FootprintsintheWind.com

Everything fits together
I don’t know how
There is one breath
One thinking
One living
Only one

:- Doug.

There are religions which draw people together against others (the “we’re the only ones going to Heaven” syndrome), and those who call for union with, without distinction. Where is the path of love?

:- Doug.

She tried to pass on the right at 65 miles per hour, pass that is between the semi truck I was passing and me, with a child in her back seat. Stupid in a hurry is a bad combination.

:- Doug.

People think of conversation as merely stating to each other what is already known. What they miss!

:- Doug.

The negotiation starts when you walk away.

:- Doug.

We’re either riding the white water waves or we’re creating them, either flowing with or thrashing them up, going in the eco direction, or the ego.

:- Doug.

We might think of we as a collection of individuals, yet there is a sense in which individuals are teased apart threads of the whole. There is a scientific view that the whole is as necessary to understanding the parts as the parts are to understanding the whole, that the whole is fully rolled up in each of us. So when I speak of family, consider that I might be holding a picture of a whole, an unbroken thread back to Eve and Adam if you will. Therefore we might together catch the edge of the moving shadow of how we can be—and we don’t have to convince anybody, just be alert to what—and who—is already here.

:- Doug.

It is an abstraction to see an individual as separate from the whole, as it were drawing that limb unnaturally apart from its body. Mostly we think it an abstract notion to see the whole as giving birth to the parts, when we are abstracting in just the opposite direction. What else do we see backwards?

:- Doug.

There is no difference between being & doing, and doing is being.

:- Doug.

How do you want your children and grandchildren to experience your death?

:- Doug.

What are you doing to prepare your children for your death?

:- Doug.

So hastily was Johnson sworn in on the plane after Kennedy was pronounced dead because we did not know if the country were under attack.

:- Doug.

I lie here
Mostly asleep
Writing the words
Of these poems
And then
I reach for my pen

:- Doug.

We are born
& we die
We go through
This life
Mostly alone
We gather around us
& make
A small family
Because

A touch means much
His hand, her breast
Your hand on mine
Your word, my being
Because

:- Doug.

What is the right answer to aging? What is the right answer to caring for your parents?

:- Doug.

What about caring with you would be a burden? What does it mean to be a burden? Was it a burden to change your children’s diapers?

:- Doug.

Dissonance comes from holding together two loves.

:- Doug.

Dad’s getting older, maybe dying—who can we yet be together?

:- Doug.

What is the question that will create our dissonance?

:- Doug.

As we converse, we make the path.

:- Doug.

Chit-chat talks primarily about senses—what we can feel, see, hear. Making moves us to bending and not just presently sensed things, but those of the future. Making moves us to poetry, to touching mystery, to moving something larger than us.

:- Doug.

There is a surface attention that chit-chat brings forth; conversation engages in doing and brings out a different form of attention, one more engaged, able to take in (and go out). We assimilate the conversation and each other. We become more unitary. We act.

:- Doug.

Elastic fluid
Conversation is
A white water rapids
& a flat flowing
Quiet great river
Every time you step in
Alive
Lapping
Carrying
Stretching

:- Doug.