The Secret Life of Plants

By Philodendron, channeled by Jennifer Glickstein

Philodendron in the wild would never have taken such abuse. It did hurt to have a leaf chewed off—somehow it was more offensive then when one of those human hands nipped it quickly, thinking that was its job—giving a sort of hair cut. That is what they call it, a hair cut, when a human hand holds the sharp shiny instrument and nips the tendrils off a human head—the leaves, the top part. Philo had experienced this with the smaller human head. These hair cuts happened every so often in the space where the food was prepared.

Now Ratso, the fat animal the human hands constantly patted, was up on the flat surface—the table—chewing and chewing. This was no hair cut. This was no life. Where was the human hand that usually swatted Ratso off the table? In fact, all humans and their hands and heads seemed absent. There was only Ratso, chewing and chewing. The light through the windows was growing dim.

Suddenly there was a gurgling, and Ratso backed up, falling off the table. Philo's tendrils waved—experiencing Ratso below, heaving and gurgling, sticky substance expelling and green.

Philo breathed, spores opening with satisfaction, and vaguely recalled the freedom of silence, of another life on a forest floor where leaves could breathe nature. No hair cuts.

Philodendron—its toxicity its protection, known by the other spores, by the lean animals, by the wind.

 
(“I can’t conceive the nucleus of all

begins inside a tiny seed;

and what we think as insignificant

provides the purest air we breathe.”

            --Stevie Wonder, The Secret Life of Plants, 1979)