"Don’t take anything literally but always look deeper. For example, if you drink too much, what is your soul looking for in the alcohol? If you eat too much, what part of your soul is in need of nourishing? Think poetically and never respond on a surface level." -- Thomas Moore
Playing with this quote for 15 minutes before I head to the mail trail.
We own and operate a native plant nursery at our house. We are always learning about native plants. There is so much we don't know. They teach us. There's a mystery to it. That's the beauty of our relationship with the plants.
My soul somehow someway wants to be in contact with wild nature. The part that is beyond our control. Because our culture is hellbent on controlling every last atom in its attempt to play God. Omniscient and omnipotent kind.
Control and predictability. That's what we seek at a level we keep hidden from ourselves.
Off to the mail trail
Fire #119
1.31.25
"What’s important is finding out what works for you.” ~ Thomas Moore
5:50 AM. This quote speaks to me in so many ways. I'm going to play with it for 20 minutes before I go out to start the mail jeep.
One thing Daniel Quinn got across to me in his teaching novels was that life is more fruitful focusing on what works instead of what's right and wrong. The former is more of an engineering mindset; the latter you get into rules and religion. Both are important nonetheless.
We learned early on keeping our kids out of school works for them and us. Most parents nowadays work all day, then run their kids here and there for activities afterwards never spending time together as a family. We eat home cooked meals together 7 days a week.
I occasionally ask our kids if they want to go to school. It's always an emphatic no. With the access to the Internet they're privy to the same information we are. They see school has a place to be potentially bullied or shot and killed. It's prison like to them.
Shifting to a single income family has worked for us so far. Annie is home with the kids to help them on their learning journeys. Kids don't need school. School is primarily there to keep them off the job market. Everything revolves around the health and growth of our economy. It's about products over people. Schooling is no different.
That's not to say some kids benefit greatly from school and there are some amazing teachers out there. Again, it's what works for them.
I know that plowing up fields and spraying them with fertilizers and herbicides is bad for the land and our bodies. Cancer sucks. So we grow native plants with what Thoreau famously said in mind:
"In wildness is the preservation of the world."
Turn to the wild with an open heart and open mind and we see what works.
Well, that was fun. Now it's time to get ready for the mail trail. I hope you have great day! And I hope I didn't ruffle too many feathers. But then again, that might be why you made it this far.
Fire #118
1.30.25
We payed our electric bill with Bitcoin yesterday. The first bill ever. It won't be our last. We used Strike. Our lights stay on another month. And we're closer to living on a bitcoin standard.
"A father is one whose perspective and knowledge are rooted in the underworld and tied to the forefathers, those who have gone before and have created the culture that the father now takes into his hands. A father’s wisdom and moral sensibility find their direction from voices that are not now in life. His initiators are both those literal fathers who have created culture and his own deepest reflections." ~ Thomas Moore
6 AM. I'm on my second burning of wood. It's 25 degrees out there. During my run last night the sky was full of stars. I didn't see the moon.
It was a long day on the mail trail, 12 hours. We were short people, so there was no help to deliver Amazon packages. All in all it went smoothly though. I am starting to internalize the route. In other words, things are starting to fall into place. That usually happens for me after the first week of freak out learning a new route.
The quote to start out this piece I take seriously. There's the job I perform to help pay the bills, then there's fatherhood. Fatherhood connects me to the generations that came before me, and that will come after.
The mail route not so much. I think of hundreds of thousands of years when I think of fatherhood. When it comes to delivering mail maybe a hundred. We've only been delivering mail here for a few hundred years.
Fatherhood is part of the long game. The survival of our species and the habitat that gave birth to it and countless others.
That's enough riffing for now. I'm happy with it. We live in a flat, fast culture. One guy going deep on his phone for 15 minutes in front of a fire ain't going to hurt anything. I hope it adds something. :-)
Off to the mail trail.
Fire #116
1.28.25
In a society that is defended against the tragic sense of life, depression will appear as an enemy, an unredeemable malady; yet in such a society, devoted to light, depression, in compensation, will be unusually strong.
~ Thomas Moore
I agree. Money isn't the solution to all of the world's problems. Like you alluded to, we do live in a system of rewards. So it does have a big impact.
