Snails and Mushrooms

When can the slow snails reach home after having their breakfast outside? Will the snails meet one another again if they go out in all different directions? 

Some mushrooms grow close together to enjoy an unseparated family life, to have trivial chats from sunrise to moonset, to count snails from one to six, and to laugh at each other that the number six with an extra protruded eye should not belong to one of the snail species.

Some other live alone, but life has to go on, so its cap talks to the gills, and the messages are then passed to the stem. The cap and gills laugh when the stem is jerked by the jokes.

Being a busy body, one of the real snails then forgets to go home.

It's Winter

I left summer to embrace winter. Yes, this happened in a click and with a lot of heat and perspiration.

Mushrooms were inevitably surrounded by gloomy soft winter light and rims of frost covered their edges.

They made a stump the shelter, but the stump itself withered because from every angle wind was blustering. Its skin wrinkled, it shivered.

It was just a camera trick but I did not intend to get summer back for the moment.

Winter never visits the equator, but it was winter now, right in a Sunday morning.

Say Cheese

Giving it a camera, the monkey started to take selfie which went viral in Internet; what will happen to mushrooms?

Google, in the future many years, will tell us that there are hundreds of built-in micro biological cameras within the mushrooms. They take thousands of million-pixel pictures which will be shared when propagation takes place.

The nasal hairs that make me a sloppy fool, the wrinkles that unveil your age and sticky eye gum  fresh from last night sleep can never escape from these macro view of candid shots.

Not surprisingly, the impossible is possible when Google tells us more.

Action and Reaction

It has been my habit to hike with the DSLR strapped round my wrist, and my eyes synchronise not in series but in parallel to my footsteps. There are forces emitted from my sides that have my heart giving my brain its vision.

I always bookmark these places for the round trip when my camera will depend less on the steadiness of my hands. My brain has the vision but lacks of good memory. I usually lose some of the mushrooms in the end.

Mushrooms are small, their attraction is gigantic.

Newton told us that for every force there is a reaction force that is equal in size, but opposite in direction, but he forgot to mention for every beautiful attraction there is a photographic reaction that is greater in size and opposite in direction.

This is the beautiful and soft Fourth Law.

Black Corals

Some snails try to appreciate flowers like we do, while some mushrooms never look like mushrooms. They are named coral mushroom, though do not look exactly like a coral.

I have no knowledge about them days earlier. This is the fun of hiking, and is blogosphere. We meet each other, and call ourselves friends. The more I explore, the more surprises I get.

These black coral mushrooms “produce tubular, unbranched fruit bodies that typically grow in clusters” because they too need friends.

They stroll with upper bodies leaning forward and always have an eye on their steps.

They behave less like mushrooms.

Sweating

My mind had gone blank in an exam again. Panic. Sweated so much. 

To my relief, I woke up to find that it was just a dream.

I am still awake while hiking at Cerok Tokun. Wide awake to day-dream.

Some mushrooms have a big head, other a thin one. Is intelligence the size of a brain? Does their heart gives the brain its vision? Do they spend most of the time day-dreaming like me?

Do they have exams in their world? 

Those must be a nightmare for they are sweating in most of the time when I meet them.

It's a Small World

Hundreds of spiders are so miniature that they look like a lump of dirt. This lump starts to disintegrate when my "up-close" curiosity overwhelms. 

I think of whom to follow initially, but chasing two rabbits means catching neither. I turn to continuous high speed, focus on the big lump and hand over everything to my luck. 

It is easier when the miniature mushrooms are not rabbits.

With such a skinny body, their heads look abnormally huge, and their lucks are very much required when a small breeze comes up.

That is the side effect of extreme dieting.

And bald-headed, and the whole body shrinks under this unshrinkable head that contains a hard brain that determines to be miniature.

And small is beautiful.

Duet, Cicada and Mushroom

I follow its voices and am surprised that this cicada stays put even we are only within an arm's length. 

It is normally a low risk-taker that used to turn round and hides behind the tree trunk, or simply flies away. 

Then captured by the radar screen of my camera is a mushroom with a big brain and a long neck.

It suddenly dawns on me that both of them are on stage for a duet.

The mushroom sings songs that voices can never share. They are echoing in the well of silence.

