FootprintsintheWind.com

What do we not know? We do not know one another. We do not know what lies between and among us. We do not know the energies alive in the others and the amongs. So our work is in inventing, folding and unfolding all those others and betweens.

:- Doug.

How does finding what we do not know help us? It tells us where to turn our attention, next. Better, it tells us where the searches are apt to find the richness between us.

:- Doug.

If in conversation we act out the angles and flows of some larger or adjacent context we might feel the echoes resounding, and get an unvoiced sensory experience of how things are interlocked.

:- Doug.

How
and what
this hearer
hears
we cannot know
because this hearer
has not yet

:- Doug.

In conversation we talk in incomplete
ideas collide
others get it still
repetitious
meaning otherwise
saying same
differently heard

:- Doug.

How can we not prepare for conversation? We can gather our thoughts and information about the players, context, text, and subtext. We can think of the complexities of all these. Then throw away our notes, clear our minds. How can we not prepare for what we don’t see coming, for the things we don’t know we don’t know? In the midst of the conversation how can we unprepare the players for this conversation?

:- Doug.

Conversation is the constant unveiling of reality. Therefore, we cannot know, much less direct, outcomes. Conversation by nature seeks surprise.

:- Doug.

What does it mean for a conversation that it’s never that and nothing more?

:- Doug.

How might we continue a conversation? Is conversation ever over? How might we make sure it is never over?

:- Doug.

How might we go out of conversation?

:- Doug.

How might we go into conversation?

:- Doug.

We have a need for poetic imagination.

:- Doug.

Conversation exists, it is true, in time; it is hard to be heard if all speak at once. Conversation is also in space, in the bodies and heads and smiles and shouts of the players. Conversation is in the flows and emergences to and from the betweens and surround, the texts and contexts and subtexts. Conversation is in the also—the somethings more. So physical descriptors fit, but must be elastic, and must leave passages for more. It is the function which matters, not perfection.

:- Doug.

Be a conversation inexpert.

:- Doug.

Speak life!
Livingly
With abandon
Let beauty show
Speak breath!

:- Doug.

Thinking is strenuous work; we avoid it at all costs, including progress. We jump across to used thinking—called thoughts—ours and others’, because those fly easier and faster. The value of conversation is to stimulate new thinking work but it is mainly co-opted by thoughts, so we get mired without realizing. We’re excited by a “new” idea but just that fast it becomes a “used” thought. If it’s a thought, it’s used. We have to slog on.

:- Doug.

Just as thin-slicing strawberries puts us in touch with more sweetness and flavor, by being in touch with more of the betweens and players of a conversation we may find more life. When you slice a conversation what do you get to taste?

:- Doug.

It may be that the human animal is a good detector instrument for what has deep feeling in a conversation, for what touches spirit (as it is for BS). So others in a conversation likely feel what you do. Notice that people are excited and bored, by turns—but often together—in a group event. If true we can use this ability to observe conversations for what works.

:- Doug.

Do our conversations carry us deeper?

:- Doug.

In conversation, as in dreams, see yourself as each of the characters.

:- Doug.

So how is conversation a built thing, a thing being constructed, a beautiful thing found in the wood or streams? It takes work, strength, stretching. Its beauty is often found in rustic, unfinished places, a chance expression in a clumsy speaking out. It is learned, it is found, it is made of things supporting the beauty and function of one another.

:- Doug.

This balloon is where we live our days
With what we feel and love and fight and know
Enshrouded in our guesses thick as haze
At that edge! We touch our ignorance
Dare we poke our finger through—and grow?

:- Doug.

Freire is objectifying reality, pitting it over against us, showing it as a problem to be worked, with the purpose of transforming that reality. When we see we are oppressed by our own less than conscious ways of accepting our stunted humanity, in that act of seeing we have initiated our transformation. But it is a seed with only a first watering.

:- Doug.