The Direction of Intention

I had no intention of writing about white rot fungi. I never imagined myself in the course of my lifetime writing or even being interested in white rot fungi. In fact, in scholarly terms, I have no business writing about it. But, here I am. White. Rot. Fungi.

I live in the age of the internet and Google. I remember the moment in the mid 1990’s that I realized the world had changed! I was doing research for a play about Joan of Arc and, instead of using the card catalogue and spending days in the library scouring the stacks, I was trying this new thing called ‘the internet.’ In a matter of moments, I found the complete transcript of Joan’s trial. The actual notes from the actual scribe that sat in the room in the 15th century during that very political/religious trial! The scribe’s notes were typed for my consumption, digitized, and available for my 20th century eyes. Information-gathering was suddenly so easy! Then, I discovered the notes for the 2nd trial! Ten years after burning Joan at the stake they reconsidered their decision and admitted a mistake. It was also, no doubt, a very political/religious trial; the making of a saint! Days of dedicated research compressed into a few hours of poking around. It was a kind of miracle. I reached through time and a scribe handed me his meticulous notes. “Do not judge us,” he whispered.

And, so, white rot fungi. Kerri shot this gorgeous photograph (she calls it ‘nature’s stripes’) and we chose it as a prompt for our studio melange. This morning, wondering what to write about nature’s stripes, I asked myself, “What’s all over that nurse log?” In less time than it took to find Joan’s second trial I had my answer. It digests dead wood.

The name, white rot fungi, a collection of words, does not do poetic justice to this species. It is the vital middle stage in a snapshot of the life cycle. On the left, the vibrant green shoots of new life, spring. The middle: a nurse log, a fallen tree, providing food for the fungi. And on the right, the brittle brown leaves returning to the soil, nutrient for the next new growth. A hundred year cycle captured in a single image.

This photograph is also a compression, making it possible for me to easily see an unimaginable life cycle. Yet another miracle. Yet another way to reach through time and see.

I forgot how difficult it once was. Finding facts. Blowing dust from pages made it somehow more important to check the data. Reaching through time to a reader in the 25th century, I whisper, “Don’t judge us. It happened so fast, this enamoring of the easy, this nonchalance of meaning, this indifference to information”.

read Kerri’s blog post about NATURE’S STRIPES

read Kerri’s blog post about White Rot Fungi

a whisper through time. this was once called ‘john’s secret’ but kerri renamed it ‘pray now’. circa 2010.

pray now/john’s secret ©️ 2010 david robinson

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