FootprintsintheWind.com

Ask each other why you continue to meet as you do.

:- Doug.

Not underneath: behind the curtain.

:- Doug.

I have been avoiding the complexities, trying to simplify. Rather I should dive in, get overwhelmed and lost—admit it on the page.

:- Doug.

Conversation sets about opening spaces and possibilities with which neither of us was acquainted.

:- Doug.

Going forth toward meeting is like walking up to a curtain. You see a mere sliver of this one’s life. Perhaps the curtain parts with the breezes and you get more whiffs. You can poke holes to try to catch more, to hear more, to taste. Or you can walk away—those aromas do not call to you, even push you away. The curtain might be fabric, or fog, or forest. The curtain may not move easily. Your timing is off—you look as the curtain closes. Little do either of you know that this is how you appear to your other. Even less obviously, this is how you appear to yourself. I cannot see my own back, whether the hairs there have all turned white. You cannot see your own eyes (for your mirror reverses them); you cannot hear your own voice with fidelity. All we can ever do is poke more holes.

:- Doug.

Where do myth and ritual not overlap? In these places we can learn and grow.

:- Doug.

Revelation takes energy even before the work of it: for, it requires a dive into an essential complexity. All the strands of you are so entangled, to follow one means to move and twist nearly endlessly. Such effort!

:- Doug.

An academic writer used the word “diachronic.” We think this word means “through time.” What we slip by is that it refers to one kind of time—Chronos time—the countable tap, tap, tapping as it flows by. How empty the linear time that separates this from that, parent from child, you from thou! There is another time we inhabit—the time not of seconds but of moments. This is the outside of time Now, the “I forgot myself for hours,” instances. This is the ripe time. This is the ripe time.

:- Doug.

Stretch forth your mind
Wrap it around
Push its feelers into
The complexity
You would know

:- Doug.

Ritual is about to change.

:- Doug.

Ritual is about change.

:- Doug.

How did your father change and develop over the course of his lifetime?

:- Doug.

Being met is to the soul what oxygen is to the brain.

:- Doug.

Conversation is a place we can seriously and with respect make sense our our pasts, our futures, and our lives.

:- Doug.

Into the betweens we may find our selves dissolving.

:- Doug.

Imagination has an important rational element.

:- Doug.

What is your responsibility for this conversation?

:- Doug.

Questions we can ask each other midway into our conversation: What have we oversimplified? What is often oversimplified? What question does nobody ask? Where do you feel torn? Is there anything else about this subject?

:- Doug.

Together, create a list of 17 questions—for each other, for experts, for how others approach your subject.

:- Doug.

I’m curious
How can we help
Each other
Get more curious?
Are you curious about me?

:- Doug.

Why have a conversation? I have no great answers. None of us does. Do it anyway. Prepare to be surprised.

:- Doug.

At support group today, a lady told about keeping a log on everything her mother did during the day, so that she could pick up on patterns to tell her mother’s doctor. I wonder if we might together keep a log of our conversations and get some value from our patterns.

:- Doug.

In our conversation maps we might think we disappear. But what happens is “we” are everywhere, pouring through, over, and around each of us: soaking.

:- Doug.