Mm, crispy mushrooms. Unburnt by flame, unseared by iron, but consumed and burned for energy in the acd pits of me… Who’s the eldritch horror now, huh? I will eat any lesser organism.
I discovered The CryptoNaturalist over at the other place, and ending up buying ‘Field Guide to the Haunted Forest’ and ‘Love Notes from the Hollow Tree’ by Jarod K. Anderson…
Which is unusual for me as I detest poetry. I think it’s a pile of long-winded, navel gazing wank…Except for haiku, (because they’re short and sweet, and condense things down to their essence, which I like).
I like The CryptoNaturalist though, probably because they write about nature in a weird, beautiful and wonderous way. I want to use the word ‘magical’ to describe it, but am reluctant, for reasons
Also, thanks to this post I just found out there’s a couple of other books available which I’m going to buy tonight 😀
I sometimes feel that the classic haiku are let down by some translations, and the fact there are Japanese words that don’t translate across very well or at all.
Fungi confuse me. I can’t figure out what they are. I think the fact that I thought they were plants my whole life and then it turns out they aren’t just broke me lol.
afaik a decent summary is that they’re sorta like animal cells that specced into a plant lifestyle, but since animals are good at digesting stuff and can’t photosynthesize, they went for eating dead things that no one else eats.
Oh my gosh I’m so dumb I never even put that together. That’s so cool. He does have interesting theories but he’s also saving old growth forests well trying and he’s doing breakthrough research in the medical attributes of mushrooms.
I was speaking to a guy that looks after an ancient forest and he was explaining the fungi that allow the trees to communicate and it was fascinating but I thought he might be pulling my leg, so I came home and read everything, it’s fascinating.
The Woodland Trust have staff that mind them. I’m not sure what this guys job title was but probably a conservation officer or similar? He was helping us with something about the oldest trees in the UK.
That is what people sound like that have taken too many shrooms. Comes a bit too close to newage bullshit. “Life is the universe evolving to experience itself through you” and bullshit like that.
I just think there are better ways to say nature is awesome without adding mystics, new age stuff, or fantastical expressions to it. Then it starts turning into non-science.
I like those better ways too, but I’m me and you’re you. I think the vulgarisation like in the op are good and useful as well. We’re not talking about Deepak Chopra here, just a little mycological poetry.
I would use the word “special” rather than mystical, but the awesomeness of reality can often feel mystical. I think it’s ok to play with that as long as you aren’t making any serious claims, like we should order our social structure around fungi deity or something
I feel exactly the same way as how you described it. I think the quote from OP about the universe experiencing itself actually originated from Carl Sagan, who is as scientific and atheistic as you could ask for. It’s just a play on words.
And then you have the likes of Deepak Chopra, who is the most disingenuous woowoo-talking charlatan in existence. If he said something like that, he would mean it literally.
You sound like a sour lemon. I’d rather hang out with a hippie that thinks the universe is conscious than someone who slaps a paper tiger license to their low originality threshold posts. Just sayin.
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