FootprintsintheWind.com

We change the form of matter, space-time, and persons through our original emergence—conversing.

:- Doug.

Not only is meeting a bouncing one off the other. At times it is one receiving the other as woman receives man, as earth receives seed, as babe receives breast. Then again one may sense what the other makes, realizing what happened, making real, recognizing, pointing for all to see. For the invention is not of benefit till someone—one—makes use of it, a leader is not a leader without followers, especially the second follower.

:- Doug.

Suggest. Say less.
Use words heavy with child
So And grows

:- Doug.

Met a part, set apart

:- Doug.

Truly meeting opens a spigot: tentatively at first, as if testing your ability to sustain the rush. So maybe we have missed the full import of the between. Meeting also acts through the two of you: as a flowing, issuing out of the striking of flint and steel.

:- Doug.

Visionary intelligence
works
—between—
us
to reveal
—our—
emerging original trace

:- Doug.

To seek to make your mark upon the world is to swing your stamp in the open air. Nothing sticks until it meets another and another. Over years it grows clearer. The truth in this is you need others—all the others. Maybe especially those who resist you, who come up against you—with them your mark gains clarity. In all your work together with others your mark becomes blended. And becomes your work that lasts. Come mark with us. Come talk with us.

:- Doug.

Our body-mind is so intricately wrapped in all the people and persons around us that our conversations are not random and at the same instant not preordained. We mold each other and to each other in a richly entangling beauty. Togethering is our original nature.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2200

That’s it! The magic of which I have been catching glimpses all my life: the vast regions of life as it is lived, for which we lack adequate words. Here there be wizards: if only we could hear!

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

What happened between?

:- Doug.

The things I have turned up are merely the hem of the conversation unknown.

:- Doug.

Let’s explore some words not for word nor symbols nor meanings but for actions and solid physical bodies.

:- Doug.

Conversation exceeds, expands, enlivens, . . . communication.

:- Doug.

Life wears swift slippers
—We meet in conversation—
Veering us too soon

:- Doug.

Conversation is about that which is not inside an individual, but what is between us, what arises from our meeting, fully and originally.

:- Doug.

Conversation, this mystery, cannot be wholly expressed: certainly not in words!

:- Doug.

Conversing expands and concretizes living. It makes possible new possibles: new ways, paths, doings, together.

:- Doug.

We have a right to tangled fulfillment.

:- Doug.

Conversing comes in complexity: we cannot learn the tangle, cannot plan it, nor for it. Only enter. Become entangled. Force ourselves to allow our struggles to subside. Now we live out ever complexified. And that is some sort of joy. Its appearance elates.

:- Doug.

Unlike our thoughts of improv, conversing is not letting something out, but noticing something showing up in between us. Somehow we must let out this being that was not there before we came together. A new being may emerge any time we meet. Only if we notice.

:- Doug.

How is it for you? Is conversing an art, a craft, or a drudgery?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2199

This moment’s converse
the one who wrestled Jacob
might touch your leg too

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Is conversing the Twenty-first’s great improvisatory art? Or act? There is in here a surprise, a hanging over our heads. Not in all cases a sword, often an open sky.

:- Doug.