Questions of Travel by Elizabeth Bishop.

A bumblebee, fat as my thumb drones above me, buried in the locust tree blossom.  The birds contest their rights, vividly, as the squirrel comes  close on the overhanging branch, leaps to the roof, & maneuvers his way to the fuchsia which he tries to eat.  A crow, sharp, apt, caws.  At this point another bee decides to investigate me.

It will be warm day.  I put nearly everything into pots this year.

The pot out back, above, the pot out front, below:

This is the sage with bees you can’t see:

I read recently there is a chemical released when working with soil that wards off depression, so much so that one is compelled subconsciously to garden.

I wonder what weeding does for the mind?

Related articles

• Chilly spring confounds bumblebees (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• http://www.gardenvisit.com/blog/2009/03/24/french-impressionist-painting-and-english-planting-design/

Lotus Seed 1 by © Kuan Chong Ng | Dreamstime.com

One of the best yoga studios in the world is around the corner from me, and I used to go regularly.  Since March, however, I’ve been resisting it.  I wanted my mornings for writing, and by the time the afternoon rolled around, I was too weary to go.  I did suffer from a flu that had me miss classes I’d especially signed up for, but what is my resistance to going now?  I fear I am so far out of touch, but I know that this studio is full of non-judgmental students, students who are very much concerned with their practice.  I’m heavier than a few months back, which makes me body-conscious. I know, as we all do, that getting there (to a class, to a studio, even to a restaurant) is the hardest part; once you’re there, you wonder what made you stay away.

Is it that I’m moving so I don’t want to miss this studio and its teachers and its students too much?  That I stay away so I can let go?  The sadness of loosing something is enormous.  I fear the loss, the change.  I was lucky enough to find a teacher who directed me to her teacher, a blessing I sometimes forget.  When I met my principal teacher, her teacher, I felt aligned immediately.  I have only felt that way in some auditoriums, just before I know I am going to see some good film, theatre or listen to a reading.  It is a sense of identity, knowing, oh, I’m one of this crowd, I know how to do this, I belong here.  It’s a sense of recognizing, I’ve been doing this all my life.

That’s funny sentence to write when I am very much a beginning student who avoids arm balances and headstands, but to sweep up one’s arms in a salutation to the sun seems familiar.  Maybe I speak of two different things: yoga and sitting in an auditorium filled with a buzz.  Maybe the buzz is the connection, the mutual energy that film-goers and yoga practitioners share, the knowing that one is a participant in something bigger than the individual.

I cannot bear to promise I will go to yoga today.  I think I might, though.

Later: I did.