ANNE – Superhero

 

Earth. The feel of soil on the skin. It’s balanced, alive. Steam fills

the lungs. Anne calms down. The surrounding land and plants

stand out. Anne tries, however, to close her mind to all those that

have a message to send, needs and hopes. You must not drift into

caring, drown in timeless space. Your desires and those of others

may get mixed up. Now you must rest, let it gather strength. You

must try to remember that it is separate, Anne has made it get

used to her. But it’s separate! We’re not as one, and I’m not it.

Anne’s the one who did it. Anne needed mushrooms. Me, Anne

… I’m a separate individual with my own plans and needs. Anne

sinks into her thoughts and at the same time, unnoticed, her

connection to the mycelium strengthens.

She no longer recognises species, or names, or anything, however

hard she tries. She only recognises and feels them, annoyingly.

Without scientific names there’s no return to normality.

True, it looks like that’s not possible anyway. Everything’s different.

As if one was another person. It may not be coincidental

that she stops to rest just now and in this place. A few hundred

metres from here is a new clearing which sends out all kinds of

signals. Overwhelming. I could at least try to enjoy myself, choose

a complex spot with an abundance of species, in which fellow

creatures manage their relations evenly. There’s a powerful smell

of plants under stress.

Now is the last chance to get free! One should leave. There’s

so much to do. The air’s humid. The skin’s clammy and slippery.

Collapsed metabolic waste has grown on Anne’s thigh

– as the disease exits from the organs. Recently tiny electric

impulses have been felt throughout the body. Anne knows that

then she can really move. You could now say that the slime

mould is in its vegetative stage. The whole body feels its powerful

rhythmic flow. It also affects the blood pressure. This

time Anne has not eaten lettuce. The last time at this stage

her skin went greenish.

But now one should somehow go! The flow can stop. One

should not get stressed, it could ruin everything. The air’s still

humid. There’s a plastic bag of damp towels, bottles of drink and

sprays in the rucksack. Anne’s dressed in a thick black skirt over

black trousers. Light can’t penetrate her skin – there. There’s a

rag soaked in corn starch jelly taped to her thigh. Nothing should

accelerate the development of the sporangium. For then it would

be necessary to stay in the forest.

 

 

Anne is a mycologist from Helsinki. She’s a sensible, fortyyear-

old woman who enjoys her own company. Some time

ago Anne learned that she was very ill. There was no time left

for treatment. There was only time. Anne was accustomed

to working. Her illness drove her to work without hope, to

seek new directions.

In her work Anne had studied how mushrooms adapt to

poisons and actually use them as a source of nutrients. In a

serious vein she recalled the story of how a robot camera had

been placed inside the Chernobyl reactor. The inner surface,

which had been assumed to be empty and dead, was shown

to be completely covered in black slime. Research showed

that the slime lived directly on radiation.

As the disease spread Anne combined her knowledge

of the mycelia as the basis of forest life, intermediaries –

perhaps even carers, to their ability to carry nutrients and

degrade. Now new knowledge floods in about how mushrooms

clean the soil of toxicants as well as in the search for

materials to replace plastic. Anne continued her interest in

the ability of myxomycetes to move and solve problems, remember.

Ultimately everything’s connected to the ability of

the mushroom to adjust to different growth environments.

At the terminal stage of the illness, when her distraught

family prepared to say their farewells, Anne began to behave

oddly. She was no longer reachable. This was interpreted

as a sign of the end. A far longer period had elapsed than

was originally diagnosed. You almost never see her any

more. Once her sister thought she’d bumped into her in the

street, but she wasn’t absolutely certain. The situation was so

strange that she didn’t dare approach her. Surely one should

recognise one’s own sister? But this woman appeared different,

even though it really was Anne.

Apart from the obvious miracle, that she’d been cured,

and alongside all the physical changes, what was special was

the change in her nature. This former nature-loving if rather

routinised car-driving individualist had gradually become

empathetic towards other creatures as well as a student of

them. Goals and other essential things have changed. Her

idea of herself and her relationship to others is in crisis.

Anne’s hair is no longer fair. Ammoniac is one of the

most dangerous chemicals for people like her. She can’t get

used to it – it’s her weakness. Anne has begun to enjoy warm

humid conditions and is happy being offered sugary things.

The sources of deeper enjoyment and feeling good have also

changed. At the beginning of the change, the obvious dependence

on the earth and its associations appeared only as

a compulsory need. Now she feels differently. Anne’s identity

vacillates – the main message of her body and mind is to

secure life: To be of more of a benefit than a hindrance, to

solve the problems of others rather than create them. She

can’t exclude herself from anything. Beauty has begun to

surround her.

 

translation Michael Wynne-Ellis

First published in N = 000° - by Kari Huhtamon taidesäätiö and EMMA, 2014