FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2156

The big question right now is why and how recognizing our relation to plants and animals, knowing again their personhood, relates to our study of conversation. In one sense it is obvious: relation and person are basics of conversation. Yet we in western thought mode, especially since the rise of science, do not admit that living beings besides humans can be persons. That is, can have value as individuals. So one thing we do not know is how this mosquito, this dandelion, this moss can have worth as an individual. Another is how we might meet.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2155

If you’re to have a conversation with your garden, you’ve got to get your knees dirty.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2154

This life is a gift. I have received it and I treasure every breath of it. And when I am done with it, and my consciousness, I will lay them down and just ahead, I will accept what comes or does not come next. I have that choice I can make.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2153

Conversing is an act of reciprocity: giving to the world in return for all given to me. Pause, consider.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2152

Every day we
are met by gifts
meant to be held
but not kept
our work to pass

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2151

What do you give in return for this person’s attention to you?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2150

The breeze runs its slender fingers through the leaves of maple, here and there turning up a flash of silver; a stream play-wrestles the fishes; a dog eats the treat so he can play with the human throwing the ball. Who’s to say each of these conversations are not in some way intimate knowing exchanges? When humans “make” a metaphor from the natural world, who’s to say from the plant’s side a lesson was not taught? Who’s to say there is there no imagination that we as yet understand but even then catch?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2149

Why do we break bread together? Because we need food to go on living. And we need together even more: for the dynamic of living.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2148

When the stream flows
water takes on oxygen
and the fish live more intensely
This is our conversation
we the fish
the shade the eddies the rocks
the sun the raindrops

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2147

Some conflicts waste our energies. Some might focus them.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2146

The emptiness
among us
has shape
and sound
do you find
your way here
and hear?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2145

We probably don’t so much solve tough problems as evolve with them.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2144

Why the words exist
Why the dreams exist
Why the clouds exist

Poem, you pull me in. Here is progression, I am unsure if I have it right. It is from smaller to larger, I think, pulling us out. Is this a function of conversation?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2143

Get people together.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2142

Fishing is conversation between fisher and worm and hook and line, between fish and fisher: a tuggle, a release, a quiet again following. The fish flashing away, heart beating, hiding; the fisher sitting back, taking in the enjoyment, thinking of re-baiting the hook.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2141

Maybe bird talk is the betweens of the notes. Their notes are the canvas from which the silences arise as mountains and river valleys in relief.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2140

I am wondering about the benefit—and necessity—of a time away from the conversation. Two sleeps, or a sleepover on a mountain or beside a lake. What do we not know of that?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2139

Expand your ignorance.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2138

Do I paddle a canoe? In truth it is not something I do to the canoe. More with the canoe. The canoe, the paddle, and I become one. This one carries us. I provide the calories to propel. . .us. I invite another to sit here, too, we paddle in harmony, all still part of one object. I steer and the river steers more. We converse, the stream and two paddlers, several steerers, several minds, struggle or harmony.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2137

A conversation ought to be approached as a major work of art, something to heal the people, to raise us.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2136

We go to movies
We sit with friends
To load up on metaphors

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2135

We keep finding new mysteries.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2134

There is at least in human conversation, a function for the functionless, untidy, things forgotten, things discovered, things held back, things in the dark, secrets and laughs not shared, things repressed. “But above all, develop the human talent for forgetting words, phrases, whole unwelcome sentences, all experiences involving wincing.” Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, p 142. “We might, in this way, regain the kind of spontaneity and zest for ideas, things popping into the mind, uncontrollable and ungovernable thoughts, the feel that this notion is somehow connected unaccountably with that one.” Id, p 140.

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