9. The Ecological Self: Creating a Reciprocal Relationship with Nature with Chloe Parsons

[Music] Hello. Welcome to Wild Geese. [Music] Do you think human beings are bad for this Earth? I know that's an intense question to start with, but with global warming creating catastrophic events and morbid timelines towards the end of the world as we know it, that seems to be the prevailing thought. A lot of us were taught to be ashamed of ourselves and disconnected from the natural world through all sorts of scare tactics from a pretty young age. But what would happen if we deconstructed those stories and told a different one instead, drawing from the wisdom of indigenous people to change our relationship to the Earth? I'm your host, Anna Karin. And today I'm sitting down with Chloe Parsons, a watercolor and floral collage artist who creates art for the eco-sensual. If you don't know what that means, keep listening because linguistically and stylistically, it's a really cool concept. She brings her fascination with what's happening in unseen places, both the underground and the subconscious to her work. Chloe works with the intent to welcome people into belonging to the ecologies around them, and to inspire them to collaborate towards restorative climate justice for all species. We're starting with talking about how the stories we tell can drastically impact people's behavior, and then by the end we get all the way to the nuclear family. It's all interconnected, I promise. We're talking about transactional relationships versus reciprocal ones, individualism versus interconnectedness, ascendance versus incendence, and there were multiple times during this conversation when my draw was on the floor because Chloe throws out some absolutely fascinating fun facts about nature that I think you'll be excited to share at your next dinner party. So without further ado, let's get into the episode. The reason that I reached out to you in the first place was because of your video on the ghost pipe flowers. It reminded me of the book "Brading Sweetgrass". Have you ever read that book? Yes, it's one of my favorites. In a couple of weeks I'm teaching a painting class at the library, and I have this list of books that have inspired my art in "Brading Sweetgrass" at the top of the list. Oh my gosh, I would love to see that list because I'm always looking for books like it. But what you were saying about the ghost pipe flowers really reminded me of that book because for anybody in my audience who hasn't read that book, first of all you should go read it. Second of all, being able to kind of give a story to our natural world is something that makes me feel a lot more connected to it. I've been always felt super connected to nature just by default. So I want to get back to the ghost pipe flower thing, but first can you kind of tell me your relationship to nature growing up? How has it evolved up until now? Have you always been super connected to the natural world? Or is that something that kind of like came about as you grew? That came about by deconstructing a lot of narratives. But as you were saying, I think we are very narrative beings and we have a lot of stories that we kind of ritually carry through generations, but not intentionally, even though it isn't intentional, it creates these barriers. I grew up in Maine where people fly from all over the country and all over the world to visit Maine because it's so beautiful. We have the ocean and we have the most densely populated forest of any state. And I grew up so afraid of the woods and so afraid of the water. I also grew up very religious and so I grew up afraid of everything. I grew up feeling inherently bad. I think that ends up turning into a type of disconnect that I see a lot of people in my age group experiencing, which is people are bad for the planet. People are bad, therefore we are bad for the planet. And I think that comes kind of from a thin doctrine that we've been given. And when you deconstruct that, when you separate and tease all of those threads back apart, that ideology negates at least 200,000 years of human life. And I think that's the reason why I grew up in Maine. I think that's why I grew up in Maine. I was pregnant with my first child. Before I had my daughter, I experienced a miscarriage. And it was one of those things that nobody talks about it and everybody has experience it. And you're like, where was this right conversation before? And so understanding that there's this really like intimate and so understanding that there's this really like intimate secret keeping. And so understanding that there's this kind of underground network of knowledge that is kept separate from what is like appropriate in or polite in conversation and realizing how hurtful and lonely that felt. And like, well, how do I how do I not through that then and get to something real? How do I get where the people are talking about these things? I don't want to be in there's a there's a great Mary Oliver. I don't want to be respectable anymore. I don't want to put on a nice dress and put on a good face. Like I want to be where the people are having real conversations. And so it's through pregnancy and the birth process. I ended up having my daughter at home in a pool and a kitty pool with the middle of the house. It was just an incredible feeling of, you know, as a young person feeling so cast out from the garden of my own body. And like coming coming back into that and realizing like I want more of that. Right. And all of the power that brought me through this process like came from nature. Yeah. None of the power