FootprintsintheWind.com

No, not like: Art is beginning a sentence before you know its ending. Perhaps no sentence has an ending.

:- Doug.

In making art of conversing, and especially of meeting, you are changing yourself, making yourself, re-making yourself.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2385

What have I understood of conversation that I am using?

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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

Is love
Is conversation
Is life

:- Doug.

Even in an argument, can we find we have no sides?

:- Doug.

Sides—no
us—just
earth—rounded

:- Doug.

No sides
a rounded earth
only us

:- Doug.

Among
humans no
sides. Us.

:- Doug.

Some ritual is given us and we perform, such as from a book of liturgy, or by some high official. Some arises from us, such as when we kiss a child’s owie, or gather around the bed of our father newly died, scatter rose petals, wash his face, hands and feet, and sing songs from imperfect memory. The radio plays music which tells us how to feel and sometimes think—that too is a ritual, but unseen. Too seldom dancing and music wells.

:- Doug.

Today
I read a poem
I wrote a poem
What could be
better? We
two—together
becoming a poem

:- Doug.

Stalking the conversing
That betweening
Event happening
Now it’s gone
You have two of you
Entered a new land
An Oral culture, mostly
Once spoken, words
fly Once said, you
soar Found dazzles not
Lost together is fertile

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2384

To go forth
To meet the unknown poem
With my pen tip
Is better than
To shape burger patties
Other days the other making
Is life

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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

See how an artist can make me—err, help me—think new thoughts? See how you in conversation can seed new worlds!

:- Doug.

Say, what are the private Alps no one knows you two have climbed?
And what is the vanishing point of this painting you two are making?

:- Doug.

Art is two together.

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2383

As I grow replete in years and start to gather a cadre of doctors around me, do I seek to make them my friends? Better do I seek to befriend? Even, do I seek to converse with them, to meet?

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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

My notes have gone
to denser tones

:- Doug.

There are many things in this world of which you are unaware. Some you will not as human animal ever experience (electricity as sensed by fish), or seldom (echo location as in bats). But some you might develop. In conversation we work on some of these.

:- Doug.

What’s one word to say what you want out of our conversation today?

:- Doug.

Does it speak forth some reality previously not understood?

:- Doug.

Are you discovering?

:- Doug.

Is it prophetic?

:- Doug.

Footprints in the Wind^sm # 2382

We have in our friends more lives to live—how can we spare any more time on this one? “I left the woods for as good a reason as I went there. Perhaps it seemed to me that I had several more lives to live, and could not spare any more time for that one. It is remarkable how easily and insensibly we fall into a particular route, and make a beaten track for ourselves.” Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

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