FootprintsintheWind.com

Conversation is sacred.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2136

We go to movies
We sit with friends
To load up on metaphors

Please pass it on.

© c 2022, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

What is a living conversation? It may be that it can only be defined metaphorically.

:- Doug.

Imagine a process that allows each conversation to become a living being in that place, every time.

A process to soak us in the expectation that this conversation will evoke and make use of our feelings and passions. We first work to make explicit that each conversation has among its major tasks creating life. Second, we actively call upon links between conversations and especially the life in those conversations. Third as each person nourishes the conversation in which he or she is, each will want to share improvements and innovations. Each person knows in their heart a need to heal the people, heal all conversation.

:- Doug.

Metaphors tell us what matters, what is most real. Metaphors change our actions.

:- Doug.

If metaphors were not so prevalent among us, the word “literally” would be relegated to academics.

:- Doug.

Metaphors are the stories inside the stories you are telling. And more: many words within their histories hold still more stories. Stories within stories, stories within conversations, conversations within conversations. Stories and conversations—wheels within wheels—bringing about our thinking, thinking bringing about our worlds.

:- Doug.

The redbuds all about in our yard are beautiful. A deep and bright pink-purple, enjoying the splash of the wind in which they immerse.

:- Doug.

Sometimes I use highlighting in a book simply as a bookmark. Literally.

:- Doug.

In writing: allow characters to lead.

:- Doug.

Talk rhymes with walk and so reminds us to stroll through the old growth woods. Talking and walking are good for us, as thinking out loud and physical beings; let’s go.

:- Doug.

Conversation is how we understand: understand one another; understand the world; understand even our selves. Conversation is a whole system, a system undefinable in one or a few synonyms. Its understanding is metaphorical, lyrical, and is itself understood in melodies and story.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2135

We keep finding new mysteries.

Please pass it on.

© c 2022, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Metaphor stands wild
with one foot in here
offering a helping hand

:- Doug.

I have a fertile
wondrous garden
of flowering ideas
and budding conversations
Come play

:- Doug.

We are of more
than sinews, gristle, and grit:
we are of night dreams
and bed dreams
fears and fights and whit

:- Doug.

All the characters of the story, though they may appear a far detour, are as of a dream, all parts of the protagonist, the dreamer, Nausicaa going to do her wash.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2134

There is at least in human conversation, a function for the functionless, untidy, things forgotten, things discovered, things held back, things in the dark, secrets and laughs not shared, things repressed. “But above all, develop the human talent for forgetting words, phrases, whole unwelcome sentences, all experiences involving wincing.” Lewis Thomas, Late Night Thoughts on Listening to Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, p 142. “We might, in this way, regain the kind of spontaneity and zest for ideas, things popping into the mind, uncontrollable and ungovernable thoughts, the feel that this notion is somehow connected unaccountably with that one.” Id, p 140.

Please pass it on.

© c 2022, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/291-0022, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Please publish in your print or electronic periodical, with the above info.
To subscribe, send an e-mail with the word “subscribe” to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com

O great stirring: come back to me renewed and strong after you rest. For now do allow me to sleep to refresh.

:- Doug.

How are Buber and all these others who ponder the large and the long providing us useful ways to peer into the winding vine covered paths we might live in conversation?

:- Doug.

Conversing curiously

:- Doug.

Curious conversations

:- Doug.

Conversation: be friendly, seek friendly.

:- Doug.