What do I mean by, or see in, the word center as applied to me as a human? It largely is a pivot point around which all orbits, and I need to say, turns: my history, my moods, my wishes, and on. Less explicitly but more influentially it is source of me, who I “really” am—more infolded and less in awareness.
:- Doug.
Now that we’ve warmed up, let’s do some stretches with these conversations! And Twists!
:- Doug.
It is curious—it calls me to turn my head sideways—that Rome was built on military conquest, yet its language is so cerebral, disconnected from body blows. Then there is Old English which is almost aboriginal, physical at least, though maybe not connected to earth and surrounds.
:- Doug.
If the conversation sticks and won’t go further? Ask each other, and ask the conversation, what would it feel like, be like, if we got through this? What is the way at this moment?
:- Doug.
Focusing might help get to the more complex infolded intricate parts of conversation.
:- Doug.
For our conversations, in our conversations, call us to a new primal conversation.
:- Doug.
Maybe this elation I feel at the first snowfall is a body sense. I just felt it again after weeks of warm winter weather. The dusting of snow, powdered sugar on the green grass, brought on a drizzly nose. And the elation. Something may be going on under my notice. And I was reminded in my reading that my body is large: beyond my skin to the curvature of the universe!
:- Doug.
“This,” he said, gesturing with the bread to all that surrounded him, “this is my body; this is my blood. Take it into you thoroughly. Eat. Drink.” Maybe this is how he meant it. All of this is my body, all of this flows, life through me. His example inspirits me.
:- Doug.
Innately we know right from wrong. I have wondered why this is so. Could it be we are so hitched to one another that our souls, our bodies, know what will break the hitches?
:- Doug.
Limit my writing to unanswering questions and evoking curiosity—wonderments.
:- Doug.
To set goals is to live in future, some Then that never can arrive, because you allow no now.
:- Doug.
Separate beings
disappear
skin and boundaries
semi permeable
irrelevant
one event
pulsing
:- Doug.
Use shared art making—a play, a dramatic reading of any book at hand, a dance, a song: this might whisper us into a new and necessary conversation. A new and fecund and necessary companionship, sharing of bread, society.
:- Doug.
A provokes B’s energy, B evokes A’s energy, inertia is overcome.
Until it gets old and boring.
Thus energy requires apartness as well. So C meets A, D meets B. New colors of sparks. More faces of qwoan, more sides to the die. Die becomes dice.
This is the work and play of collaboration. Interject next a few friends, near and far, chance encounters with acquaintances and strangers: the universe sings!
:- Doug.
Every encounter you have one and two-thirds powers to create, make, call forth, invent, other persons. The first power is to hear the being facing you into existence as person. The two-thirds power is what the two of you have jointly to give birth to, bring forth, your composite person. It is two-thirds not one-half because each of you must go farther than to the meeting point. And no, you cannot bring yourself forth as a person—only the other can, by hearing you, taking you in, respecting you. You can’t do this for yourself. Can you tickle yourself?
:- Doug.
Maybe we do become, as Nachmanovitch proposes, an organism made up of a group of two. What can we abduce of this organism: it has its own organelles and cilia, speaking orifices, and an augmented shared brain and will.
:- Doug.
In this process we create a language, just we two. A rhythm, a shorthand, a manner. We drop consonants, vowels, and whole words. A look, a bob, a pointing is enough, a lot. Even though we cannot be sure what each means, we are sure enough.
:- Doug.
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