FootprintsintheWind.com

What kinds of conversations are there? To exchange information. To say you and I are of the same cloth. To explore ideas. To explore the quality without a name. To tell a story. To ask a question unanswerable. To laugh. To share tears and grief. To argue. To prove. To offend. Is there a continuum?

:- Doug.

Now make it profoundly yours.

:- Doug.

What tragedies changed you for better?

:- Doug.

These, these will live when I die.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2084

Start conversations in the parts in the worst condition, not the best. Here you can bring the most life.

Please pass it on.

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What funerals were the best?

:- Doug.

What do we know about the ancestors 300 years fore, 300 years aft? Aft, we are apt to ignore, as if they did not, will not, exist. But is this fair? To us?

:- Doug.

Beyond our wars and arguments, beyond our irritability with one another, beyond our current divisiveness, as apocalyptic as it seems, there is something that makes us human. And this extends across generations. As little as we think of other generations, fore or aft. It is this green tendril that will save us. Or it will die out. This we tend.

:- Doug.

What is the wholeness? It is human. It is the wholeness human. The wholeness of the generations.

:- Doug.

You—you!—have the capacity to nurture, to draw forth life, from me.

:- Doug.

Conversation is ladling life into each other’s bowl.

:- Doug.

Be to each his or her facing living center: sustain, make more alive, lift up: by your presence and life elicit life in this one, this time.

:- Doug.

The human is a finely sanded set of fingertips able to pick up the vibrations of life in all space-time. Slide your hand under this other’s, almost touching, wait for what comes more subtly than the electric buzz.

:- Doug.

What are the possible gradients of weight and light in conversation?

:- Doug.

Being phototropic, people orient toward light, move toward light. Light in conversation might mean emotion: laving tears as well as smiles.

:- Doug.

Why do conversations resemble paths and nodes? Perhaps because they are both human activities concerned with moving. A difference is that the paths can be trod singly, while conversation is often two or more.

:- Doug.

How might we build an arcade—an ambiguous inner and outer space—into our conversations? We can call others in. We can shelter each other. We can reflect and laugh and cry. What else?

:- Doug.

Human includes: heroic, agency, choice, novelty. These were not concepts I had considered before.

:- Doug.

My big-W Work is making more conversations wonderful, with a longer reach.

:- Doug.

How to meet a tough conversation? The trick it seems to me is to get people talking. When, How, Why? Tell me the story of…. How would you re-tell that with a better ending? How can we get past talking past each other? What assumptions do we have about each other? What are our secret thoughts about each other?

:- Doug.

What is a sunny place for conversation? What does sun mean to conversation as sun means to backyard?

:- Doug.