October 1, 2006

• Easily Entertained

  I have been deriving an inordinate amount of pleasure from watching a
  couple of clumps of Coprinus mushrooms develop and decompose.  It
  started with that photo I posted a while ago:

  
  
  

  A few days later, I noticed another clump of Coprinus coming up near the base of the cat ramp, on the other side of it.

  

  Just in case you didn’t recognize the
  decaying remains of the original clump in the background above, it’s in
  the right foreground of the shot below.

  

  I was checking on the progressive
  development and decomposition several times a day.  A few days
  later I got the camera and documented how, as the new caps grew taller
  and opened and a few new nubbins had emerged, the old cluster was
  decaying into black slime.  The common name for this genus is,
  “inky cap.”

  

  The small, unopened caps at bottom right
  above are at the best stage for eating, but I was too interested in
  watching them grow to pick them.  Below is a close-up of the bare
  wrecked stalks of the first clump that same day:

  

  I continued watching their life cycle,
  and yesterday after a frosty night weakened the stalks and hastened
  their demise, I took the shots below.

  

  

  I caught Albion just as he lifted his head from sniffing at the shrooms.

  ---

  Something Quite Different

  Gray’s First Sober Year
  by William Notter

  This new life is better
  than a dozen beer-joint romances
  or a hundred drunks at fishing camp.
  My habit now is not drinking,
  and waking up where I belong.
  I can see colors again,
  and I don’t feel like a turd in the punchbowl
  whenever I go around people.

  I’ll mow the weeds for Sharon
  and almost enjoy it. She’s even given up
  checking my breath whenever I come home.
  I went shopping for our anniversary
  and wound up crying in the store,
  but not the kind of tears you cry
  when your wife catches you lying in the shed
  with your pistol jabbed up in your mouth
  and vodka running out your nose.

  The only thing she could think to do
  was check me into another detox,
  and this time it finally took.
  This year has made me different—
  vodka could never do that for long.
  Some days when I wake up early
  and listen to Sharon lying there breathing,
  it feels like somebody snuck in while we slept
  and changed our sheets.

  This poem really got to me (in a good way) when I heard it on The Writers Almanac.

   
   

  • 5:12 pm
  • 8 Comments