FootprintsintheWind.com

Christopher Alexander writes of how every act of creation is creating something here, locally, and also accreting to the larger whole, globally. I am perceiving that what we are doing, in conversation as in building, is enhancing the whole by acts in the parts. Not constructing the whole from discrete parts. It is the whole doing the unfolding as David Bohm tells us. Not building blocks. We cannot know the whole human from the cells in her knee. It is the whole we are working on, even if only putting a stamp on an envelope.

:- Doug.

Worth a Try

:- Doug.

Conversation is high adventure, too: “Very few see science as the high adventure it really is, the wildest of all explorations ever undertaken by human beings, the chance to catch close views of things never seen before, the shrewdest maneuver for discovering how the world works.” Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, p 154. Then again, science is a conversation—in theorems, studies, papers, and books.

:- Doug.

The river conversation: the course narrows, speeds. Just here, the falls. This is as far as most will go. To make it, your canoe must be well thought out, well constructed. You will probably survive, but likely you will be bloodied and lose some of your parts.

:- Doug.

The End of Conversation

:- Doug.

Your conversation, your life

:- Doug.

Starting with a story
Starts the conversing

:- Doug.

Here is for us a central unanswered question: Which of these musings are the one or two things which are true? Can we get better at discovering our errors sooner, better at turning our errors to life’s use?

:- Doug.

Deep ambiguities
high uncertainty
make more life in conversation

:- Doug.

A mystery: many times the most central feature of conversation is lack of a predictable, clear, and usable product; what’s the value then?

:- Doug.

Conversation keeps us at one another.

:- Doug.

In conversation
surprise
unchoosable

:- Doug.

Why would we ever want to emerge from the great depths of mystery of being? Isn’t this the good stuff?

:- Doug.

We are
built for
ambiguity

:- Doug.

Sometimes, the real meaning of what you hear or what you say is only caught in the corner of the mind.

:- Doug.

Is our conversation humans only talking with humans? Why?

:- Doug.

The sounds of your words fade from ears quickly—so how then does the conversation bring about change?

:- Doug.

Far enough
then a step beyond

:- Doug.

In meditation/contemplation I tell myself: Relax! I’m simply learning about myself and my so-called mind.

:- Doug.

So, let me invite you into what I don’t know about conversation, with the request that you help me add the word “yet.”

:- Doug.

So do we end up with everything being an unrolling as far as we can, or as far as close enough, and then leave the conversation? Is that the answer to all we do not or cannot know? That is too facile. Should we not keep wrestling? If so, what do we get? Surprised! Or, surprised? There is of course no answer or solution to life. We only keep on putting one foot ahead of the other. Beyond surprised, we discover, sometimes, a new branch to our path. And that is life!

:- Doug.

We can make some good guesses about what is implicit in conversation, we can make explicit what we want it to be about, knowing we can never know all that is enfolded, and these can help us unroll conversation a bit further. Far enough to take a next action.

:- Doug.

To what extent is getting inside each other necessary to conversation? What does getting inside the other even mean? Can the other even know what their own thoughts are in any full or complete way? Indeed, might this be where conversation helps entice us to being a person?

:- Doug.