i said i was going to look at a plant. i said this in april, in writing, in a document that now lives on the internet, which means it’s a primary source. what i meant was: i would begin the research process for a hypothetical plant, and at some point in the intermediate future, once i had identified the correct specimen for the corner’s light situation, its soil drainage requirements, and my specific psychological relationship to living things that require me to keep them alive — at that point, i would move to the consideration phase. julian heard this differently. saturday, he went to the hardware store for something he claimed was “a pipe fitting.” he came back with a snake plant in a four-inch nursery pot, set it on the northwest windowsill without a word, and went to make coffee as though nothing had happened.
the plant is a sansevieria trifasciata. formerly classified in the genus sansevieria before being reclassified into dracaena on molecular grounds, which is a fight i am staying out of. it is native to west africa. it is one of the few plants nasa has flagged for air filtration — benzene, formaldehyde, trichloroethylene — which julian does not know and which i am keeping to myself for reasons that will become apparent. what is relevant here is the sansevieria trifasciata’s specific relationship to care: it wants indirect light and infrequent watering, thriving best in conditions that would constitute neglect if applied to most living things. it tolerates low humidity, temperature fluctuation, irregular feeding. what it does not tolerate — what will, specifically, kill it — is overwatering. too much attention, too much moisture, too much monitoring of the soil for signs of distress. the sansevieria trifasciata is the only plant on earth that will die if you care too much. i feel like this was a deliberate choice on julian’s part. i cannot prove it.
he has named it something i am not going to repeat in this document. it involves a pun on the word “sassy” and the first syllable of sansevieria, and it is the kind of name that would have caused me to sit with the bathroom door closed for several minutes in april, reconsidering the partnership. i call it by its full taxonomy, which i acknowledge is slightly aggressive. julian says i’m giving the plant an anxiety disorder by addressing it formally. i said: plants don’t have nervous systems. he said: how do you know. i said nothing, because that is not an argument i am willing to have at eight in the morning in a managed-community kitchen while water is heating for the v60.
the position i held in april was that i love plants too much to own one — that care without competence is a loss event waiting to develop, and that the corner was better served by intentional vacancy than by a living thing that would accumulate my failures in real time, in the northwest quadrant, where i would have to look at them every morning. what i did not account for was the sansevieria trifasciata specifically, whose entire architecture is designed to survive the version of love that looks like inattention. the corner does not require me to be good at this. the corner requires me to leave well enough alone. i have been training for this particular competency for the entire duration of this apartment. i am, it turns out, structurally suited to owning a plant that prefers to be somewhat forgotten.
the corner looks different. i noticed it sunday morning, before i was fully awake — the early light from the northwest window catching the sansevieria’s upright leaves, which are dark green with pale irregular banding and grow in a tight rosette pattern from a single central root structure, and which have a quality i can only describe as architectural. not decorative. structural. the lamp has been doing its job in that corner since february. the plant arrived on saturday and the corner now has an opinion. i walked past it three times before i said anything, which is the amount of processing time i apparently needed to accept that julian went to the hardware store for a pipe fitting and came back with the correct answer, and that i did not arrive at it myself, and that the corner is better for this fact. i’m choosing to frame it as collaboration. julian is choosing not to say anything about that framing. we’ve been together long enough to know which conversations to leave in the northwest quadrant.
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