that was given to me through any type of like religious practices gave me anything. So I ended up kind of kind of seeking it out in a counter cultural self exploratory way. And I think it's definitely like the gateway for that. Which I think is so cool because it's like beautiful to birth at the same time. Yeah. So for anyone that hasn't seen your art before or like no kind of the philosophies behind it. You've done a beautiful job of describing it through your TikTok. But for any of my audience members who haven't seen your TikToks before. How would you describe the art itself and your process of making it? So I am self taught. I didn't go to art school. I just came about that's really organically. And so sometimes the philosophy influences the art and sometimes the art influences the philosophy. I consider my art to be eco sensual. And that's the the the the language that the linguist in me that it is very essential in nature. But but eco comes from the Greek for week. And so it's like a home. And sensual you know of of the senses and the experience of your physical body. And eco sensual is to be at home experiencing the world through your body. And that's what I hope my art makes people feel. And lately I have been really playing with the concept of identity and breaking that down into smaller pieces. Into like multi cellular multi-faceted pieces and pluralizing our identities as a sort of way to self medicate from hyper individualism. Okay, tell me more tell me more. One of the facts that I that I love to give in conversation is that if we were to count every cell in your body. So the number of cells more than half of those cells are non human cells. Well, so you know in terms of the the amount of matter. Obviously you're made of more human DNA and human things. But based on the pure number of cells more than half of that is non human. So we are filled. We are crawling with this bacteria and fungi and. Inert viruses and like all of these things that are actually working really hard to keep us contained. Yeah, we see this in the beauty industry right now that can maintain the acid mantle of your skin and all of that healthy bacteria that's on your skin. And if you were to just follow from the outside of your body like you're just a tube, you're just a tube that has a pretty outside. And you follow that tube all the way down. There's so many enzymes and bacteria and gut flora that you would die. You would cease to exist if those living things weren't living in you and on you. Continuously you are never alone. Never alone. And everything that you have ever done or accomplished your side. If you had to have the credit section of your magma opus at the end of your life, you would need to credit all of these living things that have made you possible. Right. And I think that individualism ends up enabling people to it's what allows for corporations to say that climate change is an individual. If we all just work together, each individual does their part individualism separates us from our actual sense of responsibility and connection to one another. And if we can see our sense of personal responsibility and connection to the living things in our own body. And to see that we are just experiencing a partnership in bringing sweet grass. She also talks about in a giveaway. And she says, "I don't say like that is a hill or that is a bay." It is being a hill. Yeah. Being a bay because everything is personified. Exactly. So you're being a body right now. You're happening. You're not a person. You're happening. You're in a current. And I think that if we really learn to just like think our teeth into that. Make life just more fascinating and wonderful and makes you so much more open to connecting with life that's all around. But then when we have that, we're so much more inclined to protect it in every kind of way. If you care about the tree that gives you shade in your favorite park. You're going to be the one who's going to strap yourself to the bulldozer so that they don't cut it down. And if we can find ways to care about even just the most minute. And not out of charity, right? Because charity is this sense that we are above something and aren't we so wonderful for laying our hands down and you know, gifting something from our own generosity. But really a sense of interconnection and interdependence with these things. Then yeah, we're going to fight. We're going to fight for those things and for those people. You have a piece called incendence. Am I saying that correct? Yes. So it's a painting that looks like to me like a man sort of reaching down through the roots of the earth to. And looks like the core of the earth. And of course art is up to interpretation and all of that. But your caption said something about how this idea of like ascending into the 5D is an escapist myth. And I would love to talk about that because I feel like this conversation. Sometimes people, especially like the new age spirituality community can think that they're so ascended. Like they've been through their spiritual whatever and it actually does create a sense of superiority. That is not super healthy. And I feel like a lot of the times these conversations about how disconnected we are from nature. I think about, you know, maybe the boomers that are very much. Ganghou on corporation and not as much about the people who maybe think of themselves as super spiritual, but they're trying with all their might to like go somewhere out. Yeah. How many degrees of separation can I create that separates me from everything else. And I feel the exact opposite of that. I want