FootprintsintheWind.com

Say to him, “Here”
Say to her, “Now”
Leave only air

:- Doug.

The secret
In the vase
May be sacred

:- Doug.

Like a child, if it is to thrive, a conversation must be wanted, fed, and cared for.

:- Doug.

The work of conversation resides in what seem to be opposites: We must at once focus our minds on total presence to all the other says, to the tone in which he says it, to the surrounds of both of us; and we must lose our minds and selves forgetting who and where we are.

:- Doug.

The art of conversation might be found in poetry.

:- Doug.

This is not an exchange of words. It is a conversation. It may even become a meeting.

:- Doug.

Inner is like a lens, even a wormhole to other dimensions, other worlds, to be known and unknown.

:- Doug.

Conversation is where new things can happen. Indeed it is where new persons happen.

:- Doug.

Conversation is a discovery of our dance.

:- Doug.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How might we find our way to be in tense silence and still be near, to give love?

:- Doug.

Bringing direction to conversation, consciously working to make sense, or to move toward something, could interfere.

:- Doug.

Is deeper fuller?

:- Doug.

We listen, why? To hear, to take in, to merge, to become more.

:- Doug.

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.

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.

The purpose of conversation as of poetry is often to de-familiarize us and re-familiarize us.

:- Doug.

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.

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.

Can we converse in a way that brings enduring grace, charm, and beauty to our offerings and our receptions?

:- Doug.