FootprintsintheWind.com

Conversing is putting together two beings for a wild, uncontrolled, untamed, undomesticated, uncultivated engagement. All is possible. Yet we can bend it in the long arc toward life.

This is a larger view than I have had, but hinted all along. All our live-long life we have been a-feared of conversing. We have avoided it, we have avoided really engaging one another. Here is the fear, here is the risk of life. What advice or direction can I give? None, for I have barely stepped into the territory of Here there be. Come, hold my hand. We’ll go together.

We can point our toes. We might speculate on ways to bend. That’s about it, till we get further in, meet some of the beasts.

:- Doug.

I learned more deeply about love from my sister. No. I am learning. In the youth of her old age, abandoned by her children, I help. Run errands, take her places, pay her bills. Love is truly verb, not feeling, for if emotions I’d have given up after her depression, pushing me away, pushing.

Just so, conversation is work. In this work, conversation is love. Love of Thou. Love of life.

:- Doug.

Project Apollo seemed to be scientific exploration, a drive in us from the childhood of our species. All the engineering and high math, all the numbers of people and hours of work. Sparked in a challenge put in words by one man “before this decade is out. . . .” What artifact produced is lasting? A photograph of a blue marble.

:- Doug.

Three unknowns in conversation
You friend, fully a mystery to me
Myself, still after years of Who are you
Conversing itself: coming going breathing kicking
These but the flying clapper in the bell

:- Doug.