It cannot be said for certain where it’s going, but it is known where the Aloe Mitriformis plant on the dining room table has been. It is watered on the 30th day of every month with an eyeballed half-cup of faucet tap. Over the past months, it has exhibited a keen knack for growing in the easternmost direction. This is likely due to the sun’s hapless shining through the sill that this plant rests upon. The wooden ledge upon which the plant rests is slightly warped, but the plant minds very little. This specific Aloe Mitriformis plant, being both only 2 and 192 years old, has seen things unbeknownst to the common man. This plant has seen infantile first steps and deathbed regrets during its life spans. One such experience, which may account in part for its current whereabouts on the table, occurred thusly:
It was some time ago, in a place not unlike this one; the campus was cold and brutal. The plant hoped for brighter days in these cold, cold months. The unrelenting chill of an open window often hurt it, but Aaron Haskell was prone to overheating. This was admittedly by his own doing, as he often slept with several layers of sheets underneath a weighted blanket. He was a tall young man whose feet dangled off the Twin XL bed frame as tossed and turned from the warmth and cold of the night. His roommate, Tom Gunder, was in a perpetual state of discontentment with the temperature of the space. He can be best described as a chronic grump.
The two lived in a contemptuous environment, as observed by the plant. Peace was maintained in a similar fashion to a brittle 45-year-old sapling blowing in a snowy wind. Introduce a gust of enough force and such a tree can topple over. The plant knew deep within its soul that such a gust was coming. It was a deeper and greener truth than any that could be known to a person.
During these harsh winter months, Tom only left the apartment for club lacrosse practices. He was unhappily hunched over his desk when Aaron came in. He looked up from his business course module to give his roommate a semi-kind nod of recognition. Aaron smiled as the slush fell off his boots and tracked in a cold dirty slough.
“Hey, man. How are ya?” Aaron asked with sincerity.
Tom turned back to his schoolwork. He had only made eye contact with his roommate for two and a half seconds, as witnessed by the plant from its promontory.
“Doing work,” Tom grumbled.
Aaron nodded and walked to his side of the room, a mere four-and-a-half feet from where Tom sat and rested. The space was a confined one, often lending itself to more conflict than unity. Aaron slid the screened window open further, letting in a breath of cold air against the plant. It would have shivered if it could. Instead, it retreated inwardly toward a deeper and greener cosmic truth. Beyond the dorm, beyond this world, beyond the then and there, it quietly observed.
“Hey man.” Tom spoke this in a stern voice as Aaron slid off his layered winter coat. “It’s been getting really cold in here, can we try and keep the window closed?” Aaron continued his movements slowly.
“But I’m hot. I just walked across campus in this big jacket and it’s hot in here.” Aaron was looking right through Tom when he said this. Both statements were true: He had walked from the art studio where he spent most evenings, and the room was set to a warm 72ºF.
“I don’t care, man. Please just keep it closed.” Tom barely regarded his roommate’s temperate wishes as they related to the shared living space. Letting in some brisk 26ºF air outside would only make the heaters blast warmer air, which the plant knew all too well. During these cold nights, the plant often straddled between the states of its cohabitants: much too hot and all too cold.
“Listen, this isn’t your dorm. It’s ours. We don’t have to be friends, but we gotta coexist and respect each other.” Aaron held down the boiling anger inside him for Tom’s blatant contempt. There was no sense in being angry about this matter, but then again, little in this world is sensical. The plant knew this much as true.
“Then respect me by closing the damn window,” Tom spoke sharply without looking up. Aaron thought before acting, a problem he had righted some time ago. Several months prior, he had snapped at Tom for something seemingly insignificant. Oddly enough, neither the plant, Arno, nor Tom remembered what that argument had been over.
What the plant did remember, however, was the Deep Green Truth of the world. The plant advanced forward from its meditation to view the soon-to-be argument, considering the Deep Green Truth as it did so. As it watched the two roommates continue to disagree, it recalled an earthly unity that no person had experienced since the turn toward global industrialization. It sounds contrived to say in human words, but as the Aloe Mitriformis plant puts it, there was a time on Earth when The Deep Green Truth ruled over all life. It wasn’t a perfect harmony, no, but it was a lot closer to harmony than the modern state. Even now, the plant has said, the average person can find slivers of The Deep Green Truth in the world. The plant has said that the next time that one is out and the sun is shining, and the smell of grass fills the air, and the sensate pleasure of the scene becomes unequivocally apparent, this will be The Deep Green Truth – that the world is full of natural beauty.
Please, disregard the above digression. Aaron was staring right through his roommate.
“I’ll close the window if you take out the garbage. It smells like your dinner from two nights ago.” Aaron placed the ultimatum between the two. A deep sigh emanated from Tom as he slammed his computer shut and pushed his seat away from his desk with too much force. Their sights locked on one another. Tom unclenched his set jaw to let out a low giggle.
“Yeah man, whatever. I’ll take out the garbage once you learn how to clean the bathroom.” Tom spat a little as he forced the words out.
“But the bathroom isn’t dirty, Tom.”
“Do you not agree that it could be cleaner, Aaron?” Tom retorted. There was a certain compelling logical argument for both men in this instance.
“Fine,” Aaron responded after nearly 17 seconds of thinking. The plant cannot express the inflection through which the men said the conversation, but it can be imagined with a sweet bitterness in the words. “I’ll clean the bathroom if you pick up all your laundry off the ground.”
“I’ll pick up all my laundry off the ground if you clean out the fridge.”
“I’ll clean out the fridge if you get the stain out of the carpet.”
“I’ll get the stain out of the carpet if you stop tracking mud and snow inside.”
And so on and so forth it went. They would each go on to name several more qualms they had with their living space. There was no resolution nor was anything cleaner by the end of their discussion. At some point, the window was closed, and the plant, having seen it all, felt a moment of respite after a long day.