L'Ordine Nascosto La Vita Segreta dei Funghi
There is to say I remained impressed again by the author, another wonderful mind!
Fungi: they are everywhere; in our bodies, in our forests, in food thanks to the yeast, in medicine thanks to that drugs where mushrooms play a big role as ingredients, or, if you prefer, components.
Fungi don't have a brain but they are in grade of thinking, for later elaborate new paths, chosing the best strategies to them, using other animals as ants, for example, like vehicles for their own purposes. They are sly, opportunists, they try to better themselves all the time and in various measures.
An interesting chapter the one of truffles. Why white truffles' got such a persistent smell? I smiled a lot, understanding the real reason, to me absolutely unknwon. Mushrooms, the most common ones are visibles in fields, forests, and the transmission, their perpetuity is permitted because of their visibility. Truffles, white one, dark one don't have this luck, so with the time developed a special, fragrance for being found by wild pigs and other animals, eaten for re-born thanks to the powerful vehicle of faeces somewhere else!
Merlin, went in Bologna's area years ago for assisting at the discovery of some white truffles. When found, the fragrance is absolutely wonderful but just after two days that fragrance can be lost because of a chemical reaction, so it's indispensible to act quickly for bringing truffles in New York or Japan in a short time.
White truffles writes Merlin, manifest the worsest part of the human being under many aspects.
Merlin's family was a close friend with a scientist pretty, pretty eccentric. Terence McKenna: he studied the so-called magic mushrooms, the ones in grade of presenting hallucinations and lived in a house that had to be magical.
I have always seen around sad cases of people who tried them and later had their brain devastated without any kind of possibility of recovering. I was happy to discover that differently, most people, in particular the ones suffering of terminal cancer under treatment with these kind of mushrooms, (an experiment) discovered a new identity and less pain. The self wasn't anymore important; there was an expansion of the soul in several different directions.
Magic mushrooms were studied, used during the XX century, Aldous Huxley was a great consumers of these mushrooms, but later the American government lost the patience deciding to cut funds for this research.
Merlin has tried several different substances, participated to experiments, he also enjoyed to prepare many kind of alcoholic drinks for all his friends during his years of college, co-living in his bedroom with many boiling cointainers; it was amazing to see the variety of mushrooms and how they became once mutated in the various beverages he tried; sweet, bitter, disgusting, fabulous and so on.
It's a book this one nost just of mushrooms, but also of our relationship with them; it's a story of healing the planet passing through mushrooms. It's a book about wonderful creatures.
It's a fascinating trip that I know you will surely adore!
Highly recommended.
I thank Marsilio for the physical copy of this book.
Anna Maria Polidori
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