Lessons on coexistence courtesy lacy phacelia

Lacy phacelia attracts pollinators of all varieties. The beloved apis mellifera, that docile and productive bee that provides nearly all of the honey humans consume, is among the herb’s fans.

It’s so hypnotic to watch their goings-on. Dark purple pollen collects on their furry abdomens. They stuff it in their pockets, here and there. A beautiful coexistence.

Cowboy camping — sleeping without the cover of tent, under the open sky — is an exercise in relearning. The first night or two may be particularly difficult for those in the Global North, where overt programming and sanitized habitats have taught us that humans and the natural world are separate. For that reason, it doesn’t always make for restful sleep.

But it is liberating. The coruscant chorus of stars, distant planets, objects of unimaginable magnitude tumbling through the vast vacuum of space. Melodies resonating in time with the universe’s percussive rhythms.

One of us succeeds at the expense of others. That’s what we’re taught. Humans are the disease, to paraphrase Agent Smith in a movie that somehow seemed profound when I was of a certain impressionable age.

Bullshit. Coexistence is our imperative.

The many crises we’re confronting make this imperative abundantly clear. Ecological collapse, a zoonotic disease run wild, the burdens of all of these threats distributed disproportionately to those most vulnerable among us.

Coexistence with the self, now there’s a real challenge.

There’s no way to know if I’ve really recovered from panic disorder. Six months since my last panic attack, and two years since the big one that uprooted everything, so I feel comfortable saying that I’m in remission, at the very least.

What to say of it now?

Anxiety is a source of its own anxiety. That feeling that the next episode is right around the corner is an insatiable hunger, and the sufferer is made to be an ouroboros, consuming one’s self until the hunger subsides or the sufferer is no more.

Just act normal.

Don’t look down.

I’m okay.

Negative photoblastic. That’s the scientific term for a seed that only germinates in darkness, like that of the lacy phacelia.

The flower populates in great abundance the bee yard where I apprentice as a keeper in my spare time. These days, so many sweet friends buzz about it as the afternoons grow longer and warmer.

Spring winds carry the flower’s scent such a great distance away from the bee yard.

What must it be like to catch that scent as a bee, with such fine-tuned senses? To feel it in the body like natural resonance? To coexist with this beautiful thing born in darkness?