FootprintsintheWind.com

In re-learning to fall (why “fall?”) asleep
I find the trick’s not so much blanking my mind
as blurring it
The re-verse of daytime
When focus is the unexamined value;
Now to let wash over me by immersing and pulling back a distance
Both and at once

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2532

Out your front window, you saw the old woman fall at the street’s edge, & you saw me come to help her. You came over to look. I asked
If you would let me use your phone to call for help, or if you could drive us to the hospital, & you said “My phone. . .” as your voice trailed off, and you
Turned and returned to your house;
It may have been my imagination: Did you mutter you did not
Want to get involved?

You are human
You are involved

Please pass it on.

© c 2026, 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

When were you surprised by something you did?

:- Doug.

Here for good.

:- Doug.

It is not the purpose of humanity to be interchangeable pieces, one with the other—like in hospitals.

:- Doug.

Slow down!
Here’s some life
You’re missing

:- Doug.

Have you considered the more that touches that (whatever your subject is)?

:- Doug.

What are the great questions of your life. . .this week?

:- Doug.

How does a conversation make a living? Especially how does it beget our sense of wonder in certain moments?

:- Doug.

Talking thro’ our conversation—what would that look like? Thro’ the ensouling we get.

:- Doug.

Catalogs invite us to possibilities we had not considered.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2531

In the name of the conversing, & of the meeting, & of the soul-making.

Please pass it on.

© c 2026, 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

To thing-ify something is to seek to possess it. Nouns in English point to our Western overwhelming desire to conquer new lands, plant a flag on the moon or Mars, to own slaves, to name things after ourselves. But in our truer nature we desire not to be possessed rather to be understood, met, heard, accompanied, allowed to be larger, each important in our own way.

:- Doug.

Every living thing converses
It must
Or it dies.

:- Doug.

Thoreau wrote in his journal entry January 22, 1852: “To set down such choice experiences that my own writings may inspire me, and at last I may make wholes of parts.” —This we may seek to do as well in conversation, in meeting, in soul-making. There is of course no final whole beyond the one that wraps its arms around the universe and all stars and what or who holds that. Soul-stitching makes the wholes thro’ which we do nothing but open.

:- Doug.

Get in touch with the leavening that infuses, permeates, ferments each other.

:- Doug.

It (The Last Hot Chocolate) sounds tame and ordinary, but you will not agree with all we discover, and you will fear to try some of the experiments.

:- Doug.

How can we make an ordinary conversation matter? What matters?

:- Doug.

In dark is mystery
In dark is possibility
In dark is soft moon glow

:- Doug.

I have three boxes of books: one marked “Give Away;” one “Maybe;” and one “Keep.” Books in the middle box have sticky edges—they will pull away books from the “Give Away” box.

:- Doug.

What kinds of conversation are most satisfying? What do you mean by satisfying and why is that satisfying?

:- Doug.

We will all go into the oven
Whether we come out as bread or cookies or pizza or ash
None of us knows.

:- Doug.

We are all pointed in the same direction.

:- Doug.