Talking About a Resolution

It's New Year's Eve, and though I am usually scrambling to think of resolutions I need to make, I ought to make for the new year, this year I will have only one, and it is one that I have put a lot of thought into for once: to lose the habit of casting pearls before swine. Everything else will proceed from that. I will not offer my help, and instead will wait to be asked. This will be the hardest resolution for me to keep because I like to help others. The gifts I have I will use for my own gain and where they will be most appreciated. I will make a list of my 'marketable' skills and match them up first with my family's needs, my own, and then those of deserving persons and organizations who have asked for them. As for friendships, well, I have always had the most luck with waiting for them to happen rather than trying to make friends, though more often than not, offers of friendship from others have turned out to be thinly veiled demands for incorporation: attend a shower, buy a gift, help with childcare, shop for someone, provide free writing instruction and language practice. I think that being so generous is a character flaw, as is being too forgiving. I have always thought the question, "what's in it for me?" a selfish one, and it is one which it goes against my nature to ask, but now I am thinking that maybe I would be happier if I asked it more often. I am too often disappointed to find that I was being used, and I am too old to care to deal with that disappointment. And honestly, I'm weary of, well, casting my pearls before swine, then picking them, cleaning them off and apologizing to the pigs for troubling them.

Smell the Flowers

The weather is absolutely beautiful again today: sunny, warm, near 80 and breezy. I awoke at six this morning thinking that today I would like to smell some flowers. It took me half the day, but I finally went out to the porch, from where I can smell the tea olive (does that thing ever stop blooming?) while I wrote two more pages on the new story. Then I went out to photograph the camellias, which unlike any camellia I had ever known, have a scent that reminds me of my great grandmother who grew camellias.
It should turn cold again by Saturday. I'm glad I'm headed for the Caribbean. Unless I could have some serious winter (like a snowstorm in Lednice), I would be perfectly content with this constant Spring, with or without the flowers.

The Church of Christ Without Church

I took my packages to one of the smaller Post Offices around here today so I could treat myself to a little scenery and to evaluate the incompetence of US Postal workers at another location. I wasn't disappointed by either the scenery or the people in the post office. First, the Postmaster (a salaried federal employee with an average pay of more than $60,000 per year) demonstrated both her ignorance of geography and her inability to pronounce 'Czech', by pointing and asking, "Where is that?", with a look on her face that belied her hearfelt conviction that nowhere is as clean and sweet-smelling as America, " Russia?" I opened my mouth to explain, then thought better of it. After all, I needed my package to get to Lenka safe and sound. When a regular customer came in, the Postmaster and she (a Briton, no less) began to expound upon the many virtues of real torture for people in prisons and to complain about the cushy lives prisoners 'enjoy' at public expense. After listening to this for as long as I could, I asked them if either of them had ever toured a prison or known anyone who had done time in one. "Noo," they both answered, the stench of my knowledge of such things flaring their nostrils. (Criminals, foreigners, and the people who know them all smell bad, apparently). I admit that I should have kept my mouth shut, but when have I ever been good at that? I pointed out the lower recidivism rates in prison systems that educate, counsel and train the incarcerated, and that the fact is that prison inmates do not get three square meals and a cot in a climate controlled room with cable TV. Of course, they didn't buy it. I wish I had the courage at such times to ask "what would Jesus do?" and to ask if they are aware of any teaching of Christ which sanctions punishment, to tell them about my church, the Church of Christ without Church just to watch them gawk. They wouldn't be listening to really hear the name of it. Me and Hazel Motes. Fine company I have put myself in. We're preaching to the masses, who wear their church on their cars and their faith in their mouths.

Absit Omen

Tomorrow is a big BYOA art show and sale, and not only have I not made anything for it, but I haven't really felt like looking at what I have already that I could take. I have started a new story, a complete departure from my earlier ones, and though it is already ten pages from the first draft at the first sitting, it too isn't finished. I hope this is just a function of my mood this week. It's cold and dreary, and without snow or sunshine, I am loathe to get much accomplished.
We will leave for a cruise in a week, so I have been mostly focused on the planning and packing for that. I really need to get back to my Spanish. I have enough to converse and to learn more without relying on English at all. I am disappointed in my progess. I started in April, took a break from it from June to late September, and have been less than consicientious for the last couple of weeks. Perhaps it is my lack of discipline that I should be put out with. I think the trip to Mexico will be great motivation for getting back to it. Nothing like using a foreign language in a foreign country to get me motivated.
I have at least managed to cook this week. One day was a nice Chinese noodle dish which is so easy that I don't know why I don't make it more often. Mexican yesterday. Tomorrow, maybe a roast or Osso Buco, something that will take the chill off the kitchen and our moods while it's cooking.