Fungi & Cultivating Joy When Our Worlds are Falling Apart
And Nausicaä returns in July due to popular demand!
Dear Fellow Myconauts,
How do we cultivate joy when we feel our worlds are falling apart? Ross Gay teaches us it’s vitally important, and we can do this by noticing what inspires delight in our day-to-day lives. Delight, he argues, are moments when we recognize we are all connected and entangled.
And who better to teach us about our interconnected lives than fungi? These silent ominpresent teachers of our world. I’m excited to see where this evening of exploring how fungi teach us delight takes us.
Scenes from previously in the Mycoverse…
Author Yasmine Ostendorf Rodriguez led us in an entangling game with yarn resulting in much laughter.
We expressed and wrote out our gratitude for our more-than-human community – after reflecting on our potluck and discussions of mycorrhizal networks.
An Evening of Fungi + Poetry on Delight
Monday, June 24th, 7pm @ Arlington Garden, Pasadena, CA – Free by donation
The Mycoverse returns to discuss the importance of noticing delight and how fungi teach us the wonders of connection through delight! This event is inspired by Ross Gay's books on delight, where he catalogs daily what delights he encounters and the insightful wisdom they bestow.
When Ross Gay was asked how he could possibly be focusing on joy and write a book about delight during such serious times, he responded by saying:
“What aren’t serious, hard times? ... because joy is fundamentally a practice of connection, I wrote the book, it came out six months ago now, and now that I’ve written it, I feel like I have a pretty good definition of the word joy.... I offer one in the book, but I feel like it’s getting better.
And I think that definition might be something like the ways that we practice entanglement, the feeling that we have when we actively practice being entangled with one another. That word “entanglement,” I think I come to that through a beautiful book by a writer named Anna Tsing, called Mushroom at the End of the World. But that we are connected fundamentally. And if joy is actually the evidence of connection, and it’s the evidence of participating in connection, to suggest that it’s not serious is just wrong. Usually, I have stronger words than wrong, like f*$#@% stupid."
Check out the event page for more info.
Discussion: The Return of Nausicaä (Part II)
Monday, July 8th, 7pm @ Arlington Garden, Pasadena, CA – Free by donation
We’ll be raffling off another copy of Entangled Life!
Our last discussion was so captivating, and we barely scratched the surface of Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. That's why we're bringing an encore discussion next month. If you missed our last one, this is your chance to join us for a truly engaging conversation!
This time we'll be focusing on the later parts of the story in the manga (graphic novel), Chapters 5, 6, and 7 or the second half of the series. This part of the story dives into rich detail about purity, artificial intelligence, ecological restoration, and hope in the face of darkness.
Before our discussion, we invite you to:
Read the manga! Specifically Chapters 5, 6, and 7. Don't let the size intimidate you. It's a beautifully illustrated thriller. The manga provides a richly detailed story of the world's ecology, including the myxo-myco relationships, as well as what actually happens – the film is only roughly the first two chapters of the seven in total.
Links in the Myconautical Almanac
Businesses that cultivate AMF (arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi) talk about restoring microbiomes.
The mushroom-growing boom could cause biodiversity crisis, warn UK experts.
More on the topic of introduced fungi – Amanita phalloides (the Death Cap mushroom)
We can’t get enough of Nausicaa – a YouTube documentary on the backstory of this powerful story (half-way through, it gets to the manga)
Spread the spores,
Aaron