Mushrooms

It’s funny when you think about it. The world relies on the manipulation of things that grow from rot: Fungus. Fungi. For bread, it’s yeast. For the tallest trees, it is strands of mycorrhizal. It gives some of the various cheeses it richness and funk. It is a delicacy in the form of virgin oil and steamed truffles. Soy sauce gives thanks to the strain more commonly known as koji mold. We praise the fungus for giving humans beer and wine. It’s Huitlacoche. Even the protective powder on Italian meats is fungus. But beware, there are more to these unreliable bodies. Some are sweet, like the gentleness of a kiss, or the tenderness of a mother's touch. Or as potent as a poison too delicious to ignore. There are mushroom with evil twins, fungi with vibrant colors. Even psychedelic treats that warp the mind for a period of time.

Amanita muscaria, Cortinarius violaceus, Trametes versicolor, Morchella esculenta, Verpa Bohemica, Phallus indusiatus, Panellus stipticus, Armillaria mellea, Dictyophora, Clathrus archeri, Tuber melanosporum, Tuber magnatum, Agaricus bisporus. Omphalotus nidiformis.

Food, hallucinogenics, aphrodisiacs, bobbles, knickknacks, and medicine are only a few usages. A cascade of colors surround the fungi, violets, blues, red, yellows, greens, gentle browns, slimy whites, rotting blacks. Some form shapes not out of place in a cemetery. Other looks like the whisps of ghosts. They can glow with organic light, appearing like a dream.

Chanterelles, toadstools, morels, dog’s stinkhorn, penicillin, noble rot, oyster mushrooms, wet rot, black truffle, white truffle, turkey tail, rosy death cap, chicken-of-the-woods, purple julies, yeast, algae, puffball, parasols, autumn skullcaps, destroying angels, veiled lady, honey fungus, bitter oyster, portobello, sea grass, sponges, gold caps. Ghost gill fungus.

These can be as big as a state, or as small as a strand of baby's hair. As delicate as flower petals, or as robust as horehound. Easy to bruise like tender flesh, or hardy like the bark on a pine. Dry them, bake them and grind them into an oil, slice them raw and place on a pizza, eat them dehydrated to chase a high, eat them raw to experience a bliss, subtle in a soup, expensive as organic gold, rich as meat from a fattened bird, bland and mild as a cancer reducing tea. Not that everyone enjoys the fleshy body of the mushroom. The taste of must. of the rawness of the Earth. Or the fine dusting of mold, the flakes of yeast or the strands of symbiotes. Not everyone can stand the decadance, or the rich texture far too much like the flesh of a man.

And yet, then we perish, decaying, returning to the land, becoming food for the fungus among us, from our brittling bones to our rice paper skin. To our empty strands of our veins, the withered shell of our organs. The fraying threads of our mourning dresses decay to the fungi, the cakes of makeup flaking to feeding sporocarps. And we fade away into just the food for the next round of families. And then they will fade, and they themselves will fade, a cycle surrounded by rot. Over and over and over and over...

Starting anew as a hidden form of deceiving life.