Becoming Mycelial

An Essay on our networked lives

Image source: Wikimedia Commons

How might our sense of self shift, if everything were at the center?

I wrote this very stream-of-consciousness essay during a session of Writing Playground this summer, in response to one of the prompts I created for the workshop.

Mycelial networks are fascinating, offering lots of space for exploration as well as rich metaphors for our own lived experience (Sophie Strand's writing offers some excellent examples like this, and this).

I like this flowing, playful kind of writing because I can just let my pen play across the page, and I also find some of my greatest insights in doing so. In this particular case, my mind wandered to the concepts of collective consciousness and interconnection.

Since I'm a food writer who also thinks a lot about natural systems (and who ferments food literally every day) my mind immediately went down a microbiological and mycological rabbit hole.
What I emerged with was a prelude, of sorts, plus a short essay.

I've long thought of collective consciousness in mycelial, microbial terms, but have started teasing it out a bit more during my early morning writing sessions. This is something that I'll continue to refine, and further define, as I work on a couple new projects (I'm adding more 'stuff' to my Mycelia writing group beyond our meetings, for example, but there are other TBA things in the hopper, too).

I hope you enjoy!