MUSHROOM

Smelling like dirt and slightly moist, I shook the last random mushroom crumbs onto the cutting board. Friends are swirling around me, faces and eyes aglow with happy anticipation. Some faces already flush from various inebriants they’d flushed down their thirsty gullets. There’s a kettle on the stovetop that’s starting to hiss its pre-boil sermon, temper rising by degrees as it rests on its coiled and hotly glowing red stage.

There’s chatter and expectancy in the air, a joyful and relaxed anticipation. Underneath it all electricity crackles from eye to eye and mouth to ear. I myself am engaged in a very important part of this ritual—I reverently chop the pieces of mushroom into smaller bits, being careful to keep every piece from straying off the board. I wonder which piece, which molecules will make their way to the home of my mind, wherever that may be, to be welcome in heartily, given the full tour of the place, allowed to redecorate using only what’s available within—my own mind and all that’s in it.

The kettle noisily reaches the climax of its sermon, delivering its message. Pompous, self-important blowhard.

The tea is drunk, the friends are all scattered carelessly on furniture like a bachelor’s dirty laundry, and all begin to yawn at once. Funny how that happens—you’re talking animatedly one second, hands flopping like suffocating fish trying to make a point, and the next—you’re mouth is a cave wide enough to spelunk into. But this is just the climb to the first big hill on the roller coaster—hang on!