FootprintsintheWind.com

What sort of ancestor are you? Already?

:- Doug.

Might you be destroyer of
comfort
without intending it?
Or, might you be down on all fours
crying
I don’t know what to do with this
Or, telling stories
over
till someone may find
you
or something of value
Or, will you document
the sayings of
your
elders
and if so
to what purpose?
Those who came before you
with these you are one
cannot help but be—
you were born weren’t you?
And there will be someone there after you
you will chance to meet

:- Doug.

What is the long fuse of the historical experiment?

:- Doug.

Simply now turn
face the long true direction
two strands of grass
from the same root
blown by time’s winds

:- Doug.

Ancestor watches
Ancestor waits
Friend grown patient
From what soil and waters
Did you come?

:- Doug.

What is your ancestral home?

:- Doug.

What for you is half a lifetime so far? What is half a lifetime more?

:- Doug.

What kind of ancestor—is not about the future. It is not even about you or what you do. It is about you as a pipe: What will flow thro’ you?

:- Doug.

Now, we notice everything.

:- Doug.

The seeing I seek is what I see when I close my eyes—is it itself the opening?

:- Doug.

What kind of between us-cestor do you want to be?

:- Doug.

I can do something for these children of mine—I can affect some who will be changed by the echoes—touching them in the viscera.

:- Doug.

Attach our imaginings to a landscape—lift your eyes.

:- Doug.

What if we take in the earth as a living organism, a being with a need to exist like us. As elders, are we not guardians, temperature-takers, news bringers?

:- Doug.

Might we interrogate the world in our conversations?

:- Doug.

Our job: plant seed-conversations where and when we can.

:- Doug.

We cannot get there
except by starting
the conversation

:- Doug.

We are closest to finding our way to stepping outside of time, or at least outside its rushing.

:- Doug.

This turning is toward our sacred project.

:- Doug.

How did humans transform the Internet, the computer, the aeroplane, the horseless carriage?

:- Doug.

Can we foster conversation about better ways to be human?

:- Doug.

We share not so much what we have learned, as what we are realising.

:- Doug.

Meet your eleventh generation grandchild, and ask his or her name.

:- Doug.