New persons happen
Conversation is where new things can happen. Indeed it is where new persons happen.
:- Doug.
Archive for the 'Conversations' Category
This child asks
Conversation, indeed meeting, is a creation of we two persons, two complexities. It might even be a child of us. We must, we must, make stunned silences in our child’s presence. Our child is not a thing shouted into a barren land, but nevertheless its voice echoes back: its echoes are returning as whimpers and whispers. This child tries out its limbs, it cries out, it is demanding, for it has something to give, we have something to receive. This child asks to be lived with.
:- Doug.
The finding we find
Communication is not the primary intent of conversation. It is more likely found in finding. The finding we find is one another. The finding sometimes is ourselves. The finding tends toward our humanity. The finding is continual, though we may not be conscious we are finding anything whatsoever.
:- Doug.
Out-of-timeness
When in conversing curiosity reaches out to and shifts into passion, then we come close to meeting. Yet it is not a pure reaching out but a blending—something pulls us. More than this, something is mutual. It is not about taking turns though that might happen. Often in feels as though it is a happening-all-at-once, an out-of-timeness.
:- Doug.
Must come out
In conversation we seek beyond the connection between we two and beyond the reception one of the other: We seek the expression of something hidden in me that it might be received by a specific and particular you. Something wants, and needs, and must come out. There is no in without an out.
:- Doug.
Tense silence
How might we find our way to be in tense silence and still be near, to give love?
:- Doug.
Direction interferes
Bringing direction to conversation, consciously working to make sense, or to move toward something, could interfere.
:- Doug.
some*one* at stake
Meeting, more than conversation, needs something to be at stake: it has to be about something; someone has to be affected. No mush here.
:- Doug.
I’d tell you, but
Today in a support group for care partners, one woman told us about her husband. I do not say he suffers from his dementia, since she is the one who suffers more often. He was reading the newspaper classified ads. She asked him what he was reading. He answered, “I’d tell you, but its classified.” A meeting, a memory, a legacy.
:- Doug.
To de-familiarize
The purpose of conversation as of poetry is often to de-familiarize us and re-familiarize us.
:- Doug.
Outer edges
Things which just barely touch conversation are in fact the outer edges of conversation, its learning places. Listening, hearing, attending become positive acts of expression: strands inseparable from the knot that is conversation.
:- Doug.
Savoring not stopping
What we are working toward in conversation is a consummation, not a mere cessation. We savor not solely at the conclusion, but throughout. We circle it. It infuses the whole. Here is a wholeness. A wholeness that does not know where it is going—our adventure!
:- Doug.
Enduring grace, charm, beauty
Can we converse in a way that brings enduring grace, charm, and beauty to our offerings and our receptions?
:- Doug.
Becoming a monster
When you start to take even one other human as a monster, that’s you, becoming.
:- Doug.
A word, an echo, a perfume
How will you know you are in meeting? Reality tells us we may not know till days or years later. Memory may pop, and you know now what it was. A flash catches you in a later meeting, telling you both were and still are meetings. A word, an echo, a perfume remains, stays with you.
:- Doug.
Undoing the rounding
What makes our meeting memorable is when we manage to round it out. That makes it a meeting. This is why Harrison Owen said that overstaying can undo the meeting. We are undoing the rounding, fraying the threads.
:- Doug.
We cannot hide
We cannot hide
who we are
from others
except the others
don’t know
how to consciously
read what we reveal
:- Doug.
