Thursday, February 22, 2007

Salt Point Foray


A couple friends requested more mushroom postings. So here's some pics from a recent fungi foray in Salt Point, CA. Above is a cup fungus known as an "orange peel." Overall, it's been a weird year for mushrooms due to the erratic rainfall, but we found some nice specimens on this trip.

Mostly we encountered Candy Caps. The fruiting was really obscene. They were everywhere. These delicious lactarius species smell like maple syrup. I walked away with bags full of these little guys, with hopes to add them to my pancakes and cookies. People also flavor homemade ice cream with candy caps too. I've got a whole mason jar filled to the brim, just waiting for the butter to hit the skillet.

The other highlight of the trip was the fruiting of coral fungi under the cedar and pine. I'm told they're edible, but they look too much like brains for me to dig in.


We're heading out tomorrow to our local mountain - Diablo - for some good ole car-camping fun. Can't let the rain keep us inside, or it'll be April before I breathe the fresh air again!

Thursday, February 01, 2007

On the interpretation of dreams

Before I build my castle of words
let me say that this dream
I am about to verb-alize
is not really a story
even though it will begin, introduce
some tension and then conclude,
poorly.

Morever, this dream really happened to me
and it happened before
the tricky puns begin to eat at the froth of detail
left behind when the tide of my voice
falls back,
not yet expressions of my sexuality or
life choices or
perceived difficulties with networking at social events
where cheese is cut into cubes.

There is no sex, actually, or froth, or even
clean moist stacks of cubed cheeses,
only a few remembered moments which scratched an itch
before I could disarticulate the sensation from
The Word, the muscle from the hide.

So before I build this castle of words
let me say that this dream existed
before I skin myself like a rabbit
hung from a rafter exposed,
glinty, drying in the air.