FootprintsintheWind.com

You are called to profound participation in the life of others.

:- Doug.

Conversation where? Conversation? Conversing?

:- Doug.

Asking a question, as when we start researching, is a form of goal-setting. There is also a good to be found in the vague, ambiguous question. A better question might just be less clear, precise, and focused.

:- Doug.

My insight cards are pings and leaps and hints and bridges between my larger time chunks of reading. And slow readings are leap-frogging lily pads from this pond to the next.

:- Doug.

Working hypothesis: Deep is a pen name for complex.

:- Doug.

Elders of the Heart

:- Doug.

Elders’ Time to Talk

:- Doug.

Elders: It’s Time to Talk

:- Doug.

Who cares about conversation?

:- Doug.

Living cells need to eat, breathe, and grow. So too conversation? Especially if conversation embraces life? Let’s see. Eat: differences are recognized, become news. Breathe: the respiring, conspiring between partners, give and receive the news. Grow: If I don’t add to what I hear from you, the conversation soon dies. Is any of this true on a more complex level?

:- Doug.

Where are my friends? Open the doors, windows, skylights! Turn!

:- Doug.

The Spirit of Converse.

:- Doug.

Refining the question means throwing out the premise (we can do conversation better), in favor of figuring out a better question. What is a better question we could ask dealing with us and with conversation? Are we even necessary to the question?

:- Doug.

I am finding that if I simply hold my fingers to the keyboard a little longer, I can take what was a twig of an idea and cultivate it so that a little green shoot starts.

:- Doug.

Pay no attention to what I have to say about conversation; rather to what you have to say in conversation . . . and hear.

:- Doug.

Slow conversation? Can we grow here? Can we get out of the way of what might be? In conversation, how do we slow ourselves so we can savor this conversation? Is there something to do beyond savoring? Slow gives us opportunity to examine the wings of complexity within our reach. Slow helps us see the individual leaves of the tree, perchance see a dandelion or two as we pedal past. How too might we slow the reader of our book? One book puts the footnotes on the left side page, and goes into more detail on the context of the main text on the right page. Could we in conversation pull in more context by making notes on side pads?

:- Doug.

Cultivate a sense of the larger conversation. The future can open out of that—we cannot control it, we can open for it.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2109

In me this morning
the world paused

& caught wisp
of its meaning
rounding the corner

The world in us
chooses to pause

freshened,
turns again

Please pass it on.

© c 2022, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Not hope, work.

:- Doug.

Is there a way humans relate, or in which converse occurs, that is well described by fractal geometry? Are conversations self-similar, or are meta-conversations?

How do fractal dimensions apply to clouds? Seems conversations resemble clouds: they expand, contract, bend, disappear to air.

:- Doug.

Life puts us first into the upper school, contextual learning. Humans then put us into children’s schools. No wonder we’re quickly bored.

:- Doug.

Think, People, think
Look, People, look
Meet, People, meet

:- Doug.

You, Conversation
embrace life
we cannot classify
your works or kinds
in aromas wrapped
in pregnant silences
in synesthesias
of synesthesias you
roll us into your
wonder-full fear-full
tangle
and life grows more
complexly simple

:- Doug.