"...and your life is in your hands."

When I get a line of poetry going through my head, it's usually for a good reason.
Lately:    voi ch'entrate, and your life is in your hands. -- the final line of Robert Lowell's "The Exile's Return." 
"Voi ch'entrate" is elliptical for Dante's lasciate ogne speranze voi ch'entrate, better known as "abandon all hope, ye who enter here."

And the truth is, I'm staring down a precipice.

But aren't we all, always? I take my life in my hands with every breath. That part was clear. But I didn't understand why I was getting the "abandon hope" part of the quote. Maybe it was just along for the ride.

Thank goodness I've been listening to all the self-empowerment and personal development audios. I listened to Roz Savage, the English lady who left behind her corporate life to follow passion, and has rowed solo across oceans. One of her lessons from aboard boat was don't indulge in hope. My ears pricked up. In the middle of the ocean, in a storm, with a broken oar and a waterlogged radio. hope may lead to paralysis, apathy, and a feeling of disempowerment as you try to replace your initiative and responsibility with wishing and longing.
So, actually, Robert Lowell (and little miz Ela), abandoning hope and acknowledging that your life is in your hands are two arms of the same embrace--embracing personal accountability.

My life is in my hands as I stare down a precipice and as I check my hope at the door. 
I'm learning so much right now, rediscovering my urge and delight in creative writing and translating, and throwing myself down the rabbit hole of a whole new endeavor, learning and being coached to run a business. In my ripe old age, I'm finally learning about finances! I'm finally bringing myself into participation (one of the reasons I first started this blog, participation) in one of the most potent and ubiquitous means of circulation.
And it's uncanny how well what I'm learning about business fits in with many of the spiritual/personal development changes I've been working on. I'm looking forward to sharing more detail on that.
But there is also a demand for unflinching honesty. If you're going to lay out resources you don't have, you'd better be very clear about where you're borrowing it from, and on what terms. Things have to match up. 

I have a mismatch. I'm excited, optimistic, engaged. I feel really good. And/but--I feel really good despite... When I say or think x is really good despite... is usually when something's about to go awry. But really, I feel okay. And yet, it was wisdom to decide not to go to the writers' conference at the end of this month because I'm not at the top of my notch. But I'm feeling okay! But objective markers of measurement would insist I'm not okay. And there's such a mismatch, I can hardly believe it even standing on two different scales, even getting feedback from people I trust.

Now would be an extremely inconvenient time to have to go away to treatment. But I'm back at the point of being told it's go away by choice or else I'll lose the choice.
I'm finding this pretty difficult to digest. It makes going off and studying up on LLC paperwork seem relatively easy.
And my life is in my hands.

Losing, Subconscious Messages, Marzipan-Stuffed Dates

After all these extremely cold dry weeks, "snow is falling snow on snow, snow on snow" (in the bleak midwinter, here and now).

Beautiful...but the forecast warns that once again, it'll warm up again and snow will turn to rain.

Snow on the ground, and the clouds that bring snow, do something to the light. There's a softening, a dimming: an invitation to stare at that candle flame peacefully, rather than run around doing the last hundred errands, driving through the snow far faster than a one-horse open sleigh could dream of.

By the time I got home, I was without the debit card to our joint bank account, and was also pretty cognizant of having misplaced or lost the go-phone that's all the cellphone I have.
How the subconscious works! I've been receiving message after message recently that I "need" to get an iPhone. Loss of a card from a disjointing account--telling in its own way also.

It should be mentioned that, although I'm great at losing other things, I almost never lose material objects in an annoying way. And so, by today I've tracked down the debit card to the first place I suspected. The physical object returns, the question and/or message remains.

We have places to go and gifts to wrap, but I wanted to show that I haven't lost my "war on the kitchen at festive season" propensity, thanks to my grandmother in Israel. She wouldn't understand making chocolate from scratch, or marzipan for that matter, let alone soaking Brazil nuts pre-dehydrating.

But she would understand the delight in creativity and the promise of purveying enjoyment to other people through the creations.

My own idea, although I'm sure it's been done before--I made marzipan, stuffed date halves with it, coated the top with my home-made (very dark) chocolate.
I'm sure it would be really good with store-bought marzipan and chocolate, but making those from scratch made it special for me, even if people couldn't tell the difference (I hope they can)!

Piles of other goodies made already--I'll try to get some more pictures up soon.
Happy Holidays!