Becoming B

My takeaway: To die well we must have your own myth. We're a story. A fiction. Continuously editing that myth. Fantasy is reality.

5:51 AM. Good morning. It's 39 and lightly raining out there. That's what Google says anyway. I haven't been out there yet. It was wet, windy, and chilly when I worked out last night. Assuming it hasn't changed. More thoughts on Bitcoin. People ask me what it is. It's a computer network and protocol invented by a genius. He released it to the world and disappeared forever. Some say he had to. Otherwise his life would have been ruined. His name was: Satoshi Nakamoto. I bought some this morning at 107K a coin. I try to buy a little each day, even if it's $10 worth. Been doing it for over 3 years now. Part of the future looks brighter with Bitcoin. That's the way it looks from in here anyway. Off to the mail trail. I hope you have a great time day! Morning fire #11 10.22.25

I started buying Bitcoin 3 years ago. I bought a little because people who stayed politically centered during the Covid lockdowns were talking about it. These were people who understood there were two movies playing on one screen. They didn't get sucked in emotionally so much and were looking for a third way out. Most of them were financially successful I believe. Solid middle class. And as you know that demographic is just about gone. I came to the conclusion, through online observation, that people looking for a third way out tend to gravitate towards Bitcoin. So following their lead I bought some. Then I started educating myself by listening to Bitcoin podcasts and books on the mail route. I was taking in well over 20 hours of Bitcoin content a week. Still do sometimes. Plus I was desperate. My Dad just died (my first purchase was on the day of his memorial service). Annie was getting ready to quit her full time mail carrier job so she could be at home with our homeschooled kids. We needed capital to start our native plant nursery. And I'm a curious person by nature. They say people above 40 come to Bitcoin because they are curious by nature and/or desperate. So that was luckily me. I say luckily because Bitcoin has helped us financially. We're able to keep the bills paid. Without it we'd be in pretty tough shape. With Annie quitting the Post Office and inflation I don't think we could make it. Things are still tight, but they would be much worse I think. I don't even think about the stock market or any another interest bearing asset if we have extra money to put away for a rainy day. Nothing performs like Bitcoin. Everything you stick into it doubles roughly in 18 months. I have no interest in owning second best. I laughingly tell people if they see us living on the street they'll know why. Yet from what I have learned Bitcoin just makes sense. The more unstable The Dollar becomes the stronger Bitcoin becomes. And at this point I don't see any saving The Dollar. Our country is so far in debt that it will never be paid off. They are printing money just to keep the government solvent. So Bitcoin, to me, will only get stronger. Nothing stops this train, as Lyn Alden says.

Ordinary people tend to give advice, which is more about them than the person they want to help. They often fail to separate their own lives and values from the person they are talking to. ~ Thomas Moore

The human heart and body do not obey the rationality that our modern world worships. ~ Jacob Needleman

From my journal entry on August 27th, 2022 (3 years ago today): "Stopped in after work and had dinner with Grandma, David (my uncle), and Mom. We talked a bit about Bitcoin and the market dropping. Told them it was a good time to get in with it dropping below $20,000 a coin today" I checked the price this morning. It's just over $111K. Crazy.

A hummingbird visits an obedient plant. A friend of Bean Brook Nursery took this photo the other day. Like usual, she said we could use it. A month from now, if all goes well, the hummingbird will be somewhere south and the obedient plant gone to seed. We saw a hummingbird visiting a volunteer evening primrose by our front deck early this morning. I'm seeing some people report on social media the hummingbirds they've been seeing are gone. We had a customer stop in just after we opened. All is well on the front. One a day keeps the worry away. It's chilly out there. High fifties. Cloudy, gray, gusts of wind. A taste of fall. A good time to pile firewood. And that's what I'm going to go do. Until next time. 8.24.25

I took this photo on the mail route yesterday. It's sumac. It reminded me fall is near. We didn't have any customers yesterday. Things tend to slow down this time of year. They shouldn't, when it comes to planting natives, but they do. I planted 4 bluestems in the front meadow last evening . . . 2 big and 2 little. I looked up the latin meaning of big blue stem the other day. I can't remember exactly what it was but an image of an old man with a long beard comes to mind. Oh, yeah, back to the meadow. It's dry. Cutting through the soil with my soil knife is getting more difficult by the day. The soil I put back in the hole is gritty and dusty. Doesn't hold together at all. I'm off the mail trail. Hope you have a great day! 8.7.25

Money sovereignty, to me, is money not controlled by human beings. #Bitcoin

Scrolling through Facebook I see this commentary and photo from a customer: "Rattlesnake Master! Bought from Bean Brook Nursery. It’s had a hard couple of years - so I’m thrilled it hung on and is now ready to bloom!* This is our 3rd season growing and selling native plants and shrubs. This season has been a challenge. There's a lot of places we can look for inspiration and encouragement. Today we look to one of the plants we grew from seed. Why not? Plants are persistent. Without them we are nothing.