When man interferes with the Tao,
the sky becomes filthy,
the earth becomes depleted,
the equilibrium crumbles,
creatures become extinct. - The Tao Te Ching
6AM. It's 22 out there. After last week anything above zero seems easy and warm.
By easy I mean vehicles will start with less chances of them breaking on the mail route.
I reread what I wrote yesterday morning. I'm not happy with most of it. This is typical. I will reread it again to see what I can salvage out of it.
I am working on developing something and moving forward on it day by day. Keeping in mind what I am trying to say and why I am telling it to you.
It seems it comes back to the Tao quote above. I suffered. I want to understand what's happening. So I don't have to suffer unnecessarily. The Buddhists tell us life is suffering. It's the unnecessary suffering part that focusing on right now. In other words, disequilibrium.
That's where I'm at in my process. Thought some of you that follow along might be interested.
I'm off to the mail trail this Monday morning. Going to be a heavy day. Mondays always are. I'm well rested and ready for it though.
Hope you have a great day!
Fire #115
1.27.26
I'm a father of three. Yet I understand why people don't want to have children. I was dead set against having children until I turned 35.
We are creating an unsustainable future for our children and grandchildren on so many levels.
I think we all feel it on some level. Only some people are willing to admit it though. They don't want to be called antihuman.
Yet humans, like any other animal, need habitat to live.
Seems like our goal should be to preserve and create as much livable habitat as we can for nonhumans and humans.
Then people will want to bring children into the world
I've been stacking Bitcoin since July 2022. I've read the "Price of Tomorrow" and listened to a 1000 hours of Bitcoin podcasts. Yet a question still arises for me:
Will all of us living under a Bitcoin standard preserve and create more livable habitat for nonhumans and humans?
Because it seems like continuing to grow our population will result in less livable habitat for humans and nonhumans.
I am looking forward to the release of the JFK Files. Keep pulling back the curtain. Government transparency is paramount. Reality hasn't been the same since 2016, and will never be again. Thank you to the people high and low who are making this possible
I'm not going to generalize.
Think so? I don't know if I would go that far. That's me though.
I'm a father of three. Yet I understand why people don't want to have children. I was dead set against having children until I turned 35.
We are creating an unsustainable future for our children and grandchildren on so many levels.
I think we all feel it on some level. Only some people are willing to admit it though. They don't want to be called antihuman.
Yet humans, like any other animal, need habitat to live.
Seems like our goal should be to preserve and create as much livable habitat as we can for nonhumans.
Then people will want to bring children into the world.
Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, predicted Trump would change the way we see reality. In other words, he pulled back the curtain on a lot of things. Kennedy is another Curtain Puller. Reality hasn't been the same since 2016.
Thank you for asking. I was wondering what happened to Paris too. :-)
8 AM. Sunday. A day off from delivering mail. I feel like I say this every Sunday. LOL.
I love it. I have time to settle in and write.
I told you a little bit about my Grandpa again yesterday and shared this quote by Carl Jung:
“The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity.”
― Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
I said I didn't want to be ruled by the "spirit of gravity." To become part of mass culture and just die having lived for nothing.
But to do that, to not let gravity take over, I have to go into my father and grandfathers to help me understand who I am and what I am up to. That's if I am understanding Jung correctly.
Because part of me, I think, is living their unlived life.
Bear with me here. I hope I haven't gone off the deep end.
Back in my mid twenties, after anxiety and depression rattled me to my core, I made up my mind I was going to live my life how I wanted to live it.
The way of my father and grandfathers didn't work anymore. That's what the depression and anxiety were telling me.
Once I made up my mind and started to live the life I wanted to, it loosened its grip. Granted, this was a process with help in talk therapy, desperate prayer, etc., but the world quit pressing down on me.
Some people don't make it through this.
This is where "Ishmael," by Daniel Quinn comes in. Right around that time the universe put the book in my hands. A friend actually recommended it, but the event has elevated itself to mythic levels in my personal story.
And that's all we are, A story. A fiction.
The better we understand this story and fiction the less we fall into the "spirit of gravity."
That's my theory anyway.
