FootprintsintheWind.com

In a living conversation we are creating a story, and ultimately a story of our life by making this anecdote, this chapter.

:- Doug.

About conversation
What have we
Missed
Lost
Hidden?

:- Doug.

Trees have learned
To live long
Grow slowly

:- Doug.

The emptiness between us might at any moment become pregnant.

:- Doug.

Our betweens are not only what flows from you to me and back, but also the empty space.

:- Doug.

The old man rode upon a snowflake
Holding on but loosely, loosely
“Alive!” he shouts into the wind
And Wind returns his word to him:
“Your ember blown upon, now flames—Alive!”

:- Doug.

Snowflakes may be in conversation with other snowflakes, or maybe not. They are in conversation with the wind, floating along, perhaps wheeling when blown sideways-on. In reacting to the other—and even the wind is turned, minutely, upon touching the flake—is conversing. The flake converses with others when it lands, and with the grass and the ground, as it settles in, as it melts into the substrate. Just this little is conversation, is life. And the wind whistles to the wind.

:- Doug.

Are there kinds of conversations and are they different from their purposes? I am beginning to think that conversation has to be peripatetic, jumping from I am friendly to let’s get to work to let’s get down to business to hey how about this to joking to laughter and banter to something deeply complex, all within seconds and without prediction. There are no straight line conversations. We need relief from one direction every few minutes or less. Our minds are that way, riding this wave of energy and then jumping to a different train going another way.

:- Doug.

I feel like I keep getting to new ratchet-places and there is nothing to say: the steps before no longer exist for me.

:- Doug.

I am stuck in Cartesian thinking! I was attracted to this phrase the fabric of space as a locus for life. Now I see “fabric” as a Cartesian “machine-like” thing or structure. To be manipulated. Then when done, it is “fixed,” and can be “used.” To accomplish some “thing” I want to have or have happen. Ahh! But if I see it as flowing living, it becomes a dog with its own energy and deciding. So if conversation is not a fabric to be folded, wrung, washed but rather organic pulsing to ride, cooperate with, intensify, and awaken, then what?

:- Doug.

I am beginning to see that if everything has some life, the stones, the stars, then life is striving upward to more complexity, more inter-plaiting, to where there is consciousness, and whatever is beyond consciousness.

:- Doug.

We are engaged in awakening each other and the stuff without a name that we flow within when we become most alive.

:- Doug.

People love something. Start here. Not there.

:- Doug.

In conversation, some players function as fenestration, opening windows, doors, or skylights. Some close them. I want to be an opener.

:- Doug.

We could study each conversation in which we find ourselves. Listen to our own variometer. Find the flows. Give a look, voice a sound, send an intention to nurture this upflow, repair some other.

:- Doug.

Would you like to live? That’s news you can use.

:- Doug.

Deeper Together

:- Doug.

Seeing with our “together eyes” is a higher logical level than seeing each person in his or her own orbital path.

:- Doug.

I was worried that there would be no thrust to the book, the thesis, other than the drumbeat of What do we not know? The question is really, What do we not know of life? Then again, the question might be, Don’t we already know all we need to know of life? To keep learning it?

:- Doug.

How is all this news we can use? We cannot predict what your subjects will be. We cannot even suggest a method or create a statement of action or principles. However, we can state its purpose. Your purpose in conversing is life and all its closest living relatives: freedom; appropriateness; wholeness; fullness.

From here, all opens out.

:- Doug.

In what kind of a conversation can you like yourself, feel good about the whole conversation?

:- Doug.

As one person or between in this conversation is lifted, we too are lifted.

:- Doug.

Wholeness includes centers which appear, grow, and fade away as life dynamically goes on. Events are centers, and the gaps between centers and people. Pure actions are centers. All parts of the wholeness.

:- Doug.