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A central question to ask of conversation is “What’s important here?” I got to this question from reading something from Mitchell Feigenbaum who observed that what we pick out when remembering past civilizations is not their great wealth nor their power. Rather, we look to their art. Art asks What advances us as a species? What lifts us up? That is, What lasts, What is important? To answer the What’s important question for conversation with “how well we communicate,” is to miss the mark. Such an answer issues forth words when you ought to be still. Conversation is wondrous stuff. It carries immensity in small packages.

It startles
Finding big stuff
In your ear

:- Doug.

What is the human conversation over geologic time? Mandelbrot once famously asked if the earth had a climate. What he seemed to ask was whether earth had a usual, a predictable climate. This prompted me to ask if there is a usual, a predictable conversation over history and before history? How could we find out? One way would be to look to our stories, our folk tales and our myths, not so much for what we usually seek: wisdom and history of thought. Rather to seek out how we conversed. Can we inspect the Grimm brothers collection? This collection is barely more than 200 years old. But it probably collects stories transmitted orally for hundreds of years before that. But what do we know about tales around the campfires and at the streams for millennia? And the songs that we sang before we knew fire? How might we discover them? What might they tell us about what it means to converse humanly?

:- Doug.

Not even love of money is the root of all evil. More fundamentally it is fear, that is, fear of dying. Money we think can forestall dying, maybe make us immortal. Those who bet on it are soon parted from their money.

:- Doug.

So much of what is available to read about communication treats it as two dimensioned. A point is one dimension; a line is two dimensions; a hamburger is three dimensions. So I was wrong: it is only one dimensioned, since we are not given to see the line between us as persons, only the point here and the point there, that is, you and me. What might be second and third and more dimensions? Intention and subtext might be a second. Environment, such as background noise level may be a third. Energy a fourth. Imagination and its level of activation a fifth. Attraction of personality a sixth. Relative powers of the two and their perceptions of them a seventh and eighth. Others?

:- Doug.

How does a glacier touch and interact with land and air?

:- Doug.

Metaphors teach too in difference as in likeness.

:- Doug.

Imagine if you will a land of hills and mounts, rivers and deep valleys, hidden places and grand views, a wrinkled land, a land of sloughs and caves beneath caves and great rushing rivers beneath those, critters who have never seen the sun, and others aboveground of fin and feather, fur and skin, many unseen and unnamed. This is your homeland. You came from this land. You became a person here. This land is called by a gentle name: conversation.

:- Doug.

What is our responsibility to our conversational partner?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2283

The one who brings a scrap
The one who brings a scrap
of beauty wins—for us

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© 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

Resistance is a necessary experience.

:- Doug.

He could not talk the same way anymore.

:- Doug.

I wonder if. . . convection arises in conversation, and if so, where from? If so, must it be dissipative? Does dog-kick enter in?

:- Doug.

With you out there, conversing, we can never have the last hot chocolate.

:- Doug.

This may have to be a book of letting conversation teach me its secrets.

:- Doug.

Specifics are more general than generalities. After all, they are everywhere.

:- Doug.

When someone says something different from what you meant or expected, take it as a sign you’re about to learn. Especially look for people going at a slant from you.

:- Doug.

Conversation = Courage

:- Doug.

All rumors to the contrary, humans have a limit to their imaginations. Why else would movie studios buy rights to books? Their screenwriters would have stories ever-flowing. We have apparently only a certain amount of imagination which requires a good intake of nourishment. The rest of our minds are as boring as a deepening rut in the mud. Call it the Constant of Imagination. Too much or two little and we get in trouble.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2282

When
you feel that little nettlesome
ruffle in the back of your craw
when you find the satisfaction
of spontaneous hugs from
your grandchildren within play
when you just can’t get through
to your beloved about taking that trip
when life is now is life
is grit is gristle is grind
is grand
now is when
the ineffable makes song
this shared talking
whatever it is
is life
is when
and why and plenum and life’s
workshop

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

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2280

Wrestling by my writing
Those learned and trained and tired ways
Mechanical dull footed lists and recitals
And pressed imagination
What lives beyond and fills the cool air
Can give us life
Give us us

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

This is a work of wandering, telling ourselves to stay curious.

:- Doug.

There was an arrow to our conversation, and so in some sense a theme, but that only developed as the conversation twined about us.

:- Doug.

Conversation is a creative exercise. What do we create? Persons alive. It is a messy kitchen that seldom gets cleaned up: things out of place; ingredients added in the wrong order; Food on the floor and in my hair; smears on the apron.

Lively means moving, and process. The process includes making other recipes, that is other conversations.

:- Doug.