FootprintsintheWind.com

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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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2285

A most precarious place
this conversation

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2284

Deer in my yard
What is your world?
Large
But hidden
And appearing

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2283

The one who brings a scrap
The one who brings a scrap
of beauty wins—for us

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2282

When
you feel that little nettlesome
ruffle in the back of your craw
when you find the satisfaction
of spontaneous hugs from
your grandchildren within play
when you just can’t get through
to your beloved about taking that trip
when life is now is life
is grit is gristle is grind
is grand
now is when
the ineffable makes song
this shared talking
whatever it is
is life
is when
and why and plenum and life’s
workshop

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2280

Wrestling by my writing
Those learned and trained and tired ways
Mechanical dull footed lists and recitals
And pressed imagination
What lives beyond and fills the cool air
Can give us life
Give us us

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2281

You the uninvited
Must invite yourself

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2279

Conversation is at once a little thing and a big thing, a daily happening, and a way we touch generations.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2278

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2278

Do you see that cars are ways human care for other humans? Do you see that some suppose they are doing these car things for pay?

William Blake wrote “I assert for myself that I do not behold the outward creation, and that to me it is hindrance and not action. ‘What!’ it will be questioned, ‘when the sun rises, do you not see a round disc of fire, somewhat like a guinea?’ Oh! no! no! I see an innumerable company of the heavenly host, crying, ‘Holy, holy, holy is the Lord God Almighty!’ I question not my corporeal eye, any more than I would question a window concerning a sight. I look through it, and not with it.”

After the same way St. Francis wrote his canticle to Brother Sun and Sister Moon, Brothers Wind, Air, and Fire, Sisters Water, Mother Earth, and Death.

What can you say?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2277

What might be two or three pieces of music you have felt are profound? What is it about those?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2276

I am inhabited! I am inhabited by my microbiome. And: I inhabit it—it is a cloud in which I travel. In this respect, I am like Charlie Brown’s friend Pig-Pen. Why not see conversation this way? We inhabit all these conversations swirling around us, tornadoes and breezes.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2275

Say a grace
—after—
the meal
for rest and talk
making for home

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2274

moments small
your tear of joy

a lifetime
seen through your
wedding veil

“no!” a first word
we go around
the corner
to hide our laughs
our toddler

in the emergency room
screaming
as they take him
alone
for scans

a lifetime
moments small

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2273

a bite to share
a word to enter

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2272

When the drill breaks through
we will find we were bit and brace
and the hard outer of life had always
barely covered over
our hugging-craving and
our impossibly big skyward
reach

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2271

What is your strategy for making strangers (of friends, of intimates)?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2270

Besides what I don’t want: what do I want? Belonging. There is a belonging to one another. Those close to us, and to the human family. It is the issue we are facing from the pandemic and from being separated from one another. We have developed silo-echo syndrome. We talk only in our own heads and listen to only similar tunes. We reject all others, and we fear and therefore hate all others. In truth, we are so composed that we are part of one another. When ripped apart, we are fragments, fringes, torn pieces with raw edges, nerves exposed and scraped, salt added. What we crave must be something deep within us. We want healing of these angry wounds. Scratching them only pulls off the scab, exposing the sore.

The salve, the quieting of the nerve cells, is in turning to one another. Surely we need some festivals and family gatherings. Cook-outs and street musicians, games and funerals and wakes. Hugs and a few more hugs. Gatherings for pizza and beer, or for hot chocolate. Sitting by the pool and reading together.

Surely we need each other.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2269

This is my Why-day.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2268

We may seek to belong to one another
and to touch the numinous among us
these discoveries leave innumerable puzzles

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2267

Surely we need each day one of us to point us to something larger. The family of humankind to be first sure. The family of all living things to be second sure. And the something from afar to be wholly sure.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2266

Retire is a strange word. Does it mean tired again? Re-tread? Is it choice or something suffered? Or is it what’s common in our era: pulling away from things to benefit others, from activities of worth? This latter perhaps most raises my ire. I have moved from things which were valuable enough for pay, to things with which I am making my greatest contribution. Different direction, more worth.

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2265

—Age—
Proof of decrepancy
Or Badge of worth?

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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2264

What is my thesis that has lasting value? That Life is Conversation and is of the most important sector of living activity. Within that, there are ways to do it more profoundly. Profoundly means belonging to one another and to all living.

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