FootprintsintheWind.com

Our deeper primary meanings
touch before think

:- Doug.

The elephant’s share of conversation is unconscious, and inaccessible to words. How then do we sit in the presence of these messages without denuding them or outright killing them? Can we attend without wanting to bring them to our consciousness?

:- Doug.

Can we converse. . .better?

:- Doug.

Can we learn? Can we likewise forget? Can we find again?

:- Doug.

We can have continual change, some progressive (cumulative) and some not.

:- Doug.

If for the stability of the community the variable must alter but never maximize, then human growth and learning must progress by a drunken tipsy walking.

:- Doug.

However we may be constituted, as mammals for example, we can learn. It is perhaps here where my work finds home.

:- Doug.

I seem to be studying some by random juxtaposition, for example Gregory Bateson’s climax/orgasm as the goal orientation of our culture.

:- Doug.

Progress in this work is slower, more gentle and delicate than I had expected, and yet felt.

:- Doug.

Humans possess a desire to know another—to grasp the other’s experience. This is likely beneath and before languages. It is the first conversation.

:- Doug.

Conversation, like breathing, must be done again every time. No matter how perfect the last one, we must start all over with the next, if we are to keep living. Is there progress? Is there getting better? We may get better at whatever breathing allows us to do. Conversation, unlike breathing, is seemingly more open to conscious attempts at influence. There is a chance to get better.

:- Doug.

Rather than state my premise and then list the evidence, sneak up to it—surprise my reader as I was surprised.

:- Doug.

Lesson: Leave room for the unseen. Unseen origins, unrecalled stories, unnoticed thoughts. The collisions and tangling of these. These move us more than we consciously know. Leave room in the circle.

:- Doug.

A goal, a change, is a crap-trap.

:- Doug.

Does conversation have stages?

:- Doug.

What is the preparation for conversation?

:- Doug.

I find evocative the betweens of the betweens and the befores of the betweens. How do I show others?

:- Doug.

Our history is a language; our family history is a language; our cultural history is a language.

:- Doug.

I am not working with the problems, but with the problem-makers.

:- Doug.

Conversation turns. Conversation needs turning. Conversation subverts.

:- Doug.

My working question is: What can theater, architecture, sign language, dreams, sharing food, and all the other languages teach us about doing conversation well?

:- Doug.

Life is in conversation.

:- Doug.

I seem to be a non-institutional Christian.

:- Doug.