Vanity
By Dave Layton
I have seen all the works that are done under the sun and, behold, all is vanity and vexation of spirit. Ecclesiastes 1:14
Paragyrodon sphaerosporus
In Charlie’s post “Accretions” he examines his propensity to acquire stuff. He explains its role in sparking his memories, heralding him back through different stages of life. He begins to define and understand how all this stuff has come to be in the many homes he’s lived in. I’ve often equated the accumulation of things as vanity, but Charlie shows that what we acquire and the reasons we acquire it are far more complex than that.
Our big sister Nancy left a great comment on his post describing our grandmother who was a true hoarder. Grandma Layton was fascinating to us children. She made entire walls out of stacks of boxes of crossword puzzles, and she had the strangest looking bottles I’d ever seen. Her rock collection was gorgeous to young kids. Was she vain? I’m going to say Dad thought so when he hauled rocks on a train for her. (see Nancy’s comment) But really rocks are just natural things, free gifts from God. How can collecting them become vain? After all mushrooms are natural things, free gifts of God too. Am I vain about them? As I pondered that question a resounding YES echoed through my cavernous skull. I began to see the log in my eye from a different perspective.
I often jest/brag that I’ve eaten over 100 kinds of fungi – mostly edible. I continue to eat with impunity fungi that many experts warn against. I justify my behavior with thoughts such as That’s all that’s available right now. Paragyrodon sphaerosporus is such a species. I’ll share more about it in the future. The simple vain truth of my thinking really is: I’ve eaten these forever without problems. I know more about this species than those other “experts.” Even more vainly, I’ve shared one tasty species for decades with others even after being warned that it has been known to rarely cause allergic gastric distress – so what? Morels are known for that too. Finally one person I fed it to had a possible reaction and he was miserable. These are now on the do-not-share list.inot grigio
People accumulate wealth, power, possessions and superiority all in vain. I accumulate fungi and it’s just as vain or more. For I see all of those things in myself whenever I eat a fungus few others really know about. Charlie has accretions of things that he refuses to let go of, but I have accretions of old knowledge that I refuse to scrape clean. Which is more vain?
Unnamed fungus I talk about. If you know what it is just from this picture let me know and I’ll discuss it more with you.
A few weeks ago a mushroom fruited in abundance that I ate as a young man and thought delicious. More recently, I stayed away from that species because an expert warned that no species in that genus should be eaten. He said that, even if you know the species, the American version is different from the European version that was eaten and not enough is known about it. I also hadn’t found it in abundance in recent years, so it was only good for photo ops and citizen science anyhow. This year I found it along side the two poisonous species it’s most likely to be confused with. It was easy to compare the subtle differences. And, despite the warning, I knew I’d eaten it safely in the past. I could stand my abstinence no longer when I found a large fresh cap that could flavor a couple meals for me (Sally would have none of it).
It was all right, but not as wonderful as I remembered. It had a bit of weirdness to its taste that I never noticed as a young man. That’s probably because I was eating even weirder stuff at the time. Okay I’m good with sticking to photo ops with this mushroom in the future, but why did I have to appease my vanity first? When will true wisdom rule my life more than vain fungal knowledge accretions?
