FootprintsintheWind.com

The piece is puzzling. I had a clear insight, and this is more evocative than clear. It is a prose poem; it is pulling things out.

:- Doug.

It must be difficult especially for a woman as caregiver to acculturate to the numbers and schedules of a nursing home. Carefamily wants to plump the pillow and hold the hand as well as dispense the meds. What a mismatch to wear on real humans! No wonder we have burnout and turnover. If a person can see this mismatch can she turn it toward her humanity, rather than lose her humanity to a machine-like “life?”

:- Doug.

Our grandchildren’s grandchildren are unreal to us or why’d we do such things to them? Our time horizons are very short: tomorrow, next vacation, maybe at most some someday retirement. Always centered in “me” and “mine.” Visiting the Alamo one day, reading the names on the plaques, I glimpsed that these were real people in my grandparents’ grandparents generation. Perhaps we can catch the glances of those 4 or 7 generations off—enough to know real people.

:- Doug.

We shall know each other or we shall kill each other.

:- Doug.

Conversation, our conversation, is one.

:- Doug.

The conversation is the invitation, the freeing, and the calling home and whole, all in one process. There is one sender—and none, one receiver—and none, one message—and none—the conversational process itself: this rhythm. This rhythm invites, releases and sends forth, and calls each member.

The conversation is not apart from its members but arises from them as they from it.

:- Doug.

What if extraterrestrials came and found our current crop of election candidates?

:- Doug.

Just saw the start of a serious scientific attempt to use small, soft, light-powered creations to go to the stars at something approaching 20% of the speed of light. What a new direction of thought! What if we had already been visited by such “butterflies” from other beings, tiny things, barely noticed, seeking us?

:- Doug.

How does the respiration of the universe show itself to us? Are we looking in the right directions, with the best eyes? For instance, we see the universe since the big bang as straight line expansion; but is the world like that? Do things contract too, are there waves, are there eddies and back waters, is there work and rest, greening and browning and greening again? Have we looked for these things among the stars?

:- Doug.

How do I respire with you?

:- Doug.

Friend, into your loving rhythms.

:- Doug.

Beyond surface what of death lasts? What are its boons? Think perhaps in the direction of poignancy….

:- Doug.

When the human stood up and looked upon the starry night it was the birth of reflection yes, and also of wonder. These may be aspects one of the other, or divergent developments, enriching each other.

:- Doug.

Listen to your heart, listen to your breathing. Notice the other’s breathing. Notice your movements together. Do we each fold our arms? Do we respond to the other’s nods, gestures? Does the same gesture follow one particular movement? When one person gets up at the end of the meeting, others do too. What other things do we do together, consciously or half-consciously? What can we notice?

:- Doug.

How do we converse when without words: maybe with rhythm, rhythms of which we are not aware, but might find ways to notice.

:- Doug.

So seeing the world as conversation, and conversation as rhythm and entrainment of rhythm is a fertile field for exploration, harvesting, planting.

:- Doug.

Chit-chat might be entrainment of our breathing and consciousness—or avoiding of it.

:- Doug.

If this view is correct, conversation is deeper than speech, deeper than body language or gesture. Conversation can include and might stem from something unconscious and from outside us, even outside our time. Our conversational horizon might be beyond our ken, our ability to imagine.

:- Doug.