FootprintsintheWind.com

For the bright snow
against the brilliant blue
I must all my thanks now sacrifice

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2319

Just as a toddler looks into the face of a puppy or horse or elephant and squeals, having seen himself, so you too can look in the face of your friend and see something new in yourself. You probably ought now to squeal.

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© c 2024, 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

Let us learn the language of story telling that we may feed our many.

:- Doug.

Can we—you and I in conversation—take a little from here and put it there, and so change this? Is unfolding a big thing?

:- Doug.

It is just barely possible that we seek most the mysterious, the thing just outside our reach, the temptress fading into the mist, the prairie dog chattering and disappearing below ground.

:- Doug.

I am not trying to prove it
It is the other way around

:- Doug.

Patch Adams has decided to be silly as a way of life. Can I find my way there?

:- Doug.

Some sneezes are wet
Some coughs are dry
Finish this poem, or try

:- Doug.

Is she another person outside this setting?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2318

The flower, the poet, and the sausage: One way to compose a poem is the “natural way, in which a poem is born from within itself….” When Phil pointed out this Bashō quotation to me, I wondered how a poem could become from within itself. I played with this. Maybe the haiku is borne out of the meeting: the meeting of the flower with the poet. The poem is then a third thing. A poem is neither flower nor poet. I point my index fingers toward one another a nose-length away from my eyes. As they approach, a sausage appears and hovers between them. The flower and the poet come near, they meet, and the haiku hovers there. The haiku is the sausage. Phil reminded me not to watch haiku being made.

Please pass it on.

© c 2024, 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

There is not one story—within every story there are always more.

:- Doug.

At Quaker Meeting today, one member stood and related about meeting with a friend. The friend had had a massive stroke a few months before. The two women sat, one speaking, the other not. The one with no words had eyes alive. “I experienced radiance,” this member reported. What a wonderful friend to notice this radiance. If I was the one without words, I would want to give such eyes.

:- Doug.

Persons are coming to life
around you
all the time
one of their rivers
is the hot chocolate
of conversation
you are stirring

:- Doug.

I am reading my own pre-writing. This is most evocative for me. Pre-writing is that which almost whispers to me so that I have to chase it into the labyrinth, and drag it out in pieces, while it is grabbing and pulling me back in.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2317

Conversation is ordeal.

Please pass it on.

© c 2024, 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

Ask your question not from script nor duty nor etiquette. Each question can be humanity felt together.

:- Doug.

Not a concept, nor a construct: I am writing out of a felt change of consciousness.

:- Doug.

Draw a picture of what kind of ___ you mean.

:- Doug.

Character does not matter. Love loves anyway, whatever your character. Life lives anyway. What is love and what is life? You don’t get to decide, but you must choose. Now. In this conversation.

:- Doug.

The question the myths ask, ultimately, is What is life? We don’t know. Even biologists don’t know. What is your life? The myths ask, and ask you. Only you can reply for you. The myths don’t respond. Seed enters ground.

:- Doug.

Conversation ought to be about the thing you can’t quite figure out and it is driving you nuts.

:- Doug.

Today on the way I was in conversation with the world. It was a Sunday and traffic was light. The world revealed itself. A sign proclaimed “Hope.” Another “Ivy.” Then all about I saw signs of life and home: “Old Friend,” “Liberty,” “Center,” “Kitchen.” A bumper sticker had the word “life.” Life, friend, home: Words larger,meaning-filled, mythic.

:- Doug.

something spins
around us
conversing

:- Doug.