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Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2235

Last night I wrestled with sleep
I’m not sure who won

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Conversation is its own world, calling us.

:- Doug.

I use poetry to invite
an unaccustomed byway
for our thinking-on

:- Doug.

Did we call us to conversation, or did the conversation? How sure are you?

:- Doug.

Conversation provides the growing points of life.

:- Doug.

Two persons—two small worlds
the wormhole between
is their conversation

:- Doug.

We do not make the microcosm. We only play in it, maybe shaping it as it in turn shapes us.

:- Doug.

The small world is the only world in which we or anything ever live. Still, ever we feel the pull to live in the macrocosm.

:- Doug.

The conversation pulls the players into its world. Thus they are able to take out what no one carried in. Thus persons are made and remade.

:- Doug.

Much of what we write—I write—of conversation is based upon a dualism between I and Thou, a thing false much of the time.

:- Doug.

Tension in conversation comes about from the fact we cannot know how it will turn out, what it will turn up, or whether anything at all will turn.

:- Doug.

What exactly do I see when I see conversation as the play of the species?

:- Doug.

Play suggests action: an investment of self, as in conversation.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2234

This writing does not promise a recipe to follow. Nevertheless it is entire, there is egg to bind the flour into dough. For the next thousand and one nights, or the next thousand and one lifetimes, we will continue incapable of discerning what folds all this conversation-stuff into one dough. Much of the time we will turn round and round not able to choose. But we can feel our way along. We can get closer.

It seems the only way through is to wade into the mix, kneading with fingers, arms, feet, head, heart, soul: the whole body. The sustenance is not in a formula found, rather in ongoing working. A hero’s journey.

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com

Start by adding just a little fun to each conversation.

:- Doug.

I am looking forward to. . .my life!

:- Doug.

Conversation is the play of those
who may yet be elders
but age is not a proper delineation

:- Doug.

If you were writing this chapter where would you be tempted to take it?

:- Doug.

I am writing a pair of books about my play.

:- Doug.

Play is “other” than “real” life—not more nor less it would seem—or it could be either, and by turns. Recall that “other” and “holy” are interchangeable. Recall that boys releasing pigs into the school house is play, especially when painting “1,” “2,” and “4” on the pigs’ sides!

:- Doug.

Tell me about the music you like.

:- Doug.

If you look
you just don’t know
what you might see

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2233

Context within context
and you the bricoleur

Please pass it on.

© c 2023, Learning Works, Incorporated. All rights reserved. Easy reprint permissions: 574/274-5353, or by e-mail to mailto:Footprints AT FootprintsInTheWind.com. Back issues available at http://www.FootprintsintheWind.com