Example no and yes
These pages are not an example of how artwork looks, that is, ends up. But it is an example of the approach to the beast.
:- Doug.
Archive for the 'Conversations' Category
Starting points?
When we’re family we still come at things from starkly different directions. He walked out of therapy carrying his crutches in his right hand. “Hi” he said to me, I said “Hello,” and noticing his surgical boot almost said “That makes you dangerous,” but he was past me quickly. Five steps back his daughter (I guessed) hustled to catch up. “You’re trouble,” she said. I hazarded she approached the little event from safety, he from feeling free. I could be wrong about what they each saw; but am I wrong about starting points?
:- Doug.
Curiosity offers respect
Curiosity offers respect
All are created
Equal in dignity
Which of your stories
Withhold?
:- Doug.
Beyond hard work
I’ve been saying conversation requires and is about hard work. Yes, it is hard work, but that is not what it is about. It’s about imagination. An imagination calling forth curiosity. An imagination calling forth playfulness.
:- Doug.
Commitment to sisterhood
Conversation is a commitment, not an add-on: a commitment to humanity, to sisterhood, to Being.
:- Doug.
out & over & held
Endless the depths
of our night sky
Scientia imagines
our universe rounded
just not measurable
So we find ourselves
each planet each person
at the center of the ball
moving apart
Or maybe we are on
the ball’s surface in
a viscous fluid
gathering ‘round
a hearth
these depths
out & over & held
are not, perhaps,
deep & out & over & held
but
:- Doug.
Can always go back
We know more of a friend at a later stage of our development than an earlier. Why should it surprise us that we can always go back with curiosity?
:- Doug.
Cascading over your head
When you were speaking, what of your friend did you take in? Go back—was it his face, what her hands were doing, whether she was distracted or bored? Early in her dementia, when irritated with me, my sister would bend her fingers and unbend them in a characteristic way—what was going on for her? While speaking, what did you hear of him—laughter, snicker, an encouraging hmm, farts? Did she reach to touch your hand, your shoulder? Did you catch an aroma or even taste? To what extent did you escape from your words and gestures so you could receive? Receive from his or her multitudes cascading over your head?
:- Doug.
What stands in our way
The things you want most to give to others may be precisely what stands in our way—Being’s way.
:- Doug.
Lifting a hair?
When others stand in your presence, what of human Being do they hear? What through you do they taste, sniff, see, feel? What breeze of Being lifts a hair on their head? Can you stand out of the way?
:- Doug.
Deciphering one another
In conversing we are opening windows, doors, and skylights into each other’s worlds—again, we are deciphering the poems we are—then entering—then coming back into our own world, now larger.
:- Doug.
Each reflects all
To enter into one other person’s life—to seek to understand that person’s history and ways—to walk in his moccasins, look out through her eyes—is to somehow touch the lives of all persons. Each one of us is a microcosm. Each one reflects all. Said another way, all are jewels on Indra’s net.
:- Doug.
Anger, pain overcome
Anger and pain can be overcome if only in part, by reaching out of my little balled-up self and entering by imagination into the life of my friend who has hurt me, or whom I have wounded. Of course, it only goes one way, heals only one side, my own. But there is a chance it touches my friend.
:- Doug.
Wispy the breezes
Wispy the breezes
from you from me
satiation
is probably
not what we want
:- Doug.
Your last chance
Grab this conversation
‘Tis your last chance
This day is soon gone
This moment, week, year
Life
:- Doug.