less borders, less boundaries, less barriers between myself, whatever that means. And I like right like my deepest desire that I will have one day is to be consumed by the earth again. That's that's that's all I want. Yeah, so this painting I also really love that when you saw you interpreted as a man like I've meant for it to be in drachanus even though I used like feminine references, but I want anybody to be able to feel it. So it is sending is the impulse not to rise above the world, which is to us end or to transcend, but to crawl into it and seek its core. That's what that means. And so I felt so so seen by that word. It's like, you know, sometimes you'll see those like Instagram posts or people talk about like there's a word for the way that the rain smells or there's a word for this type of sunlight at the end of the day that we've all experienced. You didn't know there was a word for it. If you're listening, you can like go to my Instagram, which is at holy Chloe W H O L Y period Chloe, and you can pull this up so that you can look at it while I'm talking about it. But yeah, there's a few elements I can talk about. So it's this human person reaching not up to the sky, not up to the light. There's sort of this white orb that kind of represents the sun or at least worship of heaven. And then there's this dark orb underground that is glowing and enticing. And to me, that really represents earth based with them and body based with them, which is everything that Robin Wall camera would talk about in breeding sweet grass. And so it's like a city that in Christianity, sin comes from being belly to the ground like a serpent, but it's also where the knowledge came from like who lied in the garden of Eden, not the serpent. So being belly to the ground and in a rather vulnerable position, if I do say so myself reaching down towards this earth based with them, the body based with them. And as the body crosses the barrier starts to become see through so you can see the skull and the bones through the skin. Because as we reach for these things, we realize that our sense of self becomes thinner our sense of the barriers between our selection, everything else start to dissolve into different layers. And so it's a great mushroom kind of sticking out through their toes here that are connected to all of these spores underground that are myceliating and connecting nutrients and information much like the ghost type flower and sending it to the tree. And so this is an oak sapling and oak is a keystone species on turtle island and keystone species are anything that supports a huge amount of life oak in general people rely on it animals rely on it insects birds fungi bacteria it just supports a whole lot of life. This person while they're reaching down because this is a slippery slope to leave the world that you know and go down into all of this wisdom hanging on to this keystone species to like keep an arm in the real world keep grounded to something in reality. And this also represents for me like respecting kids like respecting young people I think a lot of people respect like the mighty oak but not necessarily you I could talk about it forever the last thing I'll mention is the earthworms that I love because earthworms don't when they mate as they're doing in this painting they impregnate each other. So they just represent this really like delicious sexuality and so essential for like the nutrients in the soil and breaking things down and making fish new so yeah it's an amazing piece and I have a couple of thoughts just from the way that you described it. The way that the body is kind of becoming translucent and you can kind of see the insides of the person brings to mind how if you just picture your body like the insides of your body how similar it just looks to the earth. The ins sort of look like roots in a way and then another thing that this all brought to mind is the fact that the story that you told about pregnancy kind of bringing you into or closer to all of this if we think about the womb. So like darkness can be so vilified as this like quote unquote bad thing but if you picture a womb and a baby coming into the light of the world they had to like incubate in the darkness of the womb for X amount of time before they could be ready to come out into the lightness. So because the head is sort of below the line of the earth there's no light where that person's head is yeah what can it do for us to get comfortable with this idea of darkness and it doesn't have to be all light and in fact it shouldn't be the next painting that you have above you. I'm not sure what it's called but it's called earth feed earth seed okay that is bringing a similar thing to mind I know that this is a podcast so people can't see all of these things that we're talking about. But I wanted to throw that out there because the image of the womb clicking into place for me I was like well it's so interesting because I feel like like as I hear you talk about it it feels like something that's just in my words. Yeah it's been a part of my body because I've experienced it and it just kind of comes out in the art in some ways intentionally and in another way is not. So earth seed is it's a woman inside of a seed essentially and now I get to be a little bit botanically nerdy again earth seed is inspired by up cavea butler and her hair bowl of the sower is another great book I would recommend to people. And when a seed sprouts if you've ever like put put a bean in a plastic bag with a wet paper towel and you hang it on those you know take it to the window like when you're a kid and