Page 26 - Luce 2020

C ovid R eflections

Onward: a reflective piece

Janet Clarke Hall Entrance Scholar Amy Wortmann reflects on the
sensorial experience of living at JCH during the global pandemic,
from the perspective of her College indoor plant.

Being a walking plant is hard. For a start, Friday mornings are suddenly tinctured
you’re shaped differently to your friends. with cinnamon and breakfast clatter.
Your roots are flat and padded, made Wide smiles come from love letters
for trekking as well as burrowing. Your slipped under doors, loud laughter and
leaves hang low to feel the earth as you secret glances.
move. You have no eyes, but the green
pigment in your flesh means you always It makes it easier, sometimes. Other
know where the sun is. times, all it does is deepen the ache.
Stretches of silence after 8pm and
Being a walking plant is hard when all closed café signs fill our minds with
you want to do is put down roots. Soft melancholy. We return from an
soil is hard to come by, especially in afternoon walk feeling emptied, and
long stretches. You find the riverbank think, ‘At least it’s pasta for dinner.’
both a blessing and a bewilderment, at
first. You knead into the dirt, expecting Being a walking plant is hard because,
resistance, and discover it churns like all plants, you feel the cold. Your people’s doors. The buds on your back
beneath you. It’s flush with life. Grass leaves curl at night and thaw in the burst open into bright petals that trap
blades brush against you, murmuring morning, every moment a bite. But the sunlight. You learn the joy of giving,
greetings and questions. You’re surprised when you feel the grass beneath you sharing, learning. We embrace each
to discover you have a lot in common. shivering, you realise there’s more to a other from afar.
winter than solitude.
Plants aren’t made for walking, and And as the wind settles – as your petals
people aren’t made for solitude. We are You pick a wattle for your neighbour fall – you find yourself marvelling at it
made to brush elbows, bump shoulders, and leave it at her door. A few days later, all. And in the end, when you lift your
shake hands: we laugh and argue and you find a thank-you letter resting on roots once again (for you are a walking
chat over breakfast. We crave company. your desk. plant after all), you stop to survey the
ground you’ve left. It is a ground strewn
Humanity and companionship grow A bud begins to form. with pink petals, post-it notes and scraps
together on the riverbank. They of torn-up haiku drafts, and soon, it
intertwine like two veins in a leaf, You knit a scarf for your best friend and will sustain someone else’s roots. The
working together to supply water, he lends you his jumper. You play a song wind will warm, freeze and warm again,
nutrients, comfort. When we’re deprived for your group, and suddenly you’re all and you will carry on. It’s hard being a
of company, we search for it between singing together in the common room. walking plant.
brick walls and ivy clumps. We notice Soon, you’re picking flowers every
piano sounds floating up the stairwell. day and writing haikus to slip under

Author’s Note:
Everyone has their lockdown shtick, When the walking plant arrives at and sadness; although I was thankful to
and for me, it was growing indoor the riverbank, it is greeted by soft come home at the end of the year, I also
plants. Between the highs and lows soil and friendly blades of grass. This knew I would dearly miss College.
of 2020, I managed to collect no less image reminds me a lot of my arrival
than 5 potted succulents. The idea of at College; the environment was I interspersed the leafy prose with
a walking plant came to me when I welcoming, and I immediately felt at broader reflections on humanity, and
accidentally knocked my smallest pot home. The cold spell, which causes the role companionship plays in our
over. The plant, miraculously, landed on the plant to shrivel a tad, represents the identity. Having others to depend on
its roots and made a full recovery. onset of COVID-19 restrictions and their helped me get through the worst of
impact on me. The walking plant draws lockdown, and I wished to pay tribute
In lockdown, I felt somewhat like a comfort from its grassy companions; I to some of the little moments that kept
walking plant: whenever I’d settled into found similar solace in my community me going in 2020.
a lifestyle, new restrictions would come here at College.
out and turn my world on its head. In
this experimental piece, I hoped to When the plant picks up its feet again,
capture my lockdown experience. it does so with a mixture of gratitude

26 LUCE Number 19 2020