Bill had a strange dream, bursts of red and yellow light flashing all around him. When he awoke he was a mushroom in a pleasant patch of soil, near a tree and a running brook. Two lady mushrooms sprang up beside him, beginning a conversation.
"You can be very proud," they told him in unison.
"But why? But what?" he answered, naturally disorientated by the transformation.
"You're bright and brilliant and happy birthday," their voices came, almost a song.
"It's my birthday," he repeated slowly, to see if it might mean anything to him.
"You've just joined us in the Bohemian forest." Their voices again, reciting, as a classroom of children might with one voice tell their teacher, "One plus one is two."
"I've always wanted to have a Slavic soul."
"And now you're part of the collective."
"I'll have ideas! I'll be inspired!"
"If you don't and you aren't, we'll assist!"
He closed his eyes and mused. Under the congenial auspices of the femmes a la fungi he felt inspired. He had ideas. Fairy tales flashed before him. Bouncing and spinning notions swirled into imagery unimagined in his usual trains of thought. Ideas couldn't rush in fast enough before other ideas pounced upon them, merging into a new, ever-evolving inspiration.
"Eureka!" he cried in a sort of mental orgasm of aesthetic certainty. The girl mushrooms applauded. The idea, the forest, and his existence as a Slavic mushroom were the thoughts immortalized in his mind as the Czech mycologist harvested him for his fungi stew, over which he was certain to dream up some great new work of art.
Story #294
All contributions have been reposted at indeterminacies.blogspot.com.
Original post: This will be the big mushrom madness weekend, and is of course dedicated to one of my most faithful visitors, Mushroom. So let's all write some great stories for this picture! I'll post mine on Monday.
17 comments:
Sorry for not answering the comments in the last posts. I'm really short on time, and going away for the weekend. See you all in a couple of days.
Mushrooms in the wilderness......thats kinda like hope comin alive in the midst of despair....!
So you found my ex-GF's blackmail photos -- of me in a ménage à trois with her and her sister. That's one less secret I have to keep... :)
Thank you for the birthday present and tip of the keyboard, Indie!
Curiosity became too much for Candace, so she plucked a large mushroom from the earth.
She'd been told that those mushrooms were deadly for some and magical for others, and she'd never had the courage to eat one until now. Her life had been such a mess, and she was willing to take the risk in the hopes of having some magic enter her awful world.
It tasted neutral, very bland in fact, and she finished every last morsel, hands trembling with the unknown.
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Happy Birthday, Mushroom!
When Hurricane Bob was striking the East Coast, my friend took me to his cabin in VA to get away from it all. Back then I wore skirts so short I didn't like to get out of the car in the New Jersey Turnpike service plazas with all that wind.
The cabin was rural, though you could see three smoke stacks and a minor highway from the porch. Everything was wood, so if you spilled something you just wiped it up. My friend's parents kept bees, so there was always great honey, and usually some to take home. And you were supposed to throw your beer cans off the porch, because every weekend whoever was there crushed them on the big stump in front of the house and took them to recycle.
But you didn't have to have beer, as there was also a selection of liqueurs. I remember one trip, I don't know if it was this one or not, having kirsch and lying back on the redneck porch to watch a spectacular meteor shower.
This trip we did some magic mushrooms--not too many, but enough for a buzz--and drove to the local Civil War battlefield around sunset. Because of Hurricane Bob, clouds at different levels of sky were blowing in opposite directions, and at that hour they were all pink and purple and greyish blue.
Again, I don't remember if it was that trip or not that the drummer from Minor Threat came out hawking his "Ed Meese is a Pig" t-shirts, or that trip or not when we ate a stewed rabbit full of buckshot that the neighbors brought by, but at that place, you could always expect the extraordinary.
Gohartix,walking slowly through the forest,eyes to the ground, scanning inch by inch the floor of the celtic woods near his home,was praying the gods to find the perfect fly-killer mushroom.Oak trees,turning to yellow,were spilling their seeds among falling leaves and squirrels looked down on the young celt warrior whose attention kept him bent forward scrutinizing underneath the bushes.
