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A Breath, Shared Between Two

Zsuzsanna Ihar

A lone Philodendron sits in front of my living room window. Its arms stretch towards the glass, seeking light greedily in a way that is both earnest and unashamed. Outside, the early morning sun rises over an arterial stretch of the Great Western highway, clogged up with numerous cars, buses, cement trucks, and fuel tankers heading towards the city. There is something anti-social about congestion, taking the body out of the world and isolating the multiple into one.

Over the past few years, I lived and worked within particulate clouds. Alongside refineries, oilfields, highways, and chemical plants where the air was heavier and prone to the violence of stripping and marring. In each location, I would instinctually seek a vegetal companion who I could entrust with the labour of filtering, ventilating, and cleaning. Each wilting leaf was evidence of sacrifice on my behalf as the plant took on an array of noxious compounds and rogue particles. Indeed, a pot on the windowsill became shorthand for a breath of fresh air.

I tend to the Philodendron knowing that I am tending to my own body simultaneously. Watering devoutly, caring deeply, and sharing in communion amidst exhaust and fumes. I think of how inspiration means both the ‘taking in’ of air, as well as a ‘blowing into’ (inspirare). And so, the plant breathes into me – the immediate influence of a certain god perhaps, a kind of divine guidance, dust to living soul.