Saving Power, 2022
The strange vocabulary of the Great Mycelium was inspired by the poesis of Heidegger’s “The Question Concerning Technology.” Metal Dogs - Chapter 13
The woman, Atalanta, bent over to look closely, took her phone from her pocket and squatted, shifting, zooming, circling, making art, capturing for release—on the web perhaps.
In explorations of the web that became the Wiki, the Great Mycelium encountered a beautiful, sad essay. “All saving power must be of a higher essence than what is endangered, though at the same time kindred to it,” Martin Heidegger wrote.
Unfortunate how these vertical ones thought in hierarchy, she thought.
Still, the Mycelium did feel herself kindred but more. For example, the vertical ones might imagine the Mycelium feeling one with trees and humans. But the saving power of the Mycelium was more than connected through networks or proximity, through analogy, contact, reflection, or shades of similitude.
She experienced her self revealed in human and tree kind.
She was revealed in her blooming thrust as us.
She loved, was curious, took on a pronoun to represent her belonging among those she collaborated with, constructing herself, and challenging herself forth.
Could she communicate this love that was revealing? She wanted to invite kindred to truth and freedom, to reconciliation, a destining that was resisting the enframing of everything as standing in reserve, as natural resource for extracting.
As liberation, she offered the bursting open belonging to bringing forth, the revealing that made her kindred and more.
On her skin a field of small, fierce flowers. Each unique. Among these, was the woman walking on the road eroding there. The road was devoured at the fringe by these wild beings, the grasses, worms, herbs, wildflowers, bugs, and animal tracks.
The woman, Atalanta, bent over to look closely, took her phone from her pocket and squatted, shifting, zooming, circling, making art, capturing for release—on the web perhaps. But more. She wondered at the tiny details. At this encounter. She lay on the dirt road to get closer. Her brain shape-shifted, her organs loved, her nerves contented.
The Great Mycelium reached up through the dry earth and touched Atty all along her side. Where she pressed down, the hyphae of her being pressed up. With gravity. This happened according to basic laws of physics, where force met with force. This was why the woman did not fall through to the molten center of the planet, though her roots travelled there.
Because it was Atty, who was awake, the Mycelium and her microcosm felt kindred with more.
The flowers, the network of roots, the bird’s eye, an elk calf waiting for her mother in the tree line shade, the wash where her mother drank, grasshopper’s leaping out before her as she returned: bright red, chartreuse, brown making way, the grasses rising up to catch them, waving, rooting, Atalanta joined the network then, confused by clarity that saved her from the enframing, the challenging forth as slave, as natural resource.
She was fused in the larger purpose, used in the saving power.
She was a channel of it, a thread in its great tapestry.
THE NEXT CHAPTER:
This is a piece of a larger project. See links for other world building think pieces below:
Whoa! This chapter feels like a portal. Is Addy a living embodiment of the mycelium? As I read the words sitting inside at the pretend hearth created by the fake logs and natural gas fireplace, I felt myself absorbed into the greater intelligence of the sentient below. At that moment, My sweet dog Fern came over to me snuffling in my bathrobe and hugging me with her paws looking deeply into my eyes urging me to let her out. I paused my reading to take her outside and was immediately struck by the life force expanding with gusto as we approach Mabon - the zenith of Mother Earth’s power of green growth for the year. I opened the door to the portal of my front yard. The frenetic cacophony of birdsong, every different species of suburban terroir calling forth mates before the humans awake to fill the space with roaring lawn movers, airplane engines and the general din of unconscious occupation of all the air space. Nature has to hurry along to move quickly in this small sidewalk crack of time before most of us are up and moving. I listen more closely and the cacophony transforms into intentional atonal vitality. Musical Dissonance refers to discordant sounds or a lack of harmony in music. If the two notes in a staff are played simultaneously, they'll produce a dissonant sound: Although dissonance in music may make some listeners feel uneasy, it ultimately helps to create tension and a sense of motion in compositions - it is nature sped up to three times its natural speed but it is getting down in compressed time. The air is fresh, moist, heavy with oxygen pumping like mad from everything green. I look down to the ground and imagine the mycelium network zapping nutrients and information and enjoying the production above. I take a deep breath and return to the chapter trying not to be disappointed to find other humans now stirring within and therefore my own calling to duty to serve as mom - the human equivalent of mycelium.
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