FootprintsintheWind.com

Improvise is to not see ahead, not provide for what may come. Surprise is to take above, beyond, or over. Brothers to each other, the one carefree spirit, the other overtaken. In conversing, the one the essence of a walk in the familiar woods, the other on the walk meeting some new and wonderful beastie or fertile field.

:- Doug.

Game: adjectives unfitting

:- Doug.

The conversation eternal
The conversation every here
The conversation ethereal

:- Doug.

Draw a simple O
Include us both
. . . .

:- Doug.

Ponderful: Conversations

:- Doug.

Conversation is a work in the soil and seed and sun and water over weeks and years and maybe millennia, to blossom in a passing moment, complete of color and aroma and beauty. Always, the flower fades. But can the work of sun and seed and soil and water have been lost? Or are they but wind through the leaves, revealing other handiwork a few cosmic moments after? This conversation, can you see, is a trace of something come and gone on? And so, and so: each conversation, your conversation, is but a lightest touch of that longer conversation.

:- Doug.

Great improvisers of conversations are like ancient priests: thinking only of their Thou.

:- Doug.

Was it divinely bestowed on you, that shitty attitude?

:- Doug.

I like that book: it could be a model for mine—if I did mine poorly.

:- Doug.

You can digest the words of the writer. But can you absorb the writer’s person, her importance to your life? Can you weave her into your being? Can you with her converse?

:- Doug.

A big part of hearing your other is hearing how what they express, words or otherwise, lands in your body, and maybe later in your gathering-into-your-being aspect.

:- Doug.

Come live in a different world.

:- Doug.

I seek not to change minds but to change shields—our separation from one another.

:- Doug.

I was a little anxious about writing today on the books. I see on the other hand that yesterday went well, and that I have plenty of material for today. Best to wonder where it will take me, and get on the path!

:- Doug.

What is the danger of meaningful conversing? Prometheus is our warning. Will our liver, the seat of our emotions, be continuously, torturously, and with much blood eaten out? Will we be chained to a rock?

:- Doug.

What is the purpose of meaning?

:- Doug.

Could there be a believing game not of ideas/propositions, but of people?

Why did I write people and not persons? Perhaps because we do not need to work at believing persons, that is, Thous. But maybe we do. Maybe it takes more work because they might be too familiar to us. Maybe for them, we ought to doubt ourselves.

:- Doug.

Conversation is a process of the whole person, so you are a fool if you try to learn it step-wise. You must throw in your whole self—naked. So must one other. Because of this, it is doomed from the start. Very few meaningful conversations happen in our times. Did they ever? Perhaps when we sat around campfires at night telling our fears and in the morning telling our dreams. We seldom do that now, even on vacations. So is it merely luck when it happens? Probably that is how it happens when it happens these days. The question is, can we improve our odds? For instance by getting “naked,” revealing our real selves? Searching for our real selves, in front of, with, another? Guessing at our Thou’s real self, or more likely, selves? Is this question worth our sweat and fears?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2198

Where was a garden
You once loved?
It was shaped gradually
Any trickle
Helps plants to grow
Helps me to grow
Dirt under your nails
You cannot clean away
Nor would you want to
When was a garden
When will it be again?

Please pass it on.

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The words are a chain to pull me along. But not following them: Having them throw me out into new paths no one has yet walked. It is I who chain the words together, each opening to another link. The links do not end, they keep coming. They keep casting me on and outward. This labyrinth does not end. It is like Alice’s fall with attracting objects on each shelf at each turn. Again it is like Mandelbrot’s set, producing wonder after wonder. But not like either, for it produces new and novel and pulling further things.

:- Doug.

You cannot grow to be something else. You can only grow to be yourself. And then you die. To grow. Grow.

:- Doug.

There are a thousand thousand paths to track. Go.

:- Doug.

Sometimes things stir in me. Those times I need to get on the stallion bareback and ride off, hanging on. Sometimes perhaps I need to hitch up reins and plow. Or whisper to the wild when it won’t come. Each day go out to meet an unknown beast. Meet. Hear.

:- Douig.