If we want to get to depths we need not only be alert for when they appear, but to plumb for them in likely places and times. Places might be people, these people; times might be more mercurial yet subject to being probed with questions, jocularity, lightness, invitation, and story.
:- Doug.
Notice the poetry from the last few days: I have chosen small things and concrete. Just here are the shared, the common, the things which come to our hands, to which we all belong, which remind us of our belonging.
:- Doug.
Even if we can or can never know these things—meaning, long, deep—is there worth in proceeding beyond knowing, beyond even the desire to know?
:- Doug.
What long views can we find in conversation? Long in the sweep of history: time. Long in what all is taken in: spatial width, depth, height. Long outside time: now, eternity. Long outside space: one, universe. Long as a force co-extensive with the universe, maybe long is the stuff of the universe. Long outside the players while including them. Surely long is longer than these.
:- Doug.
If I were to write a chapter or a section of a chapter on the role of meaning in conversation, how could it be done to make it other than a chore and a bore?
:- Doug.
What are the roles of meaning in conversation? Meaning is a reward for engaging. Meaning is a draw. The opportunity to find meaning in this conversation; the opportunity to express my meaning; the opportunity to explore my meaning, to examine it. Meaning makes work. Meaning creates discomfort. Meaning accuses. Meaning repels people. Meaning repels fun. Meaning draws us to our more. Meaning must be more than these.
:- Doug.
What does deep mean in conversing? Are there paths to it? Why do we avoid this question? Is it too difficult? Why is it difficult? Are there too many ways to define deep? Is it recognizable? Will we know when we arrive? Will we only know after it is over? Can it be sought? Can one open to it? Can more than one open to it? Does it require that both arrive? Is it about intimacy, knowing one another? What does deep mean to me?
:- Doug.
Well then, what approach to conversing? Open to the possibility of conversing, open to going deep.
:- Doug.
It is not necessary to say the all in all is conversation; the smaller thing more clearly so, is that humans react to one another, they converse with one another almost every day, almost all of them. Conversation is the human world.
:- Doug.
Of course it is impossible to define conversation: it is as impossible to define the limits of what is real, because once you have done it, then you have something else next to it which is not real, and how can that be? Do I need to simply love the question: What is it to engage?
:- Doug.
Perhaps conversation is not diffused through space but is space itself, like Einstein’s gravitational field: we have a conversational field?
:- Doug.
I keep looking for the end of things in my life—get through the task, the meeting, the next thing—while the end of things is in the middle. Live where I am, partake of life.
:- Doug.
While we watched, it happened: It is processing that creates the thing, the artifact (not the other way round), but processing is where we live, act, move, bring being and existence to life. It is not the result we are after, but partaking.
:- Doug.
If we could find out for ourselves what conversation is and how to converse, we might get past our fights with one another, past wars and violence. We might argue well, dispute, get angry, love, and get our backs up—and get along after and anyway.
:- Doug.
You are only you in this context. In another setting with other people you are a different you. What accounts for the difference? And the unity?
:- Doug.
What happens in conversation? What happens in each player? In both at once together? In between the two? In society? In even larger contexts? What happens outside conversation?
:- Doug.
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