Tiny Letter The Second.

Hi again,

One of you (hi Dave) wrote back and said that one thing that is missing from the epistolary format is interaction between commenters. Certainly on Facebook you get a lot of that. On LiveJournal you used to, too (before LiveJournal became a ghost town). But they were different kinds of interactions.

Facebook is just too easy. You click like, you leave a brief comment, you write a glib sentence attached to a link that explains your thoughts in detail you don't have time to write yourself, and then you read other people's brief comments, you choose which smiley face most efficiently represents your reaction, you click like on their brief comments, you reply with your own brief comment. You may even get in an argument of brief comments. But it's all fast, and usually throw-away. I haven't really missed Facebook in my couple of days away (though I have had a look here and there).

LiveJournal was better at proper discussion. You wrote a long post, possibly not one you want to look at again now, 15 years later, but full of something meaningful at the time anyway--nothing throw-away about it. Then people commented, yes, but often they were inspired to go and write their own post. There was nothing better than a cut-link that held the promise of a few paragraphs of insight or controversy.

Perhaps, then, what I really want is for everyone to start TinyLettering each other. Maybe then you can react to what I've told you Dave's reaction is by writing your own letter about it. Maybe Dave would even subscribe.

Wait, though, isn't email supposed to be dying? This is the only little niggling lingering thought at the base of my brain. Who reads email? Does this letter go directly into your filter (skip inbox, mark as read)? Am I mewling into the much larger howl of a wind that blows a cold breath of death straight through email's frail bones? Is it obvious that I went outside without a jacket today?

I sat down intending to write something a little more personal, a little sadder, a little more punch-to-the-gut, but this is really only our second date. Instead I'll tell you about my plants.

Beatrice has recently learned that in America we say that someone has a "green thumb" where British people would say that someone has "green fingers." She's quite good at understanding that people who come from different places speak in different ways and sometimes say different things. She keeps teasing me by telling me that I have "green fingers" (because she knows that I would say "green thumb" instead), and it's a double-tease, because I'm actually terrible with plants.

I have a peace lily that my friend Ben from high school sent me when my father died. It apparently thrives on neglect because that is all I have ever given it. Apart from that, when we redid our back garden, I asked the gardener to ensure that anything she planted would live if ignored, and she did, so we have a pretty successful back garden.

BUT: something is changing, maybe. I recently bought an epipremnum for Beatrice (look at me with my fancy Latin names), aka a pothos, or devil's ivy, similar to a philodendron, and it has not died. In fact, it has grown a few extra leaves. So I thought I would try to propagate it. I happened to be in IKEA, where they didn't have their regular soil pellets, but they did have some herb kits, so I bought a couple for next to nothing and came home with all the soil I could want--it turns out for a lot of things. Now I seem to have a pothos, an aloe vera plant I have somehow kept alive for actual weeks, a fairy garden with grass in it that hasn't died, a dragon plant which I may have already killed by watering it when I got home, a propagated pothos, four paper cups with seeds (basil and parsley), and a pot outside with mint seeds.

I would really like to keep all of these alive! Will Beatrice's tease backfire on her? Watch this space.