FootprintsintheWind.com

You as reader, pulling out words from me as writer, together we are transfiguring conversing. We are finding things not seen in tame society, not often. We are going to places past edges and asking “What if?” We are finding and creating: the whole intent of inventing. In our momentary meetings, any day, this day, inventing conversation. This serves our grandchildren. This serves humanity. This serves life. We are finding something we never found before.

:- Doug.

Tell stories as thought experiments.

:- Doug.

Whatever it might be, there is a part of you standing in the way: the way of friendship; the way of breakthrough; the way to the new and living. There is a story, there, in the air. Reach up. Pick it. Let it whisper. Hold it. Tell it.

:- Doug.

Conversation is not a place. Conversation comes to be through imagination. Conversation is imaginary.

:- Doug.

Conversation is entraining. Conversation is locking our phases together, into one.

:- Doug.

Words are devices and not necessary to conversation.

:- Doug.

Does conversation ripen?

:- Doug.

Good heart, good head, make good talk.

:- Doug.

Your words lead to your actions. Your conversation more so because you are committing yourself to another.

:- Doug.

Anticipation is hope. Foresee, look for, await.

:- Doug.

Do we converse for its pleasure, “sing for the joy of singing?” (Do I ask questions for the joy of the questions?)

:- Doug.

This book continues to be a voyage of exploration and uncovering.

:- Doug.

I have a secret. Everyone in this room has a secret. Everyone in town has a secret. It is a job of conversation to tantalize out one person from the other these secrets. Neither do I know the half of mine. Nor do you yours. We, through conversation, help. Yet there is also a conundrum: What are we here for, together? A secret plus a conundrum. Two separate things. A smaller and a larger. A single and a multiple. But seldom do we notice how our shadows play! There, on the sidewalk. There, behind us. There, out of sight. Consider conversation as an active agent. With its own purposes. A third level of hidden: a mystery.

:- Doug.

We sometimes have difficulty getting through our conversation, reaching any destination at all. There is another possibility: Conversation is playing the mouse to our cat. In other words, concealing itself, its intent, its purpose, from us.

:- Doug.

I start the hole, but I do not drill to the very bottom. I leave for you the water or oil or ore you find. I merely point out the thing of beauty and worth.

:- Doug.

How do we remember and perceive the person, our beloved, who is now dead?

:- Doug.

Maybe we fear the big questions more that the conversations. Big questions: what are they? Questions perhaps that touch the timbers on which we stand, way up there in the sky where we have arrogated to place ourselves.

:- Doug.

True, raw conversation cannot be done alone. Each must work with each. Hear this: Each must work with both.

:- Doug.

Some other place
a conversation might yet be
a spell to be enjoyed

Here we may be seen to sleep. And when we dream, another speaks. In dreams, we are each every character. We hear. Our dreams change. (It does not have to be the playwright’s script, nor the spectator’s revision. It does not have to be the spell as first cast, for even spells are malleable, subject to happenings.)

:- Doug.

The conversation is, in itself, a spell.

:- Doug.

Is there a role for imagination and memory in conversation, do they exercise a power?

:- Doug.

Don’t push the wave.

:- Doug.

I was walking to the edge
of my lands: my yard

:- Doug.