FootprintsintheWind.com

I have much good work and big to do.

:- Doug.

The flow of ancestors itself the conversation. The turning over? The swirling? Of course. Pillows and vees, quiet waters and vortices. Get away from words! Hear music, feel dance, think not thinking. Attention is in the paying.

:- Doug.

How does one converse with those folks 11 generations on? It cannot be merely me, as the wise one from the past, telling what to do, or even sharing wisdom. There is a flow of ancestors: it can be conversation. How the conversation happens, and what the subject is, is larger than I have a hint about.

:- Doug.

Bigger work in the world is possible and some of it involves diving into the stream of ancestors.

:- Doug.

Small conversation and long

:- Doug.

What will you tell
grandchildren who come after
about this time?

:- Doug.

In a time such as this
she said to me
I ponder

:- Doug.

The whole country wants a single word or short slogan handle by which to hold life. Life is more complex and fine. It will not. Thankfully.

:- Doug.

I stopped reading tonight before the end of the chapter. It was a page too far.

:- Doug.

We cannot know how humancity will grow, nor even what it is. After all these generations, how little we know of the mystery that is us. Nor can we with accuracy devise in what direction to head. Would it be useful to send out expeditions, test and try?

:- Doug.

It’s been a good day for poetry
a good day

:- Doug.

I am feeling relaxed today, less stressed than in weeks, and yet strangely perturbed over the question of flow in the eastern sense, and that on the verge of almost finding my way in this forest. It is only my mind perturbed, my soul is at ease. Perhaps. I do love that metaphor of loving the forest, being at home in the woods, a root among the tangles of roots.

:- Doug.

And
altruism is no choice
woven intrinsically within our imagination

:- Doug.

I engage in a search for meaning
the gift to the generations in that
is search

:- Doug.

Altruism is a choice
a choice of stance in life
how are you going to spend life?

:- Doug.

Here is not why I am here.

:- Doug.

Singing into the future of a human race.

:- Doug.

What is the interplay between accident and intention in history and in day to day life? And habit—does it have elements of each?

:- Doug.

My days from here will need to be a mix of writing/thinking and reading/exploring/imagining: turning the compost, piling on more fuel. Youthful putting out to sea; age-full returning with specks of protein, maybe useful. Inviting others to the quest.

:- Doug.

If we cannot know, in which directions do we make our guesses? Where does our branch of humanity and humanicity head, and how might it affect the others? Truth, if that is important, is that we cannot know how it will turn out, and does it matter in the long range scheme of things?

If we cannot know and it might not matter, why do anything? Party for tomorrow we die is equally valid, yes?

But yet. . . .

I want to make lives better. I do not know what that means, and truly what I do may tie them in knots, leave them with problems or conundrums. There will always be puzzles, there they are already every day and these generations will not likely blame us as people say: they will take their conditions as the way the world is, and from here we make the next move. There is no checkmate, just an endless game of endless moves, so the work is not on the end but on moving.

This is the way of turning the unending circles into spirals, into branches. Endless branches and spirals, to better from here. There is not better; but from here to there can be better.

:- Doug.

What are—and might be—the great themes of humanicity? Wit, stupidity, cupidity, emotion, sharpness, love, fear, mistake, entanglement, argument, diversity, enslavement, imagination, reverence, spirit, reverie, liberty, egality, fraternity, verb, adjective, variability, steadfastness, weakenss, strength, vulnerability, mix: these and so many. Work. Hear.

:- Doug.

What you can
          imagine
can be
What you cannot
          imagine
is more
          likely

:- Doug.

We may not always go up
slides are sometimes long
and enduring

:- Doug.