Mycology, Birds & How we Relate to Beauty

You may have seen the movie Fantastic Fungi with Paul Stametz. I found out about the work of Daniel Reyes through the book version of the movie. I love the idea of citizen mycology and making mushroom farming available in urban environments, especially because mushrooms have so much potential benefit. for cleaning up urban toxicity, while providing healing benefits to humans as well. This field, called mycology, has so much potential! A few years ago, I bought some spores from Stametz’ online store, designed to nurture the soil and let the wind blow them throughout my yard and considering the wind that day, well beyond.

When I was 11 or 12 I wrote a story for a homeschooling project on the different kingdoms, and I remember including in it a joke about the Fun Guy. It was at the time I was skating alot, and homeschooling allowed me to train easily, as well as opt out of perpetual boredom at public school or the weird dysfunctional dynamics at the alternative school I tried, where all the traumatized from school kids hung out in the smoking room and I ended up having an experience of heartbreak with a best friend who ditched me to hang out with the older kids in the smoking room. It is a sad story with a happy ending, because although I was left completely alone, bullied and isolated until I left the school, this friend found me years later when we were both adults. She found me because I posted a picture of myself and my son on an old blog I wrote, called Quirky Grace. She said I looked exactly the same. She shared how she had the exact same thing happen to her only weeks after I left the school and felt it was her karma. She was so sorry. She expressed how she had gotten caught up in the wave of power she felt from being part of that group energy and she felt very ashamed about it for years. I forgave her, and we met up a couple of times after that when I was visiting the area where she lives. I now have milkweed growing in my garden that comes from her garden back on the East Coast. I also have logs with mushrooms growing on them. And since I added the logs and the milkweed, my yard has become a little ecosystem of thriving life! Beauty is all around. The hostas don’t tell the cosmos to be less beautiful. The cosmos, as far as I can tell, have never insulted the roses for either their beauty or their thorns. The birds sometimes quibble, but mostly they sing joyously. The squirrels bat their tales and play chase and taunt the dogs affectionately. Bees, butterflies, bunnies, trees, herbs and fungi all co-exist.

Before the sun came all the way out, I decided to take a picture of myself inside, because I wanted to just post something authentic. Not overly dressed up or made up. I wanted to not let a few things that have been uncomfortable for me with showing pictures of myself stop me from being seen. Because what if the roses did that? What if the cosmos and the hostas stopped blooming because someone wasn’t as respectful as they could be?

I am not showered, you can see my gray. My heart is filled some things that fill me with love and happiness and also some authentic things that are challenging. My girls, who live in Boston, canceled their phone convo with my son, because they are sick. Again. My heart went out to my son, who was so disappointed. We talked about it and felt our way through it and made some jokes and talked about how we hope they feel better. It literally hurts me that my girls, one of whom is (or was, don’t know now) unvaccinated, basically never got sick with respiratory illnesses, now that she has moved in with her sister and gotten on the mask train, has them often, along with the flu. But it is their lives. I love them. I set them free. We are all one, and that is why the best thing we can do for one another is love one another enough to set one another free.

Here is me.

Life is a dance. The birds are singing right now and it is such a high frequency song I cannot help but smile.

In one morning, it has gone from overcast and depressing looking outside, to the sun poking through clouds, to getting covered up again, to gorgeous sun-raining, to nearly clear skies filled with birdsong and a gentle breeze.