FootprintsintheWind.com

A chrysalis is a liminal space.

:- Doug.

This is not the whole story of conversation, but it might be a start on the story of whole conversation.

:- Doug.

That conversation cannot resolve.

:- Doug.

What’s the difference between the advertising song “Liberty, Liberty, Liberty,” and Handel’s “Messiah?” Between “Mairzy Doats” and Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah?” How much do each of them affect you? Which are more significant to you? Do you think others share your reaction? Which are models for your most important conversations?

:- Doug.

Don’t fight your meditation and contemplation, don’t run after good or bad: It is doing what it does all the time.

:- Doug.

What might be the meaning you find in being part of a living, ever growing, whole?

:- Doug.

Thresholds make conversation a work in progress, a limbo, and might bring no presently visible way out.

:- Doug.

Threshold conversations probably cannot be finished in one sitting. It may be that the more radical the change or shift engendered, the more is processing needed.

:- Doug.

But what if we’re not as separate as we, without thinking, think? What if we are not as “individual?” What if identity might be felt as larger than this bag of skin? Are we not fractal to the cells in our bodies one direction, and the other to the families and communities within which we live?

:- Doug.

The conversation is the living whole of us.

:- Doug.

What do I want to know? What’s going on in threshold conversation? What could be? I’ve been paddling around the lake, taking temperature, pH, and depth readings, finding what lives here, what nutrients feed it and keep it a healthy ecosystem, and how it turns over. Now it is time to investigate for the inlet and work my way upstream toward the source.

:- Doug.

In conversation we cross over liminal space—what is that limen?

:- Doug.

Here’s my picture of what going on in a conversation that carries the participants over a threshold: We expect to get from our presumed starting point to a planned ending point—but we end up elsewhere. So it is more than what may be expected. The friends who are conversing are changed. It is more than math might predict: we go from numbers to rainbow cakes and spumoni ice cream. Here is a change of state, and a felt shift in awareness. In a novel or a movie we expect the heroine at the end to be changed from when she started out. In all seriousness, a conversation ought do the same for the friends taking an active part—is not a conversation at least as serious an undertaking as a novel or movie? There is a factor, or a whisper, that comes unpredictably. Let’s see if we can understand it better, and if we can invite it in more readily.

:- Doug.

The qwoan not only pulls us together, but also up and out. Perhaps as a result of emergence and self organization.

:- Doug.

Life is creative is emergent is unpredictable is complex. Did you see is?

:- Doug.

Rolled up you
in me I
in you
implicate
knit as a wound

:- Doug.

A babe speaks forth,
teaching if we hear,
of our universe,

when it too is a babe,
blubbering to itself,
all ears and mouth

We grow
we converse

and for all our gains
do we
leave something behind?

:- Doug.

There is always more more.

:- Doug.

There is always more ignorance.

:- Doug.

conversation’s form
is co-introspection
fun

:- Doug.

In conversation is
taking across
of you and me
of more
leading over
a bit further
waves splash ashore

:- Doug.

We are, therefore we converse. I am, therefore I converse. I converse, therefore I am. We converse, therefore we are.

:- Doug.

Either I exist or you don’t. I assert you exist. Prove me.

:- Doug.