FootprintsintheWind.com

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2308

Consider the limits you cannot overcome. Things you cannot learn. Tasks at which you will never adequately succeed. Meetings where you have your stand and your friend takes hers. Where joy comes against tragedy comes once more against impossible joy. Where your sinews give their last—and then life spits in your face. Where you must decide. It is here—yes?—where you might gain your whole life.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2307

The photo is not the person.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2306

Can you find
the person
in her storytelling?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2305

Conversation is for sensing your friend’s largeness.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2304

How ironic
Maybe
A life in words
Now they are slipping away
Or is it the fog lifting?
Ironic
Maybe

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2303

We watch the reports of the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Children are dug from bombing’s rubble. Women keen. We don’t know their words, but we grasp. Words only confirm. Bodies bear the first witness.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2302

Now I invite you to a game
of rock, paper, scissors
and whatever you throw
I will gesture with wiggling fingers
water trickling softly down
dissolving paper, rusting scissors,
babbling past your rocky head

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2301

Go and learn of your people.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2300

No, she is not just like me
Yes, she has such loves and hates as I
No, she is then warm when I am cold
Yes, we shun the other’s arguments
No, she is not enemy, and is not friend
Yes, we can each other bring much worth
No, we won’t know when it is a gift

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2299

Is not this what conversation is about, to transpose our mere biological life to art? To high art?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2298

Our recognition of our losses, our admitting to incompleteness: these reveal our desire to be gods. The same is true of our desire for control. Not being able to control, to be complete, to prevent our losses: we throw these needs upon our God or gods, whether these accept or not. There might be value in finding a way to live with loss, incompleteness, and lack of control, because that may be the way of life.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2297

What if conversation were how we pray?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2296

It takes two hands to pray
a head who’s willing to bow
an open palm
a nevertheless will
so spirit to spirit can reach out

Two hands here raised in righteous fervor
across the gathered multitudes
“prayer” they say
And “love”
with fists they shake at one another

The one who said “nevertheless”
hears their fists
with head bowed

It takes two hands to pray
right and left
or the opening palm of the one with no hands
that we the ones with fists for hearts
might find what it takes to pray

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2295

How different this world could be if we knew others would talk with us.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2294

We live beyond our power to name and hold
ethereal lights in th’ heavens and across the table
blinking allow us no full comprehension
coherence never was the stuff of life
in breezes hiding mantis robin’s gone

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2293

Conversation ought to be
Complex as life

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2292

Formerly I’d awaken thwarted by my dreams: they did not end satisfyingly, but only stopped. Now I see there is a message to be extracted: Life goes on. There are no endings to satisfy and say this is how it turned out. Life goes on.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2291

Violence grows from Fear. Fear has its roots in Grief.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2290

Our desire to learn is maybe a symptom of a more primal desire to embrace—to embrace more and more and more of the world. This is a good greed. I want to love my loves and all who touch them. This is why it grieves me to see people who want to strike out, push away, hate.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2289

Let go the right word so a more fanciful one can float up.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2288

When sitting this close
and breathing-in one another
we risk mixing up our atoms

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2287

It is our longest reach
conversation is how we serve

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2286

The cure for dementia may lie hidden in our centuries-long quest to live for centuries: our reaching after longevity. We are told one of the surest risk factors for dementia is advancing age. Dementia reveals to us how intricate our brains are, simply by the infinite ways we lose our ways. This one is anxious, that one is bland, another grows angry, still another cannot make sense of what she sees. The human brain, at least in its operational capacities, seems to have a Mean Time Before Failure. Perhaps we should pursue short-gevity.

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