One thing "Ishmael" taught me was that we were no longer happy conquering and ruling the earth. The suicide rates among adolescents had skyrocketed by then. There was alcohol and drug abuse, etc. A general listlessness among the masses. I don't have to say anymore more about that. We can all see it and have been touched by it in someway.
At the time I was on the front lines conquering and ruling the earth. I would get up early with my Grandpa and his cousin everyday, head to the woods, fall trees, cut them up into 8 ft. lengths, and collect a paycheck.
We never considered the forest community we devastated daily.
And there's no blame or shame here. This has been going on for thousands of years. We were just living the myth of God put us here to conquer and rule the world.
We were part of a mass of humans past and present that were given the knowledge to decide what lives and dies. Because we were descendants of Adam. Who ate from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. So we got to decide what lived and died.
Of course it's all just a myth, but it has real world consequences inside and out
###
That's it for now. This is the best I've felt about a piece. I can see this developing.
I have told this story in different forms many times before. I'm just refining and deepening it. It's soul work. I think the better we understand our story the better off we will be. Like Freud said, to understand is to forgive.
Thank you for reading. :-)
Fire #114
1.26.25
P.S. I don't think I could write any of this without being on the mail route I am on. I don't think it's an accident that I now run the route that all of the characters in this story lived on. The places jog the memory to tell the stories it seems.
Twenty one degrees out there at 6 AM. Close to 40 degrees warmer than yesterday morning. I'm banking on the Ford starting no problem.
I will have to sweep the snow off from it. We got a few inches of light fluffy stuff yesterday evening. It started in at about 4 PM. Just when I got back to the Post Office.
Yesterday I met a customer on the mail route whose Dad knew my Grandpa. The one I lived with and write about once and awhile. He said his Dad nicknamed my Grandpa "Little Big Man."
My Grandpa was short, but had a big personality. The customer's Dad and my Grandpa are gone now.
Well, anyway, I'm about of writing time here. I started on a piece first thing this morning. I will post it below.
There's the feeling and urge to these pieces . . . that I need to develop them. Atleast for my own sake.
It's below. I'm off to sweep snow and start a vehicle. I hope you have a great day!
Fire #113
1.25.25
###
"The less we understand of what our fathers and forefathers sought, the less we understand ourselves, and thus we help with all our might to rob the individual of his roots and his guiding instincts, so that he becomes a particle in the mass, ruled only by what Nietzsche called the spirit of gravity.”
― Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections
I never wanted to be ruled by the "spirit of gravity." So I've always been interested in what my father and grandfathers were up to.
Bear with me. Carl Jung quotes do this to me. There is something in Jung that fires me.
If you would've asked me when I turned 18 what I was up to moving in with my Grandparents I couldn't have told you this. But at 50 years old I can.
Most 18 year olds, it seems, do what they need to do to get away from family and strike out on their own to build a life for themselves.
Cold again. 15 below at 5 AM. I immediately hooked the battery charger up to the Ford with the hope it'll start with a little help. I put it on a trickle charge. It said the battery was at 75%. Hopefully within a hour it'll be at 100.
I stopped in to deliver packages to a neighbor that lives 5 miles to the northeast of me the other day. I told him my name. Told him who some of my family was that lives nearby. He got interested. Asked me my name again. Told him that, where I lived, and that my wife and I own Bean Brook Nursery.
"Oh, I know who you are! My wife mentions you once and awhile. You write on Facebook. She follows you."
"Oh no," I said.
"No, it's all good. No worries!"
"Good!!
I left in embarrassment. I took about an hour to wear off.
I have a friend who is a published author. He's written over 20 books. He said one time that a big fear of his is that his neighbors read his books. If I remember correctly. I understand better now why.
I'm off to the mail trail. The Ford started!
Fire #112
1.24.25
This quote is why I am open to religious ideas. I don't like to suffer. Life can be easier.
"I have treated many hundreds of patients. Among those in the second half of life - that is to say, over 35 - there has not been one whose problem in the last resort was not that of finding a religious outlook on life. It is safe to say that every one of them fell ill because he had lost that which the living religions of every age have given their followers, and none of them has really been healed who did not regain his religious outlook."
~ Carl Jung