As I was sitting in my backyard under the restless overhang
of long-fingered bamboo, I watched a puffed up mockingbird, surely male, in the
loquat tree, performing preening and cleaning rituals. To my left, on the privacy
fence, is an abundance of heart-shaped leaved profusely pink blooming vine
covered with honeybees and every manner of bee-like creatures imaginable in
this geography. Some are black bumblebees; others are striped-abdomen
near-wasps and methodical hornets, all united in a frenzied cacophony of
buzzes, rustles and hummings. Each winged one is crazy inebriated on whatever
sensual pleasures are to be had by diving head first into the fushcia dishes of
the abundant pink enclosures. My attention suddenly came to rest,
unintentionally, to the ground on my near left side. I saw there a tiny nest of
common brown toadstools. One wide umbrella cap partially hid what seemed to be
three smaller specimens, all of which were obvious once seen although hidden by
branching grasses. Getting down on hands and knees, I parted aside the blades
of grass secreting the prize and immediately breathed in that rich smell of
almost-damp earth so familiar to me from childhood and gardening pursuits.
Putting my face a scant six inches from the mushrooms, and examining the soil
around them, I was delighted to see a snail shell of about ¼” width at the base
of the smallest, hidden spire whose cap was tightly fitted over it’s stem and
was growing from the base of the community at a 45 degree angle. Looking
closer, I spied several more snails, two of which were smaller than a June pea
and dainty as an English teacup. All the snails were startled by the movement
around them and became still. Continued study of the toadstools ensued until I
noticed that the first snail seen was emerging from its beautiful spiral home.
How amazingly long its neck was as it began to investigate the surrounding
environ. It righted itself and extended its bulb-finialed antennas, swaying to
a nearly heard melody of wind and fairy breath, to and fro, to and fro, almost
hypnotizing me with primordial splendor and the feeling of insatiable joy in
the journey under lush growth and green verdant. The snail surprised me by how
quickly it could move once a direction was chosen. Hanging on to its back was
the tiniest snail of all, hardly bigger than the head of a pin, so small that
only the shell was visible to my naked eye. It was then that I realized that
snails, toadstools and fairies are inexorably connected…that when one sees
snails fairies are nearby and when one sees toadstools snails are close.
Fairies can choose any form of Nature to commune with and it is the tenderness
of snails and the fragile ruggedness of toadstools that delight them. I
contemplated the fungi nest for a length of time, with my eyes softened and my
mind slack but only detected the brown-capped ring already espied. I was a
little disappointed that I did not see fairy wings dancing around the ring, or
a starry pointed wand flashing, or a pirouette atop the umbrella of the largest
toadstool. But I did see a red iridescent dragonfly of mythic size darting
among my sages. And as the wind blew the shadows of the finger-shaped bamboo
bracts over the grass at my feet, I saw a hand wave to me in the dappled
sunlight… friendly, mysterious and acknowledging Natures presence.
Later that week...
The mushrooms, once topped with tightly packed caps on straight stems are now blown as open as an inside-out parasol. Life has aged them, looking now like gilled bowls, gathered loosely in the center and ruffling out as with tightened running stitches. Their color has lightened to a creamy light vintage paper tone. The gills resemble leaves of an ancient book, fanned out in a tease not unlike a can-can girl’s pinafore skirt. Progressing from a primly tucked-at-the-knee fashion to a blowsy upended tart’s skirt in a two day span surely must be a little joke of Mothers; it’s as if the phallic stems never conquered the feminine, but rather became it. Or in an even more bizarre turn, that which resembled most closely the biological male has transfigured into an intellectual tome. Has each gill been scribed upon with the precision of quantum hieroglyphs to tell a story of the ages? Drawing nearer and assuming the position (again) of hands and knees, I carefully examine each exposed gill-page, hoping to read the story there, to catalog a fairy’s calligraphy or an old god’s commandments, but to my naked eye there is only an unmarked rubbery smoothness where I imagined script. The fungi tops are now so confectionary looking it is difficult to resist a delicate taste but I spurn the impulse, as I do not know of it’s innocence or potency. Perhaps a smell might reveal the secret and it is in putting my nose directing into the center of the wild truffle ruffles that I suspect the truth. For the meltingly buttery appearance is in congress with the sweet peat odor of chaos evolving to dissolution, of fresh tight order relaxing and loosing the gill leaves of Nature’s book that only wild snails can decipher as they feel their way over a short-lived landscape and mark their places with tiny silvery copperplate poetry.
Later that week...
The mushrooms, once topped with tightly packed caps on straight stems are now blown as open as an inside-out parasol. Life has aged them, looking now like gilled bowls, gathered loosely in the center and ruffling out as with tightened running stitches. Their color has lightened to a creamy light vintage paper tone. The gills resemble leaves of an ancient book, fanned out in a tease not unlike a can-can girl’s pinafore skirt. Progressing from a primly tucked-at-the-knee fashion to a blowsy upended tart’s skirt in a two day span surely must be a little joke of Mothers; it’s as if the phallic stems never conquered the feminine, but rather became it. Or in an even more bizarre turn, that which resembled most closely the biological male has transfigured into an intellectual tome. Has each gill been scribed upon with the precision of quantum hieroglyphs to tell a story of the ages? Drawing nearer and assuming the position (again) of hands and knees, I carefully examine each exposed gill-page, hoping to read the story there, to catalog a fairy’s calligraphy or an old god’s commandments, but to my naked eye there is only an unmarked rubbery smoothness where I imagined script. The fungi tops are now so confectionary looking it is difficult to resist a delicate taste but I spurn the impulse, as I do not know of it’s innocence or potency. Perhaps a smell might reveal the secret and it is in putting my nose directing into the center of the wild truffle ruffles that I suspect the truth. For the meltingly buttery appearance is in congress with the sweet peat odor of chaos evolving to dissolution, of fresh tight order relaxing and loosing the gill leaves of Nature’s book that only wild snails can decipher as they feel their way over a short-lived landscape and mark their places with tiny silvery copperplate poetry.