From the Fungus Garden, I
Irvine Welsh (minus the ayes and taes) impersonating a termite--that's how this entry will be written. Partly to distract from the chintzy props, the tired subject, the blown out speaker, the flicker that may or may not be only in the eye of the beholder. I want to give a sense of replaying something that never quite existed as though it did, famously, and to acclaim. Affecting this distance in person requires diligent body prodding, face arranging, getting into getups that sweat some other impersonator's sweat under lights arranged to hide as much as they reveal. It takes time anyway, which this introductory interlude is filling. When I waited for a Michael Jackson impersonator to finally get the glove on and start his show, I felt obscenely self conscious, a feeling I didn't expect to enjoy as much as I did, this many years out of high school. Feeling honest in the middle of a lie creating itself at a distance. A nice illusion of objectivity. You're watching the life of a termite...
You were born in the fungus garden. Inside the fungus comb. The fungus comb, it doesn't let you believe you're anywhere but where you are. So you get used to not acknowledging it, but all the time you know: you are a termite. You are surrounded by thousands just like yourself, your termite agendas exactly alike. Once you've decided not to acknowledge this, you get on with being you: Macrotermes bellicosus, an African fungus growing termite. Thousands like you are spawned by a distant queen every day, but she's distant. Far enough away that you can more or less forget about her. You're surrounded by the swarm. You're surrounded by fungi, a great, encompassing gut that helps digest the wood you have to chew. There's enough fungus between you and that focus of doubt, that whore queen, to keep you satisfied with you. The stench isn't really so unbearable.
There have been intrusions.
You know you are being observed. Sure, by the other drudges gnawing their way to oblivion. But also from a perspective none of you can maneuver to, from outside the fungus comb. There are visages out there peering in. A scummy intellectual ken that, when it isn't being fascinated with itself, makes one spastic swarm of all you wriggling through the fungus garden. That doesn't even see you, not really. Watching them watching you, you're more aware than ever of the situation.
You were born in the fungus garden. Inside the fungus comb. The fungus comb, it doesn't let you believe you're anywhere but where you are. So you get used to not acknowledging it, but all the time you know: you are a termite. You are surrounded by thousands just like yourself, your termite agendas exactly alike. Once you've decided not to acknowledge this, you get on with being you: Macrotermes bellicosus, an African fungus growing termite. Thousands like you are spawned by a distant queen every day, but she's distant. Far enough away that you can more or less forget about her. You're surrounded by the swarm. You're surrounded by fungi, a great, encompassing gut that helps digest the wood you have to chew. There's enough fungus between you and that focus of doubt, that whore queen, to keep you satisfied with you. The stench isn't really so unbearable.
There have been intrusions.
You know you are being observed. Sure, by the other drudges gnawing their way to oblivion. But also from a perspective none of you can maneuver to, from outside the fungus comb. There are visages out there peering in. A scummy intellectual ken that, when it isn't being fascinated with itself, makes one spastic swarm of all you wriggling through the fungus garden. That doesn't even see you, not really. Watching them watching you, you're more aware than ever of the situation.
posted by evelyn at 8:17 AM
2 Comments:
How does this post about living in a fungus hive relate to your relative impressions about Barcelona and Minneapolis? Which one is more like a fungus hive and how?
Oh and by the way, America is the land of the free and the home of the brave, regardless of your point of reference in relation to the fungus hive.
While I didn't plan to make any analogies between fungus hives and cities I've recently or ever visited, I guess I could do that here...
There was a friend's dog, Nafas (which I guess means "little toke" or something similar in Arabic), that I walked sometimes in Barcelona. The route we took, if I didn't drag Nafas, was determined by the routes other dogs had taken through the city. This route was reinforced by Nafas, hence more or less desireable to certain other dogs, and so on. The fungus hive is both constructed by and constructing the actions of the mites building it; so is Barcelona, from a dog's perspective.
And a human's, too. Proximity and topography can suggest metaphors like "hive," "anthill," "fungus garden", "shit heap," etc. At least some places in Barcelona are very close: the streets were built for horses, not cars. So it "feels" like a hive, or whatever, when your neighbor's drying underwear blocks the sun coming into your livingroom. Your environment is being controlled by proximity. And then there's the grafiti in Barcelona: it's all over, it communicates, and at least for some subcultures it influences actions.
In Minneapolis, there's too much a sense of centralized control for the hive to ever develop and thrive.
The idea of manifest destiny is vague enough that I can abuse it, making it also a claim to all potential and existing fungus gardens on all potential and existing American lands. Does freedom thrive on the potential for limitless, or maybe wanton, expansion? In the case of fungi combs, unchecked expansion presents some serious thermoregulation obstacles.
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