Apartment Lot, Day 5

Tuesday, October 13, 2009, 8:11am

Today, most of the ivy on the brick wall is dead.  I had just discovered what it was: Boston Ivy.  Had just discovered its identity.  And now it's gone.  The leaves have shriveled and rusted, back into the brick, the color of it, as foreshadowed by the red-orange-brown rain-bruised mottling on the previous green.  Now, very little green is left.  The leaves on the top ledge of the low brick wall are the brownest, surpassing even the color of brick, closest to the sun and most often caught by the cold wind.

This feels like melodrama, this description, these dying leaves still clinging to concrete as if holding onto their last breaths of life.  I feel as though I should be mourning them, but I'm not--they're only leaves, twisted vines coming and going with the seasons.  And yet, we mourn people--animals, even.  But rarely plants, which, when I look closely, still have the traits of other living things--personalities in their individual shapes and sizes, their particular curves and folds and ridges, each one unique, yet still the same.  They are bodies, each one, green in their prime and vivid, bright, like smiles, animated faces.  Their actions have little effect on me personally, though they do have actions, and particular ones--the way they cling and climb and in what directions, at what angles, at their own will.  It must be will.  It is not the wind that pushes them, for they grip the brick too firmly, not the rain, not the sunlight that chases them into movement.  They make their own way.  This ivy, these vines, have will, and can it be said that will is the same as intent?  Maybe they are somewhere in between, given that they have no brains, no complicated matrix of circuits telling them what and where and how, giving them consciousness.  And can a plant even be said to have instinct?  Day Lilies close their petals at night, hiding from the darkness, sleeping, and open at daylight--but is this the work of instinct, of intent?  Or is it the chill of night that shrinks them down, curls them up, and the warmth of sun that unfurls them again the next morning?  But then there is the Venus Fly Trap, which snaps at will, capturing insects and other prey.  Clearly, plants are complex--can have instinct, intent, free will--but to what extent does, or can, each species have these things?

Maybe there are people who mourn plants.  Maybe there are people who live among them, cherish them, whether or not their leaves or stems or blooms have character, live freely.  But out here, no one mourns the ivy--only park their cars in front of it, stare at it quizzically--or, like myself, take occasional photos of the ivy, photos with the ivy.  Is it that out here, outside, where no one tends to the plant, it cannot be loved?  Or is it simply because of the resilience of life, the fact that this ivy is fading, crippling, but will come back to life, reincarnate, two seasons from now?  Is it that, since deciduous plants die each year, we cannot celebrate the anniversary of its birth, so much as we can wait for new life to begin, new faces to emerge, to which we cannot become so attached?

Death out here is inevitable, seasonal, perhaps not worth our attention.  But are our emotions, or lack thereof, misdirected?  We know plants can't feel sadness, can't know we don't love them, or care.  But I wonder if they're more worthy of love, of mourning, than we think; if they are more than willing--more than willing themselves into being, more than willing to climb, to consume, to sleep and awaken to morning?