looduskalender.ee

September: National cloud. – National sun. – National mushroom. - The national mushroom makes you winged.

 

The yard thinks of God in September. Ponders over its place in this world, ponders whether to disappear or despite all to save the vitality, to return in spring.

 

To be or not to be is not the issue. The question is whether or not to be a yard.

At the end of September the yard begins to become transparent, and behind the trees something more than a forest can be conceived.

Mushrooms rise in the yard like mushrooms and the mushroom is like the embodiment of the thoughts of the yard. That mysterious, strange and a little frightening but at the same time funny apparition, after all we don’t even know if to say he or it, who or what. It/He isn’t a plant or an animal, or lichen or bacterium and not even a bird. But look, somehow mysteriously it suddenly appears as if straight from the underground, and it does rise from under the ground after all, in a day-and-night. The diurnal work of a mushroom is precisely rising and raising and it is not for nothing that it is said of dough that oh, look, it is rising, damn, spilling over the rim – the dough-raisers are after all fungi. Should we say „who“ about the dough? But how can you push a „who“ into the oven? But on the other hand – we say „who“ about doughfaces.

 And what to make of fungi that turn our heads by beer?

 

Quite clear that a mushroom can turn your head, even outside a beer bottle, leading innumerable numbers of mushroom pickers astray in the forests, pretending to be edible when it really is extremely poisonous or again poisonous when it is perfectly good for eating. The mushroom picker can moreover always be sure that he is a first-rate mycologist because when he tries to find a mushroom found in the forest in the endless collection of mushroom books that he has bought then of course he does not find it – meaning that once again he has discovered a new mushroom species.

 

The mushroom is a vital mediator between here and the hereafter: after partaking of it, foresayings gush out of your mouth like a birthday rosolje salad, and not a single human, but even the most trivial mushroom could predict the shape of the nuclear bomb explosion cloud.

 

The question of who are in majority – people who have been sent to the mushrooms or mushrooms that have landed in the frying pan as ambassadors from the mushroom world is one of the most burning questions of the planet. Or as it is expressed these days – a real challenge. If we manage to resolve this issue we can happily go mushrooming.

 

But it is strange that while we have a multitude of various national things - which then is Estonia’s national mushroom?

And where is our national mushroom? We even have a National Library, although nobody reads books any more, a National Opera although you go to the Opera only for the buffet and the promenade circle, and a National Radio although that nation is athletes. We have a National bird that doesn’t do for a cooking pot, and a National flower that doesn’t make you well nor ill. But - that which has always come to help us in meagre times, provided stomach fills and visions, our beloved mushroom?

 

We  have no National month either but to the Backyard Potterer it is clear that it can only be September. Then the National sun shines on us, an average Estonian sun. The National cloud races across the sky then, an average Estonian cloud. And the National birds flee in sheer terror and the National flowers wither relentlessly. The National Opera opens its doors and cannot close them any more because the national hinges have rusted, and the National Library looks for national book purloaners.

 

The first great tit appears in the national yard, even flies to the window, wags its head demandingly: so where are the seeds? Thank you, early days yet. The water voles become especially industrious and the Backyard Potterer fears that he might step through the yard surface. Who lives will see.

 

Indeed, we perceive the diversity of the world with our senses. All five senses are important but foremost of all is sight. „Seeing is believing.” „I saw it with my own eyes.” So we say when we want to assert our viewpoint.

 

The retina of the eye is like the surface of the brain. It is constructed much like the brain. The eye is like an extension of the brain that senses light and so it may be that part of the analysis of colour is done in the retina. But the remaining and basic work is left to the brain that puts together the image and calculates the whole colour scheme. How to look at the yard has been developed by the brain. The eye is part of the brain that looks at the yard from outside, the brain in turn from inside.

 

Between the spruce and the birch light always selects such a path that its time of travel will be the briefest. No need to be a mathematician, just being simply a reasonably sensible person will do to understand that rule; unless you go straying on purpose on a walk you will always choose the path that offers the shortest trampling or driving time.

But how does light know to calculate in advance which path will be the shortest? The principle of the shortest time is mathematically, and humanly too, easy to understand. But we don’t after all believe that light consciously chooses the shortest period of time in the yard. This principle indicates that in a strange way the yard can be mathematically described.

 

The nature of light is simply such that it selects the shortest time of travel. The light doesn’t know that it chooses the shortest route. Light just acts as if it knew. The path of light seems strange and incomprehensible - because it is strange and incomprehensible.