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I have been of two minds of putting in a garden this season.  I most likely will.  There’s rosemary and oregano to plant; and nasturtium, cosmos, and feverfew seeds.  I still have to put into the ground the English daisies, violas, and columbines.  One perfect red tulip bloomed, after the daffodils, from the bulbs I put in, and the iris might bloom again.

I have been of two minds because I might not see the all the results if I were to move, yet how selfish.  When I first saw my home of several years, I sat down at a bench or chair in the minuscule backyard.  A locust tree, shaped like a Japanese cherry, flowered above.  I looked ahead and felt more peaceful than I had in days.  A peace garden is what I’ll plant.

For months now, I’ve been looking at the furniture in my apartment, and wondering what to keep.  Luxurious in terms of world disaster, and time.  I will end a job contract in a few weeks, and being on the job market has brought up all those issues of change, transition, decisions.  I’ve been coping by catching up on Grey’s Anatomy–the television show, not the book.  Oh, would that I were the person who would spend her leisure hours pouring over a book out of her field.  Alas.  I’m almost through Season Three, and have gotten to know these television characters well.  They have steady jobs.

I’ve lived here nearly seven years.  I can walk to my favorite coffee shop now and know I’ll find a welcome, and an ear.  In a Buddhist-influenced town, people often just listen, not give all the advice that I never take anyway.  How can I leave?  How can I leave my yoga sangha?  Slow growth friendships that mean something?  I’ve moved enough to know that friendships and practice drift away.

Should I keep the chair if I move?  It has good lines.  When I moved out here, I left my good chair, my very good bureau, my beautiful desk, much of my library, all manner of furniture, paintings, plants.  Now I live on a third of what I used to have, but because I have remained rooted in one apt for several years, am comfortable.

What do I take, what do I leave behind?  Can I do it with becoming paralyzed with tears, an annoying habit I developed a hundred years ago, in college, my last year, when I had to pack up. Then, I was going to graduate school in the fall.  I was on the verge.