Fungi Web of Life

DC and I have not long since emerged from the cinema. We saw 'Fungi Web of Life' featuring Merlin Sheldrake. The film co-opts our usual aesthetic to show the beautiful forms and colours fungi can make. Of course it would have been possible to show more cringe making pictures but that wouldn't have fitted the narrative. This isn't to suggest that I don't agree with the premise of the film, fungi are fascinating and as beautiful as any other part of nature. It's just that I noticed a certain construction in the film. A thought came to mind as it was pointed out that industrial scale deforestation is destroying not just the above ground forest but also vast swathes of underground fungal networks which contain huge amounts of information which we'll never be able to learn. This is the case with so much of the natural world we destroy. The thought - we have created a fungi like structure and let it loose in our world and now we have lost control of it and it is controlling us- capitalism. Fungi is an ancient life form and it has survived many environmental changes over earth's evolution. Different types of fungi will have had their period of time, come and gone, but the kingdom of fungi has sustained. Will it survive mankind? Will we sustain? At this time we really are dicing with death yet as a species we seem unable to significantly change our behaviour.

Fungi can terrify me. They rot wood! Childhood family trauma caused by building structural timber decay is very much part of my trauma history. And the nature of fungal hyphae and mycelium- spreading out taking and following the form of that which it consumes without itself having any centre of control is the stuff of nightmares! As Sheldrake is fascinated by fungal creation I am appalled by it's capacity to destroy. This is of course an essential part of nature- without it the world would be full of dead wood and the nutrients for future growth locked up. And so I have to settle myself, just keep the water away from wood we want to stay as wood! Water is the heart of life on this planet and it was interesting to hear in the film that there are aquatic fungi. These are even less well understood than land based fungi. Water is an element us engineers are constantly controlling as best we can. Again not entirely satisfactorily...

There's something about the flow of evolution and the waxing and waning of forms at various levels which leaves me feeling exposed. We all feel this to some extent and so we grip on to what we like. This film has left me feeling both this need and its futility. There is possibility in the amorphous.

A Bell Ringing In The Empty Sky

A bell ringing in the empty sky is a piece of shakuhachi music which I recalled yesterday. DC gave me a CD recording of it back in 2006 and I remember listening to it at various times of reflection. The music is indeed meditative. Listening this morning I recalled a time as a small boy saying to my dad that 'if you're blind, you see what is behind your head' He replied that 'if you're blind you don't see anything'. I remember this clearly as I knew that he had not understood what I was saying. What I was expressing was my realisation that when I covered my eyes I saw black and this was different to the not seeing of the visual space behind my head. I realised two different kinds of absence were at play here and I was trying to put this into words. This morning the 'space' drawn out by A bell ringing in the empty sky reminded me of this childhood reflection and the aural and visual gates alighted at an at least partly unified 'space'. Glimpses of the mirror (of awareness) are through that which is reflected, be it sound or light. I know that I'm very visually orientated and even an aural 'space' becomes an imagined visual field for me whether filled with sound(s) or silent. I have a sense in all this that the pictures in my imagination and the thoughts, which are part and more fully formed words are sort of out there in front of me as I project the space in my head into the world as we do when considering things in general. Obviously there's a separation and sense of me in this too. But also as alluded to above there's an appreciation of the 'space' I'd tried to convey as a child.