"What ages is not merely your functions and organs, but the whole of your nature, that particular person you have come to be and already were years ago." -- James Hillman GM. I'm in front of Morning Fire 119 delighted. I wrote over 3 pages, double-spaced, longhand. And it flowed! It's been a long time since this has happened. I like the trail I'm on. It's memoir style. I'm trying to remember a life lived for the past 51 years. "Ishmael," by Daniel Quinn hasn't let me go. Read that close to 30 years go. So there's something there. I started with that. Then my marriage came up in the writing. I went back to the beginning. And how the teachings I took in through Quinn created a bond between us. To this day I don't think we would've wed without those teachings. The teachings, to me, are powerful. I don't understand why. Because I can share them with others and they can nod and get on with their day. But they reoriented me. Changed my vision of myself and the world. I started to imagine differently. That allowed me to imagine a life with my wife. James Hillman, the Jungian psychologist, writes. --- ‘If the character of a person is a complexity of images, then to know you I must imagine you, absorb your images. "To stay connected with you, I must stay imaginatively interested, not in the process of our relationship or in my feelings for you, but in my imaginings of you. "The connection through imagination yields an extraordinary closeness. "Where imagination focuses intently on the character of the other - …. love follows." ---- That's a glimpse of what I've been up to this morning. The challenge now is to go back reread and rewrite it. I might end up throwing the whole thing away. Been there, done that. We'll see. I won't regret it. It feels like I've gained some clarity. And that's always a good thing to me. The mystery keeps unfolding. I hope you have a great day. 2.8.26 #gm #memoir #soul #coffeechain .

"Because the 'traumatic' view of early years so controls psychological theory of personality and its development, the focus of our rememberings and the language of our personal story telling have already been infiltrated by the toxins of these theories. Our lives may be determined less by our childhood than by the way we have learned to imagine our childhoods. We are, this book shall maintain, less damaged by the traumas of childhood than by the traumatic way we remember childhood as a time of unnecessary and externally caused calamities that wrongly shaped us." ~ James Hillman #psychology #soul #quotes

"Despite this invisible caring, we prefer to imagine ourselves thrown naked into the world, utterly vulnerable and fundamentally alone. It is easier to accept the story of heroic self-made development than the story that you may well be loved by this guiding providence, that you are needed for what you bring, and that you are sometimes fortuitously helped by it in situations of distress. May I state this as a bare and familiar fact without quoting a guru, witnessing for Christ, or claiming the miracle of recovery? Why not keep within psychology proper what once was called providence—being invisibly watched and watched over?" ~ James Hillman #quotes #soul #religion #psychology

"To be sane, we must recognise our beliefs as fictions." ~ James Hillman #psychology #quotes #soul

"Why do we focus so intensely on our problems? What draws us to them? Why are they so attractive? They have the magnet power of love: somehow we desire our problems; we are in love with them much as we want to get rid of them . . . Problems sustain us -- maybe that's why they don't go away. What would a life be without them? Completely tranquilized and loveless . . . There is a secret love hiding in each problem." ~ James Hillman #quotes #soul #psychology #love

Dusk. Red pine. Front pasture. Place matters most 2.7.26 #gm #photography #trees

GM. It's -1 on our thermometer. An hour until sunrise.. Last night I worked out under stars. Layed on my back in the snow and watched my breath rise through the light of my headlamp into the cold air. Drove home after filling the wood stove at mom''s at 11 PM. A large waning moon was low in the eastern horizon. High Lights from a clear cold night in February. 🥶 Off to the mail trail. I hope you have a great day. Morning Fire 118 2.7.26 #gm #coffeechain #plebchain

Example: There is no one right way to live. #philiosophy #Ishmael

More wealth please. 🙏 #Bitcoin

Hold, hold, hold.... #bitcoin

I just transferred some Sat's to my wallet. 1000 to the first person who shares a heart warming story about one of their grandparents. #grandparents #soul #family

Red squirrel holding its chest leaning up against our deck after emerging from its hole. It went underground during a sharp shinned hawk fly over. Photo credit: Wife :-) #photography #wildlife #countryliving

My two sons forging steel the old way. We homeschooled them. They're both creative. Here they are in action. #homeschool #countryliving #proofoffather

"Who gets up early to discover the moment light begins?" ~ Rumi I was out there at 6 AM. The only light I saw was the moon's shining through moving cloud openings. I walked down to the end of the driveway to dump the ash bucket and saw snow plow lights in the distance west on County E. I could hear blade on blacktop when I first stepped out. There was a dusting of snow on the deck. Enough to pack down and make the roads slippery I suppose. It was 32 when I woke up. That's 60 degrees warmer than the temperatures we were having a week ago. I don't have anything big planned today. Just do the usual chores around our place and be around my family. I get that luxury with the kids not in school. Sometimes it's unusual though. My son is 16. Daughter 13. When I was their age, back in the late 80's early 90's I didn't want to be home or around my family. I was out getting in trouble with my friends. . . .for the most part. I was telling a woman at work yesterday that I was fortunate the state didn't remove me from my family. My grandpa, when I first moved in with him and my grandma, told me the song "I fought the law, and the law won" reminded him of me. I tell people this, and they can't imagine me doing that. My kids, as far as I can tell, have no desire to do any of that. I think they're more adult than I was. They have a desire to learn what they want to learn. I never had that luxury. It was learn what I had to learn to get passing grades so I wouldn't be a failure in life. I atleast had to get my high school diploma so I didn't fall under "drop out" status. Which I managed to do. It wasn't that I couldn't do the work, I just wasn't interested. Towards the end of high school I would study and get decent grades on certain tests to see if I could do it. I had to show myself that I could do it. That I wasn't a dummy. Anyway, the hope I have for my kids is that they become lifelong learners. Learning is fun. And I think, now more than ever, given the speed of change through technologic escalation being a life long learner is the way to be. That's it for now. I hope you have a great day. Morning Fire 117 2.6.27' #gm #coffeechain #homeschooling #parenting #soul

My takeaway: The only thing holding Bitcoin back is not enough people understand it yet. Lavish is predicting 1 million dollar Bitcoin in 5 or so years. #bitcoin

"No one can compete with you on being you.” - Naval Ravikant GM. The past 2 days I sat down in front of this fire and wrote longhand. Pen on paper not knowing what's going to come out. This morning, though, I read a Rumi poem first. It moved me, of course. I wanted to type it out and share it. To save time I brought it up on Google to copy and paste. I copied and edited. Tries to make it look like it did in the book. Before I knew it ten minutes was gone and it still didn't look like it did in the book. I moved on. My point: Something about longhand is more satisfying. Always has been. Time slows down. Off to start the mail jeep. I hope you have a great day. Morning Fire 116 2.5.26 #gm #soul #writing #memoir

A memory: In reading James Hillman I learn we are Christian at heart and Greek in mind. I'm a Western man. It's the substance of my psyche. #soul #memoir #depthpsychology

But don't be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth, so everyone will understand the passage. We have opened you. ~ Rumi GM. That's what I 've been up to this morning. Writing by hand about myself, memoir style. Not much else to say right now. I have to head out the door to start the mail jeep in 5 minutes. It's -4 here the last time I checked. I need to be to work by 7. So I need to be out of here by 6:40 at the latest. I am going to keep this morning-my-own-myth- momentum going. So you can "understand the passage. We have opened you." Morning Fire 115 2.4.26 #gm #coffeechain #memoir #soul