From the front meadow last evening. Black eyed susans blooming with lance leaf coreopsis. This is the most yellow we've had sprinkled through the meadow. The black eyed susans are popping up where we've thrown seed or past plants have dropped them. We never really know. The plants do what they want to do. We learn the best we can from them. 7.2.25

"Technologies of the soul tend to be simple, bodily, slow and related to the heart as much as the mind. Everything around us tells us we should be mechanically sophisticated, electronic, quick, and informational in our expressiveness - an exact antipode to the virtues of the soul. It is no wonder, then, that in an age of telecommunications - which, by the way, literally means "distant connections" - we suffer symptoms of the loss of soul. We are being urged from every side to become efficient rather than intimate." - Thomas Moore 9:30 AM. Mother's Day morning. Happy Mother's Day to all you mothers out there. We open in a half hour. We've been open for 2 days now. We've had 9 customers stop in so far, and everyone has left with plants. It might not sound like much, but for our backyard nursery operating on a thin margin every exchange counts and is appreciated. While I deliver mail Annie texts me updates. And when I get impatient I call to see if we have customers. I ask a lot of questions. I want to know how people have found us so far off the beaten path and what people are interested in. I've heard a few customers showed up because of recommendations from customers last year, others return after multiple visits from years past. Almost all of them say they'll be back! Our neighbor who got married to Led Zeppelins' "Thank You" showed up again this year. She has a few spotted bee balm she bought last year growing at the end of her driveway. I keep an eye on them. I like seeing plants we've grown from seed growing in the wild. The algorithm showed me this post and photo the other day: "Serviceberry (Juneberry) and Ninebark from Bean Brook Nursery have overwintered well! The high bush cranberry made it too but, they are shy and are reluctant to show off any spring finery as yet." We're 3 days into our nursery season and I'm already starting to feel the distance between our customers and neighbors diminish. 5.11.25

I feel like the universe is looking out for me this morning. I sit down in front of fire 213 and randomly open "The Soul's Code." I am desperate and depressed looking for direction on my day off from delivering mail. I have spent the week sacrificing my time to a system that seems destined to fail. Things seem to be getting worse in the economic, environmental, social, and political realms. I don't think I'm alone in this assessment. And it doesn't matter what political party is in control. The page I open to is 153. My eyes land on the 3rd paragraph. Here's what James Hillman writes: ### "The ecological vision restores to environment also the classical idea of 'providentia'--that the world provides for us, looks out for us, even looks after us. It wants us around, too. Predators, tornadoes, and blackflies in June are only pieces of the picture. Just think of all that's delicious and sweet-smelling. Do birds sing but for each other? This breathable, edible, and pleasant planet, invisibly serviced and maintained, keeps us all by means of its life--support system. Such would be an idea of nurture that is truly nurturing. "'Environment,' then, would be imagined well beyond social and economic conditions, beyond the entire cultural setting, to include every item that takes care of us every day: our tires and coffee cups and door handles and the book you are holding in your hands. It becomes impossible to exclude this bit of environment as irrelevant in favor of that bit as significant, as if we could rank world phenomena in order of importance. Important for whom? Our understanding of importance itself has to change; instead of 'important to me,' think of 'important to the aspects of the environment.' Does this item nurture what else is around, not merely us who are around? Does it contribute to the intentions of the field of which we are only one short-lived part? "As notions of environment shift, we notice environment differently. It becomes more and more difficult to make a cut between psyche and world, subject and object, in here and out there. I can no longer be sure whether the psyche is in me or whether I am in the psyche as a I am in my dreams, as I am in the moods of the landscapes and the city streets, as I am in ,'music heard so deeply / That it is not heard at all, but you are the music / While the music lasts' (T. S. Eliot). Where does the environment stop and I begin, and can I begin at all without being in some place, deeply involved in, nurtured by the nature of the world?" ### The world is alive, provides, and looks out for and after us. I needed that reminder this morning. I hope you have a blessed Sunday! 5.4.25

Last night I wonder why there's balls of water on lupine leaves. I think it's the little hairs that shape and hold it. Where it goes from there I don't know. "Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong." ~ Lao Tzu 5.3.25

Only he who can take care of the property of others can have his own. ~ Gurdjieff

Wish I would've understood this 30 years ago! It's hard to get ahead when the government "taxes savers and subsidizes borrowers." #Bitcoin

6:17 AM. Good morning. I was going to make this easy and just say good morning, but I keep thinking about an old, black and white documentary I listened to on the mail route yesterday. It's title: The Myth of The Machine. It was about the philosopher Lewis Mumford and his critique of modern civilization. My takeaway: There is a life giving force on earth. When we forget about it we become anxious and fear the future. This fear leads to control, and round and round we go. So I think we need to understand the mechanisms that foster life before it's too late. I'm off to the mail trail. Fire 210 5.1.25

Last week I heard a great line by a Zen podcaster I listen to. "We all get plowed into the earth." Michael Meade, the mythologist, says we do two things together: "Live and die." Just what's on my mind this morning. Thought I'd share.