FootprintsintheWind.com

These are friends, even the strangers.

:- Doug.

Conversation is bliss.

:- Douig.

Communication according to Humberto Maturana is primarily a coordination of behavior. Here perhaps he comes close to bridging the gap between communication and conversation. One step further seems to be that in conversation we think together. We decide what behavior to coordinate; we also decide to decide. We dance and we make the music.

:- Doug.

Evidently we can have a conversation not just with players in front of us: also with our memories, our thoughts and thinking, and players we make up. Consider the well-known “imaginary friends” of childhood, and perhaps other ages.

:- Doug.

How could withdrawing from conversation and from being among others be a form of conversation? Does that mean we cannot not converse? How open do we need to be? How do we open—ourselves and others? Open to others and to other paradigms?

:- Doug.

What is the role of boredom and mind wandering in conversation?

:- Doug.

Conversation is cognition
cognition conversation
inseparable
What do we do
with that?

:- Doug.

This theory, of conversation as process of living, extends the Santiago theory of cognition, recognizing the intertwining of cognition and conversation as essence of and necessary to living. It works to further overcome the separation of mind and matter, to show the unity of all living.

:- Doug.

A person is beyond a machine, a process of conversation.

:- Doug.

To live is to converse.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2128

We dear human
are perfect as perfect can be
get over your faults
they too rusty beauty
act!

Please pass it on.

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What is the feeling of a good conversation?

:- Doug.

Conversation is the essence of being alive.

:- Doug.

The dream of conversation

:- Doug.

To say that something like caring for my sister and her well-being is a goal is to hold it small, a baseball to be tossed around and caught and put on a shelf and be done with as we grow older.

:- Doug.

You will find here no definition of conversation, no limits on what it might mean. You are invited to feel for yourself as we go whether the breadth and depth and width I express are your own: or would you go further, or constrict the lines drawn here?

:- Doug.

Unfolding Conversation

:- Doug.

A conversation perfect may not be
for we ever want more of it
and it ever goes its own way
but if we will first set out
we will make it better than planned

:- Doug.

We need, first, to wrestle out how to have our conversation, and, second, about what.

:- Doug.

Raising the temperature another degree works against conversational progress. Backing away might help, might provoke. Asking questions and developing curiosity—we don’t know how and we cannot predict the dog-kick effect.

:- Doug.

One center of conversation is hurt, another is assumption, another is fear. These animate conversation. These bring in unexpected energy and turns, dog-kicked, a conversation kicked. What we do with that as well as what we will want to do with that, are both unknowns. Might someone become fascinated by these choices?

:- Doug.

A quotation recited
Can be a
Center
For a conversation
For a life

:- Doug.

What I learned from a recent difficult conversation:

When I got him talking things went better (I knew this, didn’t I?); when I was doing the talking he was holding back, preparing to defend himself. So one learning is less talking, more hearing. Another is asking for information and his perspective rather than telling. Not really surprising stuff.

The trouble with my analysis and plan for future conversations is that I could not, easily and with sureness, know what would be the other person’s reactions. I could make guesses, and can get better at guessing, but the effect of my preparation must await the fire to find out.

:- Doug.