FootprintsintheWind.com

What is the role of music, dance, dreams, poetry, and all the arts in eldering?

:- Doug.

Old folk remember. What could it mean for elders to remember? What, when, how many generations, in which directions? Might we also re-member?

:- Doug.

What are the challenges our world faces, long-term, enduring, touching generations, that we elders can affect?

:- Doug.

What’s conversation got to do with it? Everything!

:- Doug.

Keep asking each other for insights and wisdom and depth and profundity.

:- Doug.

What’s important now that wasn’t at 50?

:- Doug.

Eldering is a threshold—some cross, some hesitate, some refuse.

:- Doug.

What is the role of dreaming in Eldering?

:- Doug.

Tell us a story about wise people, wise actions.

:- Doug.

As elders, for whom shall we speak?

:- Doug.

Emergence in eldering: what have we seen in others?

:- Doug.

We can refuse to meet. Or we can meet. We are changed either way: calcified or flexed.

:- Doug.

Happening, not beings. No stream twice same. No human happens twice same. Whether meets or refuses.

:- Doug.

Where the direct way was lost
Maybe in Dante’s dark wood
Indirect ways open to us

:- Doug.

A threshold, a choice point, conscious or unconscious or subconscious or partly conscious, a fork of possibilities, a meeting place and a non-meeting place, betweens: all of these aspects of happening among two or more beings. Midst, thick, encompassed, enfolded, unfolded, surrounded.

:- Doug.

Becoming a we is riding a bicycle: continually falling and catching ourselves, coming back to our fall line.

:- Doug.

The betweens in conversation may describe a threshold—for instance of self-organization—where we might become a we or might stay on the other side: separate. Life is only found near this threshold, this fractal coast line; all else is death.

:- Doug.

As we move from middle age to elderhood it is possible something will emerge. A new phase, completely unexpected and unpredictable. Like water to ice, hydrogen and oxygen to wet, caterpillar to butterfly. If we look, we may hear: synesthesia.

As I have attended aging and wisdom, I have begun to see new things, new livingnesses.

:- Doug.

You may rest here in
the peace of mind which passes
from great tiredness

:- Doug.

Enfolding, unfolding
Evening, morning,
The next eon,
The next generation
Unfoldings, enfoldings

:- Doug.

child is born, mother
close enfolds, starts unfolding
ever: child, world: fold

:- Doug.

This is a fresh space in time
Conversation space
Hearing space
Wisdom space
Apart, a part, enfolded, unfolded

:- Doug.

Enfoldings unfoldings
Tuck into family
Go out to the world
Death, birth, which?
The way, our way,
All ways
Enfolding, unfolding

:- Doug.