Fly-killers are not hard to find since most of the times their bright red color can be seen from far but Go was looking for a special kind of fly-killer and the robe of that one was a bit less flashy;something like the color of salmon's flesh.
After long moments of non-frutuous
searching Go straightened himself,holding his back and moaning relief when stretching sore limbs.Relaxing some he breathed deep,inhaling the fresh scent of humid moss,it was his first day as a senior warrior and before the chief gives him his long blade he had to find his mad-maker mushroom;well prepared by the druids it would carry him through days during battles.As he turned around,eyes level, he saw what he was looking for few steps away,he smiled with glee for it was a good omen to find the fly-killer on the first day of manhood.
High in the sky an hawk yelled:
Eeeeeeeekkka!!!-Real good omen.
I like weirsdo's story,makes me want to be the wind when she gets out of her car.LoL.
Dreaming, daydreaming and telling fables to herself she did almost nothing and went almost nowhere except into the forest where she now lies, nearly forgotten in a grave unmarked by the hands of men.
If you listen closely you can hear our musical mushroom Trio singing our new hit song: "Five more years til fungus rule the world/rule the world/ rule the world/ five more years til fungus rule the world/ better look out then!"
Once again you've all done great! I'll write out my impressions tonight. I was way behind with writing but finally have something I feel I can post...in about four hours from now.
Before I forget, I really liked Jamie Dawn's story. Ambiguity makes great reading.
Rusty: I think this is the best picture I ever saw of mushrooms, and probably the only one. But I do like the colors.
Mushroom: Is this really your birthday? Happy Birthday! But I didn't know that. Synchronicity strikes again. Usually I'm forgetting birthdays, instead of remembering them by accident.
Jamie Dawn: Wow, what's going to happen to her now! What if there's a change and she doesn't notice?
Mrs. Weirsdo: That sounds like a true reminisence. There's something Americana about it. And that made me feel a bit homesick. P.S. I don't want to seem fresh or anything, but do you have any photos with the skirt?
GPV: Once again, I admire the way you handle the details. It makes the story so believable.
Doug: This could be part two of Jamie's story. Very sad. And as usually you clock in with the least words of anyone.
Toodler: I love this madcap idea. So I'm just going to try and enjoy the next five years while I can. (It made me laugh, too).
No worries, O Great Indeterminate One, the bridge goes "yeah, we're all fungus now/ livin in a fungus world/ the birds is a fungus, and the bees/ the men, women and the trees/ yeah, we're all fungus now/ living in a fungus world" But just in case, best to abstain from eating too many 'shrooms over the next five years...hehehe... Thanks for this cool site and inspiration!!!!
I rather like having mental orgasms of aesthetic certainty -- and lemme tell you, they do make the girl shroomies applaud.
Thank you, thank you. Synchronicity strikes again.
Glad you liked it. Of course, those mushrooms looked nothing like these, but these look as if they might be magical.
I have a picture of me in my leather mini-skirt and jacket with "pigs suck" on it from a Halloween party of that era, but it's pre-digital, of course. There might be others around somewhere, but it would be hard to find them, as they were mostly taken by pre-Dr. Weirsdo boyfriends and are therefore discreetly put away.
Mrs. Weirsdo! Do you mean to say that you've discreetly "put away" all of your ex-boyfriends! I'm speechless! Think of all the potential readers I've lost!
Cute, Indie, but putting people discreetly away is really Mr. Banana's department. If you look closely, you'll notice that from "as" to the end of the sentence is an adverbial clause with a subject, "they," and a compound verb, the passives, "were taken" and "were put." Looking backward from "they," you will find that the first noun you come to is "others," referring to pictures of me in a mini-skirt, not ex-boyfriends, and "others" (pictures) is therefore the antecedent of "they."
I didn't spend ALL my time at that fancy school with Eurotrash guys and psychedelic mushrooms.
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