FootprintsintheWind.com

It is the task of the elder to reflect.

:- Doug.

Hues, shades, tints, tones, and scales are the core of our meeting one another in the really real. Either-or is not true to our real world.

:- Doug.

To tell the story for 300 years is to send the relevant clothed in the irrelevant.

:- Doug.

the nut meat
the really real
the nuance

:- Doug.

Hues and tones
our heart

:- Doug.

Let us employ
all nuances
hear, here the coeur

:- Doug.

You are beyond a store of knowledge: you are a story of living.

:- Doug.

Think of a favorite client, one with whom you really relate: first find the most deeply human part of your client, that part with which you connect. Then radiate that connection outward: what do you like, what draws you? Sometimes poems are like that, starting as a list. Perhaps growing from there, perhaps staying as a list. Always drawing your reflection.

:- Doug.

I want less in the way of planning, more in the way of thinking.

:- Doug.

Thought the product
is much faster than
thinking the process
and much less
worthy

:- Doug.

Choices: Our task in life is to make choices, to choose to be, to live, to stand, to stand forth; and yet choose to do this, to act, to love. Each and all: these are the most difficult things.

And not just task: privilege.

:- Doug.

People share with us their profound times: we owe it to them to meet them there. We are yet human.

:- Doug.

Who is Dad to be, now? Who this family? Is it now, or next? Or past?

:- Doug.

To persist
is sometimes
to live
if only I
may wrestle

:- Doug.

Technical excellence is not enough. It is never enough. There is a place that excellence, our scalpel, does not reach, cannot cut. A place in each client. A place in us too. A place even our words cannot touch. A place only our humanity can bridge.

:- Doug.

We cannot know what each needs to hear from our story. It becomes essential for us to seek the hues, tints, whispers, shades, tones, and mists of our characters and events. Allow our story and its hearers to take responsibility each to the other. Say less to say more for more.

:- Doug.

One cannot name an ancestor. There is in lived reality no such thing as one ancestor. Each is forgotten, all are to hand.

:- Doug.

The insights carried me all over, and to softer places.

:- Doug.

What’s the oldest story you remember? That’s the work of ancestors.

:- Doug.

What are the works of dying?

:- Doug.

By his fruit shall you know him—children in cages, violence, divisions. See his contorted face, hear his brutal words.

:- Doug.

ancestors is
flowing

:- Doug.

A story is not written—is not told—does not happen—once for all time.

A story starts
when breath becomes air

:- Doug.