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.