"The Mushroom Life": A Brief Fictional Narrative Pondering the Benefits of Parallels with the Lives of Fungi.

The morning is naked and shivers with the cold of itself, in the same way it makes her to shiver as she dresses and forgets which colors match. Blue isn’t like black or white, she thought. It isn’t a color that they say matches everything. But then they say that everything goes with blue jeans… Then she remembers it doesn’t matter—I have no one to impress, she thinks—and dons camouflage lounge pants under the tie-dye shirt she is already wearing.



There are so many messages on her machine; so many calls to return and just the thought makes her tired. So many messages; so many questions! But then, she calls too, when she has questions.



I am not a fair person, she thinks; not very symbiotic. No, more parasitic, maybe; always taking more than giving.



She feels somber now, thinking of how she might use people. Somber and slightly ashamed and resentful. And since she never returns the calls, the only figure to bear the simmer of these feelings is the one in the mirror.



She looks at her reflection and the stretch marks there on her hips, and the scars. There is the navel piercing that at certain angles creates the illusion of allure, but her figure is average: relatively slender, but needs work. She doesn’t want to work on it.



That is why she pierced her navel. Her therapist told her, “Do something nice for the part of you that you hate the most, to make it feel pretty.” So she had a needle stabbed through it and there was blood and blood and, oh my, more blood than she thought there would be, but she didn’t mind. She didn’t mind bleeding and now she has her piercing. And it does make her feel pretty. It must, she supposes, because when she takes it out and looks at her stomach in the mirror without the jewel dangling in her navel, it seems to her that she is ugly.



Yesterday she dyed her hair red, but it reminds her too much of habits she is trying—I really am trying, she promises herself—to break. So maybe Wednesday it will be blond again, then Thursday purple. But no, today is Thursday, isn’t it? She doesn’t know. And now she has forgotten why she came into the kitchen, the dirty kitchen with the cracked linoleum, and wouldn’t you know every piece of wood that makes the cupboards is fake?



She peeks in the doorway and thinks it seems darker beyond, though she’d flipped the light switch. Breakfast—yes, that’s what she came for. Her hand brushes over her stomach, a bit flatter with emptiness. Well, I might as well not. No, she likes it like this, and she isn’t really hungry anyway. At least she doesn’t want to be. What a paradox. She walks on to the coffee pot. She doesn’t really need breakfast.



She doesn’t feel like she needs anything anymore. Needs food, needs conversation, needs new things or even some of the old ones. Of course, she didn’t realize that until she noticed that lately she hasn’t had any of those very often and she is still alive, still waking up every morning. And I only miss them a little bit. She thinks. Maybe the days are emptier, but empty is so much simpler. Empty is clean.



Sleep. She thinks, recounting in her mind a list of her minimalist survival, I still need sleep. She seems to sleep an awful lot these days…and now it is noon. Have two hours passed so quickly? She is still standing by the coffee, staring into the neon numbers as if hypnotized.



The mail has arrived. She always checks it—she likes opening the box, which was once empty, to find it full. Even if it is only full of empty things, like magazines she doesn’t remember subscribing to and coupons she will never redeem.



The garden is full, though. Not full of things she put there; she killed nearly everything she planted. It’s full of mushrooms again, She observes. She stops to look at them; crouches down in the half-rotted mulch. She studies the round, creamy caps and gracefully curved stem. She picks one, and her eyes slide in and out of the feather-like grooves underneath. She puts out her hand to pick the rest—such accidents don’t belong in a flower garden—but pauses for stops herself. Accidents. She realizes.They aren’t cared for, pruned or watered. They weren’t specially planted in tilled, nourished soil. They just grew; they are just growing. What do they need but a surface to stand on? What helps them live except to be left alone? They will grow in her pitiful excuse for a garden when nothing else will. How convenient that must be. She pulls back her hand. It’s when they’re neglected that they thrive.



And so she envies the mushrooms, until she realizes how much she has in common with them. What a thing to compare and contrast; the way I live as mushrooms do—needing nothing, and having nothing—with how I lived before—needing so much and having only half. She sits, resting her chin on one hand—her head feels so heavy these days—and twirling her plucked fungus in the fingers of the other. I guess I’d say this is better in the end. She pops the cap from the stem with her thumb; crushes its foamy flesh between her fingers. Yes, I think it's better; this, The Mushroom Life.