connection that all reason and experience tell me cannot exist.

I am reminded of how certain conceptual realities buried deep beneath the particulars of Ray’s flaky visions are always anchored to what those visions represent.

What I am writing now appears ludicrous to me, even as I watch it tumble to the page like rain.

Yet I cannot shake the notion that my unconscious mind is attempting to communicate something using the voice of someone who has delivered truth to me the same way before—via indirect representation.

That would mean there is indeed something worthwhile for me to find or remember in whatever hearing Ray’s voice represents.

I wish my mind would just tell me whatever it is it wants me to know.

But do I?

Not long ago, I would have said Ray’s specific Outlier type annoys me more than any other—one who acts as if he sees underlying reasons for real things without ever having put in the necessary work to gain such insight.

Now it seems frightfully obvious that I am no different.

Considering how I first discovered and have since developed my Method, I wonder: Why was I always in such a hurry?

It was because I saw my Method’s value; or I thought I saw its potential, so I had to go out and use it—I had to see it work.

I could not stay, and wait, and be told by so many that…

What is my Method, really?

I have seen, time and time again, especially in our more recent sessions, how the core of Ray’s perspective often holds true regardless of his methodology—regardless of the surface-level details of his thinking.

Valid connections emerge free and crystal-clear from beneath the jumbled liquid flow of his baseless reasoning.

How?

And could these ponderings right now really all just be distractions?

Should I not instead be attempting to figure out how many times I have met with Bing?

Bing’s dream, it…

But wait, I read it this morning…

Ray mentioned a recurring dream in which he is easily overtaken by demons.

Bing dreamed of being pulled from his stage like a balloon with no control.

I dream of being unable to keep coffee from spilling everywhere out of unlikely cups.

All of our dreams are the same in a way.

How completely absurd.

How unlikely could something like that be—that the dreams shared with me by the two clients I am considering at this very moment so perfectly match my own in obvious meaning?

And why am I compelled, now more than ever, to go back and re-read all of Ray’s words yet once more?

I swear I hear his same soft, faraway voice.

If I could just find a way to lean in a little closer.

Where?

Where is it coming from?

Why are the words about as unrecognizable as most of my remaining clients?

I want to write, “Who am I?” but again my focus seems to be thrown back to Ray.

Always Ray.

Only Ray.

How can Ray speak as if directly into the circumstances of my business, my Method, my struggles and fears…?

Is that not my job—the hard-earned results of having faithfully honed and used my Method now for—?

Alright, then what does Ray say?

The fog.

What is the fog, really?

What does the fog represent?

He has compared the fog to a lie that comes from being afraid—from being unable or unwilling to see the whole picture, as it were, yet still seeing some.

Seeing whatever I can to…

What about the church and pastor?

Ray called the pastor an artist who paints real human life into his words; yet all the slaves and rulers who hear those words can see only so much through the fog.

I was convinced the lie was really Ray’s—his own self-deception and unwillingness to see.

What could that lie represent for me?

What am I unwilling to…?

I can hear the words now if I am honest.

But…

If I am honest…

No.

It could not possibly be true.

Yet the fact that I am writing all this here…

How could I ever seek to divorce any portion of these notes from the rest?

To omit or fabricate my rich future contributions to the literature would mean…

Though I am now exclusively speaking of and to myself, my Method is still in full operation.

Nothing has changed, I cannot deny that.

I feel ridiculous for what I am about to write, yet a vast library’s worth of potential sequential volumes—more than I could ever list—seem to all combine to show that…

I meet with clients with split personalities, yes?

And all my clients deceive themselves in some way.

To allow for such deception to present itself in time has always been the purpose and function of my Method.

Even false conclusions get naturally cancelled out and re-examined in turn.

So, my Method has always worked to—

What if none of them are real?

What if none of this is real?

What if it is all just me?

What if I am not really who I think I am?

The iuns…

Could there be a cl—?

Could there be a patient somewhere, experiencing all of this as part of some incomprehensible iun therapy program?

Could this all be a world created to solve some unknown being’s own unique psychosis?

Every client, even before Ray and Bing…

How far too extraordinarily perfect that I would see and learn from each Outlier exactly what was needed to uncover the nature, identity, and experience of every Normal I have ever met with.

And now, Ray.

Ray is the Outlier.

Ray has confirmed for me exactly who and what all Normals really are in this strange world.

Yes, I can hear him if I am honest.

My Normals are slaves to the very systems I fear—systems run by the powerful who would have nothing to do with me or my work except to replace my beautiful Method and give it away for free through mindless robots, ruining me.

My Normals are taught to be nothing.

My Normals give their lives over to a society that thrives on their fear and death; and they are left so undervalued, used up, and written off I can no longer tell any of them apart, none at all.

I cannot help them.

I cannot change anything, really.

But then why?

Why all of this?

Am I Ray?

What would it mean if I and everyone I have ever known were really the intentional creations of some program?

What could all of this be meant to teach, alleviate, or show?

Impossible.

The whole notion is completely insane.

Yet how could I deny that what I have just experienced is a Sticking Point—the same as any other brought about by my Method?

To doubt would be to call into question every past and future breakthrough.

Why these notes?