FootprintsintheWind.com

What is the both/and to either/or and both/and?

Both/and cannot be the end of our inquiry—it is probably only the beginning, for is there not a valid place for either/or? For something else, too?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1370

Forget the furniture! That should be our mantra! In a book I am reading a man is recounting how his father tried to get fellow Jews to leave before Hitler rounded them up. What he heard was “What shall we do with the furniture?” He left. They did not.

What furniture holds us back from life? Perhaps I should not start this big project now because I am usually very busy in the month of May. And I have a spring class to teach. Furniture!

Choose the profound, the larger. Choose life! Choose now. Forget the furniture!

Please pass it on.

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Does birth fill space and time and death end them, or are they both unrevealed potential?

:- Doug.

Maybe the world is more complex than our metaphors or labels. Even that sweet and simple rose has thorns and aphids and blood and heart and….

:- Doug.

The world is a mixture of what stands out there and what we make of it, a tangle, inseparable. It goes deeper than “a sunny day is better than a cloudy one,” or “the sun is shining on me.” We cannot have our world without our own coloring. We can never see the world except through our eyes, handle it except by our hands, and all these get filtered so subtly we mostly do not see the filters.

:- Doug.

We see things, say the earth and the sun, as separate. Maybe they are no so unconnected as we “see,” and do not have all the characteristics we attribute to them.

:- Doug.

Let’s not open space every time but once experiment with opening place. Space is empty, cold, infinite, lifeless, dark, alien and void. Place on the other hand is organic, nurturing, warm, wet, human, intelligent, alive, connective, filled with nascent meaning.

:- Doug.

I am always successful
I go on for ever
I am life
For eons you cannot know
I have moved all
For all you know
I will never end
All things work for me
And I work all things
For continuing me
I am interwoven
I pulse
I ebb and flow
Your life is mine so
Your growth I celebrate
Life is one
I am life

:- Doug.

Less do we affect one another than reflect one another.

:- Doug.

You are in horror of oneness
This our society teaches us
This we teach one another
There are others
They are different
They are not you
And to be feared
The blending of all things
The movement and churning chaos
Makes you an undifferentiated
Part of the throbbing mess
Be a rugged individual
Separate yourself above the crowd
Unity ties you down
Takes away your uniqueness
This our society teaches us
This we teach each other
This we believe
Without having thought it out
Without having observed

:- Doug.

Play the prepositional pipe upon me, Papa!

:- Doug.

Flutter, flutter leaves!
Ready to fly from your tree!
Will you carry me?

:- Doug.

I don’t want to reserve a seat in your audience, thank you. I want to do something. I want to engage with people.

:- Doug.

It’s justice I’m after
a word spoken of lawyers
whispered by lawyers
only in their dreams
shouted by the souls of us
—all of us—
approaching death
It’s justice for life
and the living of it

:- Doug.

I’m opening space for life.

:- Doug.

Facilitate life
—be totally present, absolutely invisible
—think of one more thing not to do
—calm, knowing all is right

:- Doug.

No matter how many extra sides or angles you put on your box, it will never be flexible enough to fit every life. Or any life.

:- Doug.

There are no pre-fab solutions to life. Nor can there be.

Nor ought there be.

:- Doug.

I want to converse afterwards with the one person who is most moved to do something about this for our community.

:- Doug.

We don’t have to have all the answers to start—hey, we won’t even have all the questions till we get to digging in the field.

:- Doug.

Where is the fire’s generating core?

:- Doug.

I’m Two-thirds.

:- Doug.

Team: the old metaphor of the horses pulling the plow. Are you inspired by being a plow horse?

:- Doug.