FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2074

Most people think conversation is a tool. Not so. Conversation is the main life force and we the seeds to scatter it.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2073

Now my main work is to hand you this sticky dough-ball if you will have it: let me tell you about it. It is the essence of life and humanity. It has no name. No word fits it. It changes shape with each hand. It leaves some behind. Sometimes bitter, sometimes sweet. It smells of yeast, it smells of Limburger cheese. It is mainly a question: what will you do with it? Now that you have it, what do you see, feel, taste?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2072

Accepting that conversation is the buzz of any environment allows me to slip into and out of any conversation with any person. The conversation is always supporting us. I don’t have to make a subject—it is already present.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2071

One talkative day
would a fish ever say
“Water is only a tool”?
Fool!
Try jumping out of the bay!

One talkative day
would a bird ever say
“Air is only a tool”?
Fool!
Try jumping into the bay!

One talkative day
would a person ever say
“Conversation is only a tool”?
Mule!
No one will hear whatever you bray!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2070

The central mystery is that the world is made by conversation.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2069

Without conversation the people perish.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2068

In walking this afternoon after my appointment, I remembered strolling of lunch times in downtown Mishawaka, working out filing systems, computer systems for the office, and business strategies. So it’s not a new idea: walking leading to thinking new and generative things; it is something I have done and profited from. I promise myself to make a practice of walking in the neighborhoods and woods. It will enable me to (literally) walk my thinking forward, and maybe onto new sideways discontinuous pathways. Where all might I walk? With whom might I suggest a walk and talk?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2067

Can we?
Can we hear another?
Can we be generous?
Can we be open?
Can we be vulnerable?

Come up with a message for the 11th generation? Trust them? Hear their message to us? Change our ways for them? Reach for bigger than we have been? Can we?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2066

Tell me of a time a teacher insulted you or put you down.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2065

Our family roots are tangled: consider in the last 11 generations you have had 2048 grandparents. Consider how much will and ingenuity and strength and character they have mingled into your blood. Recall that roots in the woods bring information, nourishment, and intelligence: you may then know the largeness of you.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2064

I digress. But if we are on this “gress” together and happy and pleased with one another, who’s to say it is not instead the best “gress?”

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2063

Why do I want to get grandparents talking across generations? Recently I answered really authentically: mutual influencing. Why mutual? Because we have something to learn from them and they from us; and beyond that to carom and engender. Why influencing? Because we can get better as a species.

Why get better? No, it is not an ego thing. Sure I’d like people later to know my name, but what good does it do me? Now? None at all.

I want to give because I have a responsibility to help my co-residents of this planet, this universe. It is my fair rent for the space I am occupying. We are here for one another. Only this.

Maybe later generations will not agree with me. That is OK. They will grow as they will grow. Whatever happens is the only thing that did. I want to give them as many choices as possible.

Mutual influencing, mutual imagining, mutual opening. These are my why.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2062

I am asking a bigger question. Can we get better at being human? With the help of strangers at a distance?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2061

I want to find out how these people live with each other, what their dreams are for themselves and their grandchildren. I want to know how they are addressing the quandaries How then shall we live, think, grow, relate, expand, human?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2060

A butterfly among the ancients I appear to be.

I tend the community of ancestors, I play and sing among them. It is an impossible task, and so I get to it. Unending, incomprehensible, imperceptible. Ethereal, and most real of all.

A butterfly. . . .

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2059

You came and sat with me
in lively conversation
and then you disappeared
back into that dream
O I learned and so did you
tho I can say nothing
of what it was
Let us meet and here again
more likely we then will be
in different guises and places
yet we may each suspect
Was it you in my dream
or I in yours?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2057

A weighty log
releases its heat and light
and our flame-staring reverie
becoming fertilizing ash
lightness to float away in morning

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2056

No insights overnight. Things are marinating. Pickling. Sitting in the brine. Seasoning. Ripening. Ripen is old English. I like this word: it suggests another dimension to becoming more human. Ripe is of another place: a place we want to be unreachable.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2055

If I close my eyes you do not exist: a fate of grandchildren. Especially those five or more generations on.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2054

Beware the
Geese
We call
Their fleece
Burma-poop!

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2053

Saturday morning
lingers abed
poems writing me

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2052

The only thing fair to leave the grandchildren is a task too large for your lifetime and theirs.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2058

Why do we need papers to prove we are whom we say we are? Why is it even important that we are consistent in the expression? By nature don’t we have the right to be whomever? Must we be just one person? Does a name own us?

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