I feel jealous of creatures less than ten inches long. It’s not that I don’t want to have presence. It’s not about disappearing. If you’re small and a giant loves you, you’re safe. You’re the mouse in the matchbox bed.
FUNGUS MENTAL TELEPATHY
I’ve seen the Flaming Lips perform lots of times, but only once did the drummer, Steven, send me psychic messages to marry him. I felt lust recumbent in the dark, smoky air. His brainwaves were overpowering— during “It’s Halloween on the Barbary Coast,” they visually matched the colored laser beams that twirled through the club’s thick fog. I sensed that each colored ray was an attempt on Steven’s part to get my attention. Meet me backstage, a blue light said. I am in need of a wife, a red light suggested. After the band played their last song, my friend pulled me toward the exit. There was no time to get sidetracked, groupie-style. We had a transaction to make.
I was on a business trip to Boulder, Colorado, delivering these psychedelic mushrooms called Psilocybe semilanceata, a.k.a., Liberty Caps. This was a lucrative deal during the fall months, following heavy rains. I lived in Eureka, a small city in the California Redwoods. Every November the city held a mycology festival, and people really got into hunting mushrooms. Since the psychedelic varieties were coveted, a fierce competition arose as soon as the rainy days arrived. The clouds would pile up, the sprinkling would begin, and the first thing I’d do was run to my bedroom to set the alarm clock. If I slept in on hunting day, the patches would be stripped, and my chances for earth-flavored mushroom tea and a few hundred bucks would be as decayed as the fungi’s rotting, fleshy caps.
There was this great spot out toward the coast, a clump of shrubs that enshrouded perfectly perky brown shrooms every season, batch after batch— they were so good and fresh, plus the ground my friends and I had to slither across was so dirty in a delicious, pure dirt way. It was the kind of place where we could yank out a carrot and not rinse it off before sticking it in our mouths because the dirt added flavor and minerals.
This special dirt was on private property, so we had to crawl under a wire fence. Everyone would fold up their T-shirts to make a kangaroo-style pouch on their stomach, fill it with mushrooms, then tie it back with twisted T-shirt knots on either side, the kind of knots little girls make when they’re imitating Daisy Duke or the Dallas Cowgirls. Since we were belly-bound, we scooched up the pouches like puffy mushroom bras so they wouldn’t get crushed. If there were stray mushrooms left on the ground, we filled our hands as we started to crawl away. On the way out, we chucked some leaves over the gap we’d made under the fence, as if we were bunnies sneaking out of a veggie garden. This part was similar to a Peter Rabbit story, but if we’d got caught it would have been more serious, so we didn’t fool around.
The limit was three people to a trip, two guys and one girl. I think the guys assumed girls might ruin something. I felt honored when I was along. Gathering shrooms was my favorite thing to do. Plus, on some hunts, I went along with this guy who knew all the species; he’d teach us about Death Caps, the brown ones that looked magic but weren’t, the furry, shaggy Ink Caps, and the stunning, red-and-white polka-dotted Fly Agarics (the kind gnomes sit on). I saw caterpillars or titmice hopping around in the branches above our heads, so there was critter magic down there under the tangled twigs. Mushroom world is fairy territory.
Occasionally we drank mushroom tea before we left so we would be more in tune with the shrooms and they could call us to them with their fungus mental telepathy. The guys believed if you drank the tea you could think like a mushroom, which would cause you to gravitate toward the patches. Once I actually thought I had spores so I pictured where I would have
FUNGUS MENTAL TELEPATHY
I’ve seen the Flaming Lips perform lots of times, but only once did the drummer, Steven, send me psychic messages to marry him. I felt lust recumbent in the dark, smoky air. His brainwaves were overpowering— during “It’s Halloween on the Barbary Coast,” they visually matched the colored laser beams that twirled through the club’s thick fog. I sensed that each colored ray was an attempt on Steven’s part to get my attention. Meet me backstage, a blue light said. I am in need of a wife, a red light suggested. After the band played their last song, my friend pulled me toward the exit. There was no time to get sidetracked, groupie-style. We had a transaction to make.
I was on a business trip to Boulder, Colorado, delivering these psychedelic mushrooms called Psilocybe semilanceata, a.k.a., Liberty Caps. This was a lucrative deal during the fall months, following heavy rains. I lived in Eureka, a small city in the California Redwoods. Every November the city held a mycology festival, and people really got into hunting mushrooms. Since the psychedelic varieties were coveted, a fierce competition arose as soon as the rainy days arrived. The clouds would pile up, the sprinkling would begin, and the first thing I’d do was run to my bedroom to set the alarm clock. If I slept in on hunting day, the patches would be stripped, and my chances for earth-flavored mushroom tea and a few hundred bucks would be as decayed as the fungi’s rotting, fleshy caps.
There was this great spot out toward the coast, a clump of shrubs that enshrouded perfectly perky brown shrooms every season, batch after batch— they were so good and fresh, plus the ground my friends and I had to slither across was so dirty in a delicious, pure dirt way. It was the kind of place where we could yank out a carrot and not rinse it off before sticking it in our mouths because the dirt added flavor and minerals.
This special dirt was on private property, so we had to crawl under a wire fence. Everyone would fold up their T-shirts to make a kangaroo-style pouch on their stomach, fill it with mushrooms, then tie it back with twisted T-shirt knots on either side, the kind of knots little girls make when they’re imitating Daisy Duke or the Dallas Cowgirls. Since we were belly-bound, we scooched up the pouches like puffy mushroom bras so they wouldn’t get crushed. If there were stray mushrooms left on the ground, we filled our hands as we started to crawl away. On the way out, we chucked some leaves over the gap we’d made under the fence, as if we were bunnies sneaking out of a veggie garden. This part was similar to a Peter Rabbit story, but if we’d got caught it would have been more serious, so we didn’t fool around.
The limit was three people to a trip, two guys and one girl. I think the guys assumed girls might ruin something. I felt honored when I was along. Gathering shrooms was my favorite thing to do. Plus, on some hunts, I went along with this guy who knew all the species; he’d teach us about Death Caps, the brown ones that looked magic but weren’t, the furry, shaggy Ink Caps, and the stunning, red-and-white polka-dotted Fly Agarics (the kind gnomes sit on). I saw caterpillars or titmice hopping around in the branches above our heads, so there was critter magic down there under the tangled twigs. Mushroom world is fairy territory.
Occasionally we drank mushroom tea before we left so we would be more in tune with the shrooms and they could call us to them with their fungus mental telepathy. The guys believed if you drank the tea you could think like a mushroom, which would cause you to gravitate toward the patches. Once I actually thought I had spores so I pictured where I would have
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