This is Simon, that is Garfunkel.

Mushrooms Sing Like Seashells

I like rain. It cleanses, it cools and it brings mushrooms to life.

The mushrooms are bright or plain, big or tiny, reachable or far away, simple or fancy; they pop up from nowhere to everywhere. 

I read that a musician was threatened to be sued on behalf of the mushrooms for copyright infringement to the songs he had composed. This is of course absolutely ridiculous.

But mushrooms do sing and singing makes them always look lovely and pretty.

They sing like seashells. 

When I go up-close, I can hear the forest whispering in my ear.

Superman Gathers No Mushrooms

An apple a day keeps the doctor away. An extra millimeter a day leaves the other mushrooms behind. Persistence rules. 

Bit by bit and day by day, the drops of rain mark the stone.

Bit by bit and week by week, I shall collect enough mushrooms to make my webpage a mushroom garden. 

When a sea of talkative mushrooms meet up, how noisy but how unbelievable exciting it will be.

Just bit and bit, day by day, week by week and year by year, slow and steady.

Superman is just too fast for this. He is a rolling stone that rocks and rolls in the sky. 

Superman gathers no mushrooms.

Mushroom has a Small Win

Small wins make great presents.

Missus and I followed trail marks last Sunday to explore a new hiking trail. With guesses at many junctions over this an-hour-forty-five-minute journey, we managed to reach the peak with relief.

Three pieces of giant stones that were nicely stacked up are a fascinating eye-opener.

But the dialogue between a lonely mushroom and a naive plant is attractive.

"Join me as a mushroom?"

"Why?"

"Ever know this guy and Sallie?"

"No."

"Mushrooms are their topics."

"So?"

"They are then our topics."

Its small win in the making makes me nuts.

Micro Dreams

I am a daydreamer. I dream little dreams of the forest .

But I never expected but happened to find countless of micro dreams. They pop up close to the forest floor and blink like sparkling stars with fairy dust sound effect; they must be right at the tip of a wizard’s magic wand.

It is this magic the universe uses to make dreams come true. 

The mushrooms dreamed micro dreams:

"You sneezed hard the whole night."

"Wind brought rain. Rain soaked me in coldness."

"I could feel the earth shake while you were doing that."

"That's how bigger mushrooms help smaller mushrooms to mushroom."

Seventh Layer of Rainbow

Red is the colour of passion, and confusion that made me thinking both of these red mushrooms are same.

I am wrong the moment I start writing. Writing gets me right when my brain is greased.

Mind drilling further red becomes the colour of love, hungry lips, and a sudden halt in the midst of heavy traffic flow. Things happen fast. Red force closes all my irrelevances and day-dreams, and drives me back to the colours of weekday.

I have to cliff-climb from the "very blue" in order to reach the top layer of a rainbow.

By then red is the colour of Sunday, and also passion.

A Phenomenon

I am addicted talking to these many varieties of mushrooms which have been now a phenomenon.  The DSLR that would never turn me into a ballerina is my faithful translator.

They come in different colours of outfits and hairdos. Old-fashioned or trend leading, dazzling splendour or plain dullness, some of them keep a distant but I cannot shout. Others, who stay right in front, are fond of listening to my clicking whispers.

Unlike the darting centipedes, they are always enchanting and elegant. 

Only because they enjoy doing catwalk in the wild, instead of busy at a boring toe counting contest.

When a ballerina and a mushroom meet

Distance is now shortened, time can be intercepted, and the unbelievable coincidence happens, in the Internet.

Internet Courtesy

A mushroom meets a ballet dancer.

Mushroom, battement tendu, jungle, ballerina, spotlight, tutu skirts, dance floor, mushroom ballerina, and music goes, The Sleepy Beauty.

The slim vertical line shadows the flexed body; the pirouette work follows the pointe, and many smiles.

Thousands of miles apart, they who we name differently enjoy performing similarly are only separated by a thin line of time space.

In there exists a wonderful coincidence. 

Sweet

I heard I am too crazy to tell they are sweet and delicious. ½

Raw green beans are not, but corn-flakes which send a crisp crackling sound straight to the inner ear, and the chocolate flavor ice cream which the flakes dip in lingers in the slits of our teeth must be. Aren't them sweet?

