- Toadstools can make you wish you had never been bo-ooo-rn...

...Never been born!  - Ivor Cutler.  

(A blog entry about people and relationships.)

Photo of fungi at Stanley Park Blackpool photographed by me on 1st October 2016 
© Imogen Cane - missimoinsane 2016

By now it should be obvious to most that we do not willy nilly walk along eating any fungus we see regardless of where they may come from, what they may look like, if everyone else is doing it or indeed if they're 'good for us' at all. 

Yet we blindly walk through life befriending strangers and in some cases stuffing our faces and engorging on them like an obsessive compulsion to absorb everything about them; almost like we wish to become one with them!  Some of these we never know until it's too late just how poisonous or even deadly they may be.. despite their deliciousness, sensational aroma, or even plain and simple misleading and/or enchanting appearances. 

Perhaps we should be taught much earlier on about how to tell the good from the bad and not just follow blindly or with pure ignorance to the dangers laid before us.  If only we humans had some form of mycologist, but for people..   Someone who would not only tell us about what we may or may not encounter and where, but the effects and probable outcomes of indulging in such.   Elaborating on where this fungus grows, how it evolved and adapted, how it can be misleading and easily mistaken for something good for us when really it's increasing toxicity becomes what kills us in the end.  Or of course those that flat out poison us from the start.  

I take a step back. 

I look at my surroundings; this concrete jungle that man has created.  As we grow and spread like spores of a black mould destroying or at least corrupting everything in its path, manipulating to survive no longer simply living off the land but destroying it.  I look at what it's grown, what came to be, what grew and evolved, what adapted to the surroundings, what only came to be because of what we did.  I see what was chemically grown, what struggled to survive and what died off.  I see what's endangered, what festered from what we left behind, what is growing like an untreated yeast infection.   I see what is cleverly surviving despite everything, what managed to cling to its ancestors and still be beautiful despite all the change. 

I look at the people, they have no faces, just like mushrooms.. A relatively gathered bunch of the same or similar organisms banded together under a collective name yet still differ in texture, appearance, colour, size, shape, abilities, toxicities... Some addicting making us feel the most magical things.  While others literally rotting us to the chore.  Then as mentioned those that just flat out kill.  

I'm feeling so primitive; blindly trying out all the fungi..  narrowly escaping the inevitable with each new course.  Watching those around us make the wrong choices and die leaving behind a hollow shell.  Watching those around us who make bad choices but find a cure.  Watching those around us make the right choices and living on such a high.  Watching those around us make choices which simply sustain, nourish or at least allow to be well fed even if only temporarily.  Watching those around us as some discover or even create new threads of subspecies..  watching as they grow.. develop..  Some like a cancer.. others blooming as though they're wrapping around us like a cool breeze on a humid summers eve. 

I take a step back. 

I wish there was someone who could identify what would do us good from what would do us harm.  I grow tired of this fungi roulette; it's not fun!!

"Toadstools can make you wish you had never been bo-ooo-rn, never been born" - Ivor Cutler.

Imogen x

 - Exploring what's in my head.
www.missimoinsane.webs.com