Might be in poetry
The art of conversation might be found in poetry.
:- Doug.
This is not an exchange of words. It is a conversation. It may even become a meeting.
:- Doug.
A stew never fully made
The work of a conversation cannot be known ahead. We find it as it goes. More precisely it and we find one another. Even more precisely, we find us together in this stew. Still more precisely, we make this stew—out of us. Into us. If we don’t get somehow lost, this stew is not fully made. We expect never to be fully made: We do not understand a word like transformation.
:- Doug.
Even a wormhole
Inner is like a lens, even a wormhole to other dimensions, other worlds, to be known and unknown.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2328–The way to write to you
Footprints in the Windsm # 2328
This morning I’ve been reading John Dewey
He carries the tone of the nineteenth century
So too does Virginia Woolf
But then there’s Walt Whitman
Who wrote earlier
Who comes to me as alive in my age
And Blake—My! My!
And Rumi and Rilke
They all wrote to me
And to generations after mine
They wrote from the stars
This is the way to write
To you
Please pass it on.
© c 2024, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com
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New persons happen
Conversation is where new things can happen. Indeed it is where new persons happen.
:- Doug.
This child asks
Conversation, indeed meeting, is a creation of we two persons, two complexities. It might even be a child of us. We must, we must, make stunned silences in our child’s presence. Our child is not a thing shouted into a barren land, but nevertheless its voice echoes back: its echoes are returning as whimpers and whispers. This child tries out its limbs, it cries out, it is demanding, for it has something to give, we have something to receive. This child asks to be lived with.
:- Doug.
The finding we find
Communication is not the primary intent of conversation. It is more likely found in finding. The finding we find is one another. The finding sometimes is ourselves. The finding tends toward our humanity. The finding is continual, though we may not be conscious we are finding anything whatsoever.
:- Doug.
Out-of-timeness
When in conversing curiosity reaches out to and shifts into passion, then we come close to meeting. Yet it is not a pure reaching out but a blending—something pulls us. More than this, something is mutual. It is not about taking turns though that might happen. Often in feels as though it is a happening-all-at-once, an out-of-timeness.
:- Doug.
Must come out
In conversation we seek beyond the connection between we two and beyond the reception one of the other: We seek the expression of something hidden in me that it might be received by a specific and particular you. Something wants, and needs, and must come out. There is no in without an out.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2327–Left-handed thinking
Footprints in the Windsm # 2327
How does it affect one’s thinking to be left-handed? Your hand always immediately covers what you write. How would that train your memory?
Please pass it on.
© c 2024, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
Tense silence
How might we find our way to be in tense silence and still be near, to give love?
:- Doug.
Direction interferes
Bringing direction to conversation, consciously working to make sense, or to move toward something, could interfere.
:- Doug.
some*one* at stake
Meeting, more than conversation, needs something to be at stake: it has to be about something; someone has to be affected. No mush here.
:- Doug.
I’d tell you, but
Today in a support group for care partners, one woman told us about her husband. I do not say he suffers from his dementia, since she is the one who suffers more often. He was reading the newspaper classified ads. She asked him what he was reading. He answered, “I’d tell you, but its classified.” A meeting, a memory, a legacy.
:- Doug.
To de-familiarize
The purpose of conversation as of poetry is often to de-familiarize us and re-familiarize us.
:- Doug.
Outer edges
Things which just barely touch conversation are in fact the outer edges of conversation, its learning places. Listening, hearing, attending become positive acts of expression: strands inseparable from the knot that is conversation.
:- Doug.
Footprints in the Windsm # 2326–That many songs
Footprints in the Windsm # 2326
A person is a sort of poem and each reader reads her differently. So we are each, for the number of readers we have, that many poems. Just as each person hears a different song each playing, so for each hearer we have we are many so many songs.
Please pass it on.
© c 2024, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com
Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com
Savoring not stopping
What we are working toward in conversation is a consummation, not a mere cessation. We savor not solely at the conclusion, but throughout. We circle it. It infuses the whole. Here is a wholeness. A wholeness that does not know where it is going—our adventure!
:- Doug.
Enduring grace, charm, beauty
Can we converse in a way that brings enduring grace, charm, and beauty to our offerings and our receptions?
:- Doug.
