FootprintsintheWind.com

Small things populate your days.

:- Doug.

Through my writing, through my conversing, I’m learning how I think. We can ripen this if we heed.

:- Doug.

There is a desire for the power of conversation; there is a fear of this power; there is a swinging walkway not between them, but these each are the swinging walkways.

:- Doug.

A poem
A conversation
A recipe

:- Doug.

Is the unknown the 4th dimension in conversation?

:- Doug.

What if there were a fourth dimension of conversation?

:- Doug.

A soft wind and savage practice.

:- Doug.

The fine art and savage practice of conversation.

:- Doug.

Mostly until now I have “seen” conversation as on or off, monochrome. Now I taste kaleidoscopes, smell symphonies, and hear gardens sing.

:- Doug.

Maybe this is not a book about conversation. How would I know?

:- Doug.

What’s haunting, hunted in conversing? What stays with us, visiting us over and over? Might be guilt (“the gift that keeps on giving” from Erma Bombeck, I think). Might be mystery, curiosity. Might be an ancestor’s unfinished project. Isn’t that what ancestoring is about—unfinishing bigger things?

:- Doug.

Resistance will come—because it is necessary. So too boredom and the uninteresting.

:- Doug.

What other things could we sense? What would we want to sense?

:- Doug.

Sometimes we go in directions that turn out not fruitful—and so we must retrace our steps. At least if we want to continue together.

:- Doug.

For words which are vague or ambiguous (such as God, spirit, inner, deep) say what you mean: avoid these meaningless words.

:- Doug.

It’s a wonder we communicate at all. But is communication what conversation is about?

:- Doug.

A conversation is a made thing—its own poem.

:- Doug.

Conversation seems to operate on attention first. That then builds into interest, or it does not. If it does, interest is the still point upon which the wheel of the conversation turns. Here a choice is made, not often conscious: will I continue to pay my limited attention to this subject, or will I withdraw, or try to change the subject? If the interest builds, it turns to hunger: I want to go fully into it, commit my being, for these minutes, to this pursuit. So we have Attention→Interest→Hunger.

:- Doug.

One of us makes an offer of a subject, with our twist, our angle. The other accepts, rejects, or turns it. Will we eat it, ignore it, or sculpt it into something else? It instantly is a tree with infinite sunlight into which to sprout leaves on branches. What direction feels most teeming?

:- Doug.

How to have a conversation? How to engage someone’s attention? What is attention? How do two attentions merge, collaborate? It may be like two teens sharing a pizza: gobbling and it is gone before enjoyed. How often does a conversation start with a question? Is it purposeful and in what way or direction?

:- Doug.

Maybe we’re the only animals who ask Why?

:- Doug.

Conversation is a mystic art.

:- Doug.

Conversation is a fine and savage art.

:- Doug.