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Creative tension arises in conversation: for instance between the pull to accomplish something and the pull to true meeting true. Here we wrestle if we are to find fertile air.

:- Doug.

Today in my writers group I shared some phrases from Toni Morrison’s Beloved. Doing so gave me to know more about what I was finding here. More than writerly technique. Her stunning juxtapositions and leaps across abysses gave way to peering down into these abysses as we traversed them—and seeing our shared humanity reflected—down there.

:- Doug.

Metaphors are squirrels in my yard.

:- Doug.

It is common among us to hear “When the student is ready the teacher will appear.” Its truth may be larger. We search and we make out of twigs and leaves and scurrying squirrels the lessons we seek. We concoct from the bricolage at hand. We are alert for metaphor. A field with stubble from last season after a season of rest is fertile for the chance seed, spore, or threaded life.

:- Doug.

Only for the sake of the wrestle-dance.

:- Doug.

One even one must shh to open one’s ears—for what sings low as though through some long hollow didgeridoo of night—but here it is morning, no fog—this lonesome tree frog is sucking in from the air—a solitary mesmerizing woo-woo-woo.

:- Doug.

To wrestle-dance
to squeeze out
some art
perchance to invent
an image
—mistakenly in that
folks will find or create
intention, significance, guidance—
but meaning is off-true
for the choreography
of the living
moment
is the thing

:- Doug.

It webs and flows
this conversation stuff
and we along with

:- Doug.

What do you love? What brings you joy? Start your conversation here.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2228

Lovely day today. Comfortable, right at about 75. I have had the windows open in the office, an annual rite of spring. Rite in van Gennep: a changing of rooms (bringing the outdoors in); a going from secular to sacred (the breezes! O!); separation (opening the windows); liminality (springtime); incorporation (breathing in the breezes). Could this little ritual be image to invite me to live fully?

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 responsibility do we have to one another? In this conversation?

:- Doug.

Yes, find out who you are, then stand outside that to place yourself in the larger world, then discover yourself out in and an essential part of that world.

:- Doug.

A whole conversation is made of vulnerability and mistakes: cannot be whole without these.

:- Doug.

being amazed
at things outside yourself
is conversation

:- Doug.

A stepping out of oneself
ecstasy
found in conversation

:- Doug.

No better place
to be

:- Doug

Of what are you apprentice?

:- Doug.

We don’t know yet if this will be useful for us.

:- Doug.

Let it
find you

:- Doug.

of many things
faintly known
we are part

:- Doug.

I’m humanity
Can you say it?
So that I . . . .

:- Doug.

Is conversation an image?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2227

Conversing is discovery.

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