#30: The Lucky Bamboo

Meet Barnabus, the lucky bamboo. Confusingly, he is not technically a bamboo, but he identifies as such, so that is what we shall call him.

He sits on my bedside table surveying my room, watching over me as I tap at my laptop, as I hastily stuff books into my bag, and as I collapse at the end of the day, but he always modestly averts his eyes when I get changed.

He has been my pal for three years, since I came to university as a wide-eyed fresher, desperately trying to improve the aesthetic of my student room. In that time he has doubled in size and even grown himself an unnamed partner.* I would like to think I have grown equally in that time, even if I haven’t visibly sprouted leaves or a companion.

Barnabus is a quiet kind of guy, he doesn’t say much, but he keeps me company on the journey to and from Durham. Soon he will be too tall for the car and have to take up permanent residence somewhere, but for now he travels with me, a symbol of wherever I am currently making my home, an important position when within three years I have had four different addresses.

He adds a sign of life to a room, a token piece of greenery, reminding me on these cold winter nights of the existence of the freshness of nature. Katie talked about how some people do not like fresh flowers because they are essentially dying. I suppose Barnabus is a counter to that. I can see him growing and thriving on his chosen poison (literally just water). Soon he will be a jungle of his own.

Perhaps he is a triffid, watching, waiting, gathering strength until he can take over the world. Perhaps I should stop assigning human characteristics to a plant.

Plants are tempting to name, though, and I am sure many of you have a Colin the Cactus or a Harry the Houseplant. It is very easy to personify an object that can grow and change, that requires a little of our attention, and that has quite as much personality as Barnabus (I mean just look at that little twirl).

Is he even an ‘object’ if he is actually alive? He is certainly not inanimate, especially if I like to think he gets quite animated when I am not in the room, debating current affairs and gossiping with Suzie the Succulent.

Okay, perhaps I really should stop humanising him.

But nature demands personification. Weather and the passing of seasons and the conditions of landscape have affected human circumstances and mood since the beginning of time. I am really just perpetuating and simplifying a tradition of anthropomorphising nature in order to understand it.

Barnabus, you mean a lot to me buddy, and the only way for me to express that is to continue talking about you as a friend.

*Name suggestions are in fact welcome to rectify this sad situation.