Fuel for Thought

“Confidence doesn’t come from believing nothing will go wrong, it comes from knowing what you’ll do when it does.”--Arnold Schwarzenegger   Well Arnold, that gives me fuel for thought. It rather flies in the face of the belief that thoughts create, doesn’t it? Yet it enters the human condition into the equation. And think of it this way, if thoughts attract or create as some say, enter Confidence into the act.   We can’t think of everything, and some events come unexpectedly. There are happenings we see but don’t want, events that surprise us, pipes break, people get sick, loved ones die. We can’t anticipate it all. Yet according to Schwarzenegger’s idea, when if we can develop the Confidence that we can handle it, we have security. A wise thought.   This comes at an important time for me, for last night my husband informed me that he got a call from the hospital that we owe a humongous bill. He had an operation quite a few months ago, and I had an altercation that put me in the hospital. Months went by—no bill. I thought the Health Insurance had handled it. Only part of it. “Life happens while you are making other plans.” Welcome to 2026: I also mentioned in the last blog, which was less than a week ago, and still in the year 2025, that I ended my long procrastination about taking my Real Estate Continuing Education course and began it. After bolstering myself up to take that 30-hour course. Today, I found that the four hours I had put into it had evaporated. The 2025 course is obsolete. I must take the new revised 2026 course. I wanted to cry. I do get my fee transferred to the new course, though. Ah ha!  I see their issue. It’s the new Timeshare Bill. The new course hit us right out of the gate with the notice that starting January 1, 2026, Time-share agents are limited only to The Promotion of Time-share Interests. Only the principal broker can quote prices, provide advice, and draft contracts. Basically, timeshare agents (a 14-hour study) must concentrate on schmoozing customers. More than you wanted to know? But maybe I saved you from an unscrupulous timeshare salesperson for now you know the rules. But what about their present honest agents? Their duties were diminished, and they must take a course. That must come as a shock. I’m over wanting to cry. I only spent 4 hours on the previous course. What if I had reached 29 hours and all my data went away? Now that would be a reason to cry. There must be something in my future I need to say about Real Estate, for here I am studying a course, but not selling houses. The Book: Also, in the last blog, I mentioned that I have been editing a book I wrote ages ago. Now I figure it is time to clean it up and do something with it. Ages ago, I was interested in Cosmology, that is, the origin of things, and much involved mythology. I took notes, then wondered what to do with them. Well, of course, put them into a novel. Sixty-five thousand words later, Children of the Sun was born. Here is an excerpt:   11,500 YEARS BEFORE PRESENT 1 On a day warm as kitten’s breath, I sat on the temple wall and stared down into the streets of Anu', watching a thin line of students—minuscule as spiders from my perspective—waiting to be admitted into the temple. "Grandmother," I asked, "what do students learn in the temple?" "Guess it's time you knew," she said, putting aside the flowers she was hanging to dry, and began to walk with long strides across the courtyard. "Come," she said, looking back, motioning for me to come.  I was dumbfounded, for I had often asked why students came to the temple, only to receive quick answers, "To learn about the great creative force," she would say. "How to create their destiny. How to heal." This time, she was ready to show me. I jumped off the wall and ran to follow her.  We strode down a long corridor open to the sky, across a brick-paved grotto, and through an arched passageway. Already, I had waited years to learn what the initiatives knew. I expected to see students going to class. Perhaps I would see a ritual or hear a lecture from a learned hierophant. As we walked, I let my mind wander back over the past three years—how I had stopped going to the hills after the attack in the marketplace. And how, in that self-imposed captivity, a loneliness was born. Childhood play no longer attracted me. Deep thought did.  It has been many moons since the day grandmother released me from the temple to the hills beyond.  That day I bounded out of bed, pulled off my night garment, and jumped naked into the fountain. I figured this day would be like most others: one of study and play, meditation and exploration. However, sitting in the water, watching Grandmother unfold a crudely woven brown cloth, I asked, "What is it, Grandmother?"    She smiled and held out my towel, a soft linen one, brushed to a downy finish, and I stepped from the fountain and rolled into the towel. After I dried, she handed me the brown cloth. “Put this on,” she said. Strange. This was not my usual robe. It was not linen. It was coarse wool, crudely woven. "What does this mean?” I asked, pushing my arms into the sleeves. Grandmother smiled as she tied a belt around her waist and pulled out folds of her robe, a twin of mine, to make pockets. "We're going to the hills," she said. "It's time for you to see what lies beyond these walls.” “Grandmother! Today?”  She smiled. “Yes, Love, today.” After all these years, I had come to the conclusion that my life would be forever confined to the temple. Grandmother and I were oddities, having escaped the motherland on the day it sank. Grandmother's knowledge was guarded, too, her being a physician and a keeper of the sacred word. Yet, I knew others held the mysteries, the hierophants of the temple, for example, those who guarded their knowledge with their lives, giving it only to those willing and courageous enough to undergo the initiations.  I watched as a dog watches its master, my heart pounding, anxious. Had I been a dog, I might have catapulted myself into the air, a mass of wiggles, but I sat quietly and watched as Grandmother pulled the familiar golden cord laced with lapis lazuli from her hair. "Most people outside the temple wear robes such as these,” she said as hair, black as a moonless night, tumbled to her shoulders. "Wear these too.” She held out a pair of sandals. ---   End of excerpt.   P.S. As the young man, Ma’at, underwent the trials to become an initiate, Alli, through a psychic connection was him. She experienced what he learned, became lost in the labyrinth as he did, experienced the tunnels, the aqueduct, and found a puppy snarled in the threads of an old tapestry, the same as he.  Both decided independently that they were become a priest and a priestess.  And then they met.  A connection, a love story, and a journey.  With the help of the pilot of their ship, an engineer and a navigator, Alli and Ma’at set off on a dangerous, enlightening journey to find the motherland again.       In the last blog I issued a Woo Woo 💥💥💥Warning. So, here is a comment from Ernest Holmes: “Nature attends and is always ready to serve.” Nothing is forced upon the individual. And, when you believe the Universal Creative process believes with you, that way, your belief will demonstrate itself in a tangible form as changed conditions.   May your new year indeed be a NEW one filled with the stuff dreams are made of.

