FootprintsintheWind.com

Lawyer, notice: it is a big job to gather the paper for a Medicaid application. Some people perhaps should be discouraged from it—or at least warned.

:- Doug.

The nine muses (Hillman, The Force of Character, p 92) are daughters of Memory. Consider your life in terms of one or all of the muses. Tell the times in your life a muse tugged at your sleeve.

:- Doug.

We do not know age, we have yet to invent it. We see it as an edge off which we fall, and that is closing our eyes and imaginations.

:- Doug.

“Here there be dragons”
We said of our flat earth
Now we say—and see—
As much
Of age

:- Doug.

There is spirit in aging
Not as you expected
With it live

:- Doug.

Epistrophé, metanoia, conversing
What we do
Are we who

:- Doug.

A Friend said: “Know that we will never know.”

:- Doug.

To claim a destination is desperate hubris.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1852

Why should you care about the future of the world, the future for our grandchildren? But you do. If you are an elder. That’s one way you know.

Please pass it on.

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We set a course but cannot know the destination.

:- Doug.

What are the beauties and wonders of life? What are the challenges life and our society face?

:- Doug.

What is my philosophy of aging? My role and my function, and who and what I am for, are more important than my health and survival. Who: my grandchildren and the grandchildren right on up to the 300-year grandchildren-elders. What: our species and all species and life on the planets. My role: life. My function: expanding.

:- Doug.

Friend, into your holy age.

:- Doug.

This is a course we set
A time that works on us
A bin in which we actively compost

:- Doug.

And we will say no more
Bringing large prophecies of death and life
And then we say no more

:- Doug.

The older he got the more
He did not know
His many homes
He came back to at nightfall
He knew and did not know
And could not know
His many many people
Many now long gone
Many more to come
He knew and did not know
And could not know
The older he got the fresher
The clearer his sight to see

:- Doug.

What do humans know?
What after all can we know?
Maybe we should ask What can we do?
Doing is hollow: echoes and fades
Still we must ask about something
And our role
Do we? Are we? Were we? What?

:- Doug.

How do you want to age?
You will of course
So do it well

:- Doug.

Our course is to develop our own philosophy of aging.

:- Doug.

There’s more to it than that. A phrase for every occasion.

:- Doug.

What are your days like? Describe yesterday.

:- Doug.

There is a nameless trait astir in elders. Life? Spirit? Love? Crankiness? Maybe you can help us keep from putting a finger on it.

:- Doug.

In the compost heap
busy life billions bustling
growing and invisible
In the sauerkraut, the kimchi
microbiology teems works teams
growing growing and invisible
O age growing and invisible!

:- Doug.