Eating Raw Mushrooms And Wintry Gloom

It is dark already. Each day, I am still surprised by the lack of light in the afternoon hours. I look outside and think it is evening, but when I check the clock it is a relief to know that there is more time in the day. This feels like a little mercy. I hate it when the day ends and I feel like I haven’t done anything worth doing, or that I have not achieved anything I wanted to achieve. But now, in the colder months, I hurry with getting things done, deceived by the creeping darkness. “It’s going to be night soon!” I think, “hurry up.” And then I look at the time on my watch and see that it is only afternoon, and I am relieved. There is time. I can fit more into my day!

There was a storm in Scotland yesterday. Flooding near Kendal and Keswick. Desmond, they called it. London caught the tail-end. Wind bowed the trees in our garden, and the neighboring gardens. I went for a walk with my family in a depressing patch of land by a river. It was cold. The sky was white and there were the usual plastic bags and pieces of litter hanging around by the river. My ears began to ache on our walk back to the car. Still, I was glad I left the house, and it was better than the usual round-the-block.

I’ve discovered that I like to eat raw mushrooms. They are juicy, even before they are cooked! And they taste like the earth. I wonder who the first person to eat a mushroom was. Surely they would have thought it was poisonous, even if it wasn’t, because of the deep, unfamiliar taste? And that’s just the safe kind of mushroom. How many illnesses and deaths were endured before people narrowed down a list of edible mushrooms? How was the Shiitake separated from the shit? Was it done in pursuit of the hallucinogenics? Oh well, all I know is that I like raw mushrooms. Some types. Not the white, button ones. I tried one of those the other day and it was dry and crumbly instead of earthy and juicy. I had to force myself to finish it because I didn’t want to put it back into the paper bag after I’d bitten into it.

Yesterday I helped my family to make a small Christmas tree out of driftwood. We are not yet done, but we are getting there.

I got to drill the holes

I quite like this winter gloominess. It reminds me of trick-or-treating, mulled wine and magical spirits. (As opposed to alcoholic spirits.) When I think of winter gloominess I think of cosy fires and candles and crafting. There’s a nice smell to the air.

So Persephone, you can hang down there for a while 🙂