How about egg yolk peanut cookies which are one of our servings in the Chinese New Year celebration? When fresh from the oven, the aroma of peanut fills the air and the taste erupts inside our mouth, and flow from every taste bud to rule our mind wordless. Aren't they sweet?

Mushrooms are certainly sweet. ½

Tiny Green Beans

An energetic morning. 

The mushrooms are stretching their neck and squeezing each other's head  trying to stand out from the crowd. Life is full of ambition.

They are as small as a green bean, and could be easily overlooked if someone is seven feet tall or more, so tall that the faces become smaller than a green bean. Tall is not always an advantage.

I have my advantage, with eyes relatively nearer to forest floor; I see their determined smiling faces and bright dark eyes, determining to forge friendship across the oceans.

"Hi, mushroom friends."

What a wonderful cyberlife.

Mushroom, One, and More

One is relax, more is busy.

The mushrooms in uniform are busy walking uphill to school one morning. More mornings later, one memory is fragmented, more of them could be very vivid.

One of them remembers, when in high school, sitting a few tables away, always looking at a girl, and only looking at the girl, in the library.

The one mushroom liked to buy more sweets in pink colour, because pink is the colour of her lips.

Once was sweet, it is sweeter more years later.

One is a dot of simplicity, more is so dottily beautiful.

Mushrooms are Beautiful

"And I do wonder, who's manipulating us in our daily life, that we don't realize, to do or believe things that we wouldn't ordinarily?" 

I am always hypnotized, because I am suggestible, and I withdraw my camera from the backpack involuntarily. I begin shooting. 

Mushrooms are beautiful, I believe. I think I am pre-programmed to believe whatever it is. I have to believe. 

You are hypnotized, whenever you follow me. I do not, but mushrooms do. They shape you. 

Mushrooms are beautiful, you believe. And this repeats in every weekend. You have to believe.

Mushrooms are beautiful. Mushrooms are beautiful. 

Mushrooms are beautiful.

Beautiful.

Yellow Mushrooms

I would not ask for everything, I have nowhere to keep all these; it hurts too if excitement overflows.

When joy comes bit by bit, this makes the quota last longer.

Mushrooms today come in abundance, but joy is simple. Joy is even simpler after a lot of perspiration on the hiking trail.

Mushrooms are like a library, I can flip through the books of dreams of the forest whenever I want. How far I can go this library is never a constraint, it depends on how good I interpret and how deep I understand.

A tiny mushroom is sky-big, a big sky overwhelms my playground, small Cerok Tokun. I am an old simple mushroom man.

Mushroom Doors

Sometimes I look foolish.

Mushrooms grow doors, keeping in behind are dreams of the forest. Big doors have HD dreams; small mushrooms keep imageless snores. Green doors store happiness, where Snow Whites sees her happy ending.  Purple doors store adventure, where Alice finds the rabbit hole.  

Super mushrooms are exclusively for Mario, these are rewards in recognition of bumps on his head.

There are dreamless nights, because doors may have jammed.

I look foolish, that have to continue for the rest of the week. Only until going door-to-door, collecting stories from the opposite sides on Sunday, I shall feel brighter, before being foolish again.

Orange Mushroom

Rain doesn't stop, mushroom season prolongs and my blog continues to mushroom.

Naughty Nature makes a mushroom an orange plastic look. Too unreal to be real, I removed then put back my glasses because it is really real.

While standing back, this mushroom is causing a slight hoo-ha.

If it has, its ego could inflate like a balloon, so big it would fly, and fly, somehow fails by the Earth; so big a surprise flash from a camera would cause violent turbulence, the mushroom bursts.

Luckily it has not.

So I have some pictures for my ego. My blog mushrooms.

Click Photography

I shoot very close-up view of mushrooms today. The magnification fills the frame on my retina, so powerful it runs my adrenaline high, so big it superimposes negativity from the hangover of a yesternight TV program, in which mushrooms are unluckily related to war as mushroom clouds.

The original mushroom is peaceful, explosively beautiful and bombastically entertaining, yet usually unknown and unloved, but this it prefers. Stay low.

A click of shutter button required a second, a push of button to release a missile required the same, but endings are extremely different.

Things get easy if everyone clicks only photography.