Writing to a Drawing of Analysis

In the spring and summer of 2016, a year after I started training as an analyst, I began drawing the sculpture River by Aristide Maillol. My “training” analyst had an office located a few blocks away from the Museum of Modern Art. While I waited for my time to speak, I would stop by the sculpture garden on nice days. Maillol's sculpture continued to fall every time I walked into the garden. I found, in my attempts to illustrate that tumble, something close to my analysis at the time.

Since I made these drawings, I have started a new analysis. I have passed licensing exams and begun a private practice in my own office. Six years later, I am still looking to these drawings for something to say. I began writing letters to the woman in the drawings, to the sculpture, to the sketches, to the analysis. Where does the analyst position herself? Through words? Through lines drawn? I wonder if an analyst's position is more of a tumble. Below are the original drawings and the tumbling letters I have written to this position.

Dear Tumbling Woman,

When I first saw you falling, I was concerned that you might break. This of course is laughable because when I actually start looking at you, I see that since you are so large, so heavy, you would crush anyone before you broke yourself. But it has been a while since I last saw you. Have you broken?

I have been meaning to come and ask you in person, but museums have been closed for a while, and then when I did go, it had rained earlier in the day, and I was not allowed to go to the garden. Did you see me on the fifth floor? I went to the window to look down to see you, even though those windows give me vertigo. You were twisted up, as if you were trying to see something far away. That was me! But maybe that twist was not for me. One needs to balance somehow. I feel a permanent balance that aches every time my eyes land on you. How can you still be tumbling? Is falling better than landing?

I didn't know I would have so many questions still. I