My name is Lea Jane Aphrodite
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This is my little corner of the internet where I write about things I care about. This includes essays, poetry and fiction about the things that move me. Frequent themes are mycology, language, critical technology & ecology, collapse, anarchism, queer activism, and how we may find better, more authentic ways of navigating our entangled lives.
But what the hell even is a mycelialism? What’s a hypha? Am I insulting everyone who stumbles across this page? Let me explain!
I believe we are a mycelial culture. That means that much like how fungi interweave with many plants in mycorrhizal connections, so we as humans are intimately woven into mutualistic networks.
In a mycorrhizal association, the fungus colonizes the host plant’s root tissues, either intracellularly as in arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, or extracellularly as in ectomycorrhizal fungi. The association is normally mutualistic. In particular species, or in particular circumstances, mycorrhizae may have a parasitic association with host plants. 1
Mycelial networks are made up of individual strands of hypha that probe and explore the world around them and send feedback into the mycelial system as a whole so that it can react to its surroundings.
That’s what we are. Human hypha in the mycelial commune.
So what’s a mycelialism then? They are those moments where we encounter these mutualistic weaves. They are usually brief and spontaneous. A momentary unification of threads into one pulsating node where you can feel the thriving world around you. These mycelialisms happen all the time. And we can make them happen more.
That’s mainly what I am interested in exploring. The interwoven nature of our social and material realities. I’d be happy to explore it with you!
Here’s a poem for you about trying to find the language to talk about the world we live in and if that is even possible or worthwhile. In the face of climate disasters, fascism, surveillance Capitalism, ongoing genocide, and indifference in the imperial core, we cannot lose sight of what we are fighting, and how to fight it.
“There will be no need to fear or hope, only to look for new weapons.” -Postscript on the Societies of Control, Gilles Deleuze
Another poem for y’all. This one is from the start of this year when I was homeless for a few months and couchsurfed at different friends’ houses. There are a few of these where I’m not quite sure into what project they fit. For now I’ll share them with you here.
In a Home Not Yours
If you consider the floorboards
you tread on in a stranger’s home
as yours for just a second
and feel the push of them
on the pads of your feet
the splinters dig themselves
into your callouses like
the pinprick of a unforgotten
memory digs itself out of your
mindgrave.
Unearthed layers of skin
thick ridged scar tissue
with furrowed landscapes
in the lines.
Ich hatte letzte Woche die große Freude, einen kleinen Workshop zum kollaborativen Schreiben anleiten zu dürfen. Es fanden sich 13 von uns in einem Hinterhof eines Wohnprojekts wieder um, gestärkt durch Brownies und Erdbeeren, uns an der Sprache auszutoben. Das hier sind einige der Ergebnisse, welche ich hier mit der Erlaubnis der Autor*innen festhalte.
Ich sage zum Anfang solcher Workshops immer, dass ich der festen Überzeugung bin, dass das Dichten eines der Dinge ist, die uns Menschen am einfachsten fällt. Es ist etwas, dass jede*r tun kann und die meisten Menschen oft bereits tun, ohne es sich Bewusst zu werden. Der Trick ist es, diese Assoziationen und Verknüpfungen bewusst und greifbar zu machen. Das funktioniert meistens gut im Rahmen von spielen, und Spiele machen mit Anderen erstmals viel mehr Spaß als allein. Deshalb haben wir uns zusammen an mehreren Sprachspielen versucht.
Here’s a poem for today. I wrote this for a woman I met last year and tried to help who was stuck in the endless limbo and uncertainty of the asylum system. I don’t know where she is now, her situation was very precarious and communication with her never easy. But I hope she’s okay.
And let me be clear on one thing: Borders kill people and destroy families and lives. Tear them all down, set their bureaucracies on fire. Every checkpoint and every guard is an affront to life itself.