FootprintsintheWind.com

A new direction of thought for me: Are folks with dementia exploring for us, pointing us to, a reality that is where we come from and to where we are headed? (I don’t like the feeling of that: I feel that even spirals should have a forward and not simply circle back. Reality does not have to match my feeling.) A reality that is wholeness. A larger. Then what was this conscious and particle life all for? Does it make us wholer? If life is not about learning in a brain-like milieu, then what larger growth? Growth in love, conversation, meeting? Surely we have seen the reports of the good, profound times for these teachers and us students.

:- Doug.

out of the water we emerge
then lately we merge we flow

:- Doug.

Floating in warm fluid we
are birthed into a harder world
eyes, developing, pick out
shapes, movements, us, ears
developing pick out words
Those who are going on ahead
some of them
are going the other way
into fluid worlds
becoming one body soul world
the all there is too?

:- Doug.

The body, moving, is the soul

:- Doug.

Let’s make good.

:- Doug.

We have many subtle and unconscious references to time—while, again, until, now, next, first, elder, experience, then, suggests, when, remember, cause, foundation, before—these at least reinforce our time orientation.

:- Doug.

Develop hearing skills.

:- Doug.

The reel runs faster as it runs out
Changes come in large sizes
With great speed, and often:
Into my accumulating years
I am hurtling

:- Doug.

It’s hard to lose your mind
It’s hard to realize it’s happened
Actually, it’s easy to lose your mind

:- Doug.

In elder years we enter a time of great and rapid change, mostly irreversible, and holding the possibility of something good if we open.

:- Doug.

Now for largering
Again for our emptying
Both gently singing

:- Doug.

At times we feel unsettled
Times we are settled
Let us be kind to ourselves either “time”

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 1559

I am a young man hired to keep clean the workshop of one Thomas A Edison. What a man. So out of touch with the world around him, like all the men he employs in his workshop. Fiddling forever with odd possessions. Absent minded people, forgetting to eat. And Edison himself: asleep often in the middle of the day. I leave the place (and Edison still up and about) tidy at dark and come back in the morning to things strewn all about: broken glass, papers, blankets, wires, nuts, screws, and pillows. Mr Edison sleeping in the middle of the day again, and his companions speaking incomprehensible things, words no one ever heard—if they speak at all.

So I wonder how this is different from the place in which my grandson works a hundred some years later—a nursing home?

Please pass it on.

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Fifty years as an adult. I am feeling mature. I am feeling stable. I am on a solid launching pad for what comes next.

:- Doug.

I am: contemplative.

:- Doug.

This is what life is; life is bigger than this.

:- Doug.

Nothing to do, to think can be, for me, for each, an opportunity. Nothing to do is something to do.

:- Doug.

Do you find yourself remembering?

:- Doug.

There is to meet.

:- Doug.

When in contemplative moments we are disturbed by a movement, a sound, there is a kernel of “It’s not fair!” I was trying to do something peaceful and you prevented me! When we can get beyond “fair” we can let every breath of wind across our brow, every sight, every sound carry us here.

:- Doug.

It’s maybe not so much this is the life we are “supposed” to be living; life bumps so it gives bruises; with our minds we can make living (whether outwardly “good” or “bad”) purposeful, whole, and loving.

:- Doug.

Respected elder: what contributions have you made? What contribution do you still wish to make?

:- Doug.

This work is not only collecting data; also the data fights back.

:- Doug.