FootprintsintheWind.com

Conversation is not what is said; rather who is possible to catch as she floats by.

:- Doug.

Not who am I, not Know thyself: Who, moment to moment, is this flow within the flow, who is this neighbor among only neighbors, as far as the travels may go?

:- Doug.

What does it mean that in a conversation the food on our plate disappears and we were only vaguely aware of eating? Are we simply distracted? Does this breaking bread together cause something to happen in the participants? That is, the “together” part? We have been enculturated that food shared helps the conversation, and conversely that conviviality aids the digestion. But is there more at work? In our bones a species memory of caves and campfires? Physical digestive juices stirring and being stirred by metaphoric juices of the mind?

:- Doug.

Sometimes we must hold to our attention. Other times, let go. It is the second which we easily miss. Just being in the presence of something or someone might be enough. Or of more worth than a drilling attention. Softly for now.

:- Doug.

Groups simplify the complexity that would be found in the conversations of two or three people. The two or three can stay their disparate courses; but a group which continues must simplify to either one view or process, or divide between opposing ones: multiplicity tends to be tamped.

:- Doug.

Conversation can be seen as simple addition: you say something, I say a new thing, and the trajectory of our conversation continues. Or we can multiply: participants, ideas, subjects. Or take to a power, or if maybe if I understood better, apply calculus or trigonometry.

:- Doug.

What conversations do you want to have in the upcoming weeks and months?

:- Doug.

What has been the arc of your life, and how would you bend it in the weeks and months ahead?

:- Doug.

The poem prime
cannot be divided
leaving nothing left over

:- Doug.

There is a conversation underlying what underlies silence. Meet me there.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2103

Tell a story so we wouldn’t be so scared in the dark.

Please pass it on.

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We live in a political house of mirrors in which truth is the fake news and stop the steal is the steal. Some significant minority of the people live in this psychotic delusion. Another large group fears this delusion may overcome rationality.

:- Doug.

To what extent was life worth living?

:- Doug.

Sacred conversation.

:- Doug.

What did you do with your life?

:- Doug.

Conversation is much more layered and tangled than we had thought, perhaps impossible to unravel. We are left to work within the tangle rather than try to tease threads apart. It is likely that if we cut these filaments, we die.

:- Doug.

This is the apocalypse: George Floyd, Capitol insurrection, COVID-19, more. . . . The uncovering.

:- Doug.

How do we converse better than yesterday?

:- Doug.

These things tell us about conversation, about its results and aspirations. They evoke from us further work to uncover the deeps of conversation. The work now is this uncovering.

:- Doug.

We cannot define ourselves as falcon, storm, or great song, only do as these do.

:- Doug.

We are tangling more than tangled.

:- Doug.

Conversation is at the center of life, perhaps the life-blood, the relating that is what life does, more central to life than life itself.

:- Doug.

The betweens are not things; they are actions, movement. Betweening.

:- Doug.