Standing at my kitchen counter after putting black-eyed peas (good luck for the new year) to soak for a dinner with company – both a realization and a resolution formed.
By way of explaining what might be included here, black-eyed peas could stand for all the small things – butternut squash, frogs, sweet peas, and a walk in the woods – grace notes of any given month adding up to a cherished complexity.
It’s a relief to have the beans soaking in a pottery bowl. In the same way choosing the subject for a project energizes and organizes – directs energy to one spot (small black spots on small white beans in this case). Choice made – not pinto or turtle or black or great northern today – but black-eyed peas swelling in their changes of water, ready to be cooked with cloves and peppercorns and bay leaves (Mark Bittman advice).
Or they could be served plain and spare like January.
Beans seem heartily full of potential and miracle since they are seeds really. The leftovers will inspire soup.
William Blake wrote: “Labor well in the Minute Particulars: attend to the Little Ones.” Beans – all kinds of beans – that’s the resolution part – to cook more with real beans!
her spirits rose... 
Soaking beans, eating beans – I’ll adopt those resolutions. And the bigger resolution of laboring well on the small things.