Did This Happen at Your House?

"Christmas, that holiday, that comes every ten years when you are a child and every ten days when you are an adult," (Tom Robbin's) tiptoed on down our street on Christmas night. The following day using the new-fallen snow as a skateboard, it skidded right into 2022.

 

Daughter dear suggested that we perform a ceremony at midnight on New Year's Eve. So, at her suggestion, we wrote out irritations from the past year (some I'd say, not all), put them in a bowl, and struck a match to them. 

We smoked up the house and set off the fire alarm.

Good thing we only wrote out some of those irritations.

 

A thought: Little Boy Darling's birthday is next month on 2/2/22. (A time of balance.) Ground Hog's Day too. He can keep doing it over until he gets it right.

 

In thinking about my Newsletter, The Muse, (I'll keep doing it until I get it right.) I'm pondering: What's a Newsletter supposed to say?

• Why am I writing it instead of just blogging?
• Does it sound like a blog?
• Who wants to read it?
• Why charge?

 

I guess I'm writing it to offer suggestions where a person can read more if they want. I can throw everything in one basket, so to speak. And I love the idea of The Muse and sweeping the house in preparation for her visit. 

Some people have a stroke of genius, which is to say, the muse has visited them. Don't get too puffed up when the muse comes, though, and neither take too much blame when she doesn't. (Haha, some balance here.)

 

In the Muse Newsletter, I can offer things I'm pondering, not assuming, of course, that you don't have your own ponderings. I wonder, though, are two ponderings together better than one?

 

If I were a scientist, I would hope the muse whispers an answer to some dilemma [‘m having. However, I'm a writer, so that's my reference point. Writing, unlike scientific discovery, is something everyone can do. It doesn't have to be creative writing or even good writing. Journaling is a way to take another look at an event, sad, happy, whatever. A happy event? Relish it. A sad event? Lay it to rest. 

 

"And what, you ask, does writing teach us? First and foremost, it reminds us that we are alive and that it is a gift and a privilege, not a right."

— Ray Bradbury

 

I just finished Tibetan Peach Pie, Tom Robbin's book about his life, thus the Christmas quote. Man, that man can use similes and metaphors. He spent an entire page extolling the virtues of jelly donuts after hearing that President John F. Kennedy, addressing an audience at the Berlin wall, said, "Ick bin ein Berliner."

A novelist in a spy novel said, "Ick bin ein Berliner" meant "I am a jelly donut." A magazine picked it up, and people believed it without checking. 

 …it would be suggested that Kennedy had got the translation wrong—that by using the article ein before the word Berliner, he had mistakenly called himself a jelly doughnut. In fact, Kennedy was correct. To state Ich bin Berliner would have suggested being born in Berlin, whereas adding the word ein implied being a Berliner in spirit. His audience understood that he meant to show his solidarity.

At the climax of his speech, the American leader identified himself with the inhabitants of the besieged city:

 

 "Freedom is indivisible," said Kennedy in his illustrious speech (Second only to "Ask not what the country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”) "and when one man is enslaved, all are not free. When all are free, then we can look forward to that day when this city will be joined as one and this country and this great continent of Europe in a peaceful and hopeful globe."

His conclusion linked him eternally to his listeners and to their cause: "All free men, wherever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and therefore, as a free man, I take pride in the words Ich bin ein Berliner."

 

Even if Kennedy had called himself a jelly donut it would have endeared him to the people, the same as he did that day.

 

Okay dokey, let's give this the old college try:

 This will only go to my email, no fancy do-das to fill in.