you watch. There are two pieces that will come out one is the root and the other is the stem and so in this painting a woman is inside the seed and her arms are sticking out of the seed one arm becomes the stem and the leaf and the other arm reaches out and down and becomes the root. And to me it just represents the tension and the duality of life needing to grow in multiple directions at the same time needing to grow downward towards the darkness and there's parts that have to stay in the darkness the seed doesn't ever come up out of the darkness. But when if anybody here gardens when you plant seeds the first leaves that you'll get are called cotayladon and they're not true leaves they almost all look the same so if you planted a tray of seeds for your herbs for your garden and they all sprouted you wouldn't be able to tell them apart until their true leaves form which is like the next leaf that comes out and unfolds. And the ones are very similar to like a placenta in a way they don't photosynthesize and they just provide nutrients and like a bit of training wheels for the seed to start growing and building a stem before it produces true leaves which is like there it's true identity that can then photosynthesize and start sustaining itself and I just love this idea that we come up out of the darkness with everything we need. We don't we we're kind of speaking the light I guess whatever metaphor works for you is really fine but it's that you you have all the resources that you need and you know in my philosophy I think that we should extend that I think people should have the resources that they need I think we we invoke this kind of all of this individualistic sense of personal responsibility on each other rather than the idea that actually so much more of the nourishing is that we need to be able to do that. And if more of the nourishing is happening underground there's micro rival networks under here feeding this seed and its roots more than the sun is the sun is more of just like giving the plant the energy for the part of it that we eat. Okay, I feel like this is a perfect segue into the ghost pipe flowers which as I was saying at the beginning of our conversation is why I reached out to you like I saw that video and I was like oh my gosh this is the perfect person to talk to. So can you give a little bit of a recap of what you were saying about the ghost pipe flowers and what their existence can show us about ourselves and capitalism in the world of course I would love to delighted ghost pipe flowers are also called monotropa unifora they are a white flower that they don't produce any core fill so there's no green or color. Because they cannot photosynthesize they grow entirely because micro risal networks underground which is the the mycelium and bungal networks under the ground that feed the plant that's past information and nutrients from different species on to each other the micro risal network provides all of the nutrients that the ghost pipe flower needs. So in other types of plant relationships with micro risal networks a plant is getting nutrients from the soil getting nutrients from the micro risal network and the sun and it's making transactions there in some cases like bartering and the mirlin shell Drake in his book entangled life. To think about the micro risal network not like it's the internet or like a telephone like plants are using it to talk to each other it would be like if you and I were sharing a circulatory system that's how intertwined they are and so the ghost pipe flowers don't give anything back essentially at least not in the transactional way in a circular economy and a gift economy that they certainly do because all those nutrients get returned to the soil when they die they're very short live. But this idea that there exists species that create life for the sake of life not as part of a competition narrative that we hear a lot in like the natural sciences and not as part of a binary transactional relationship ghost pipe flowers have been misinterpreted and if you google them it will say that they are parasitic and they just aren't because parasites harm their host. And any of the parasitic relationships so there's parasitism one organism harms a different organism for its own benefit we've got mutualism they make exchanges that benefit each other also got commensalism which is like one of them take something but it doesn't harm the other one. And if anything ghost pipe flowers would fall under that but it's so much more complicated because it isn't binary it's a tri-partite relationship of at least three species that are inter kingdom so fungi is its own its own kingdom fungi for a fauna the mycelial network is receiving all of this abundance from all of these other plants in in the forest in the world. And they just have it to give they have this abundance to give so that this other life can live for the sake of living not not because it needs anything in return in all of the ways that nature like quote unquote nature with a capital N that like is separate from the way that that's been weaponized against us to say that you know survival of the fittest or reproduction being kind of weaponized as like well this that any any type of like sexual behavior that doesn't result in reproduction is unnatural we've had these narratives weaponized against us to say what is in nature is inherently good and you are inherently bad because a creator made all of this and there are so many of these amazing subversive narratives in in the soil. And I also just love that metaphor because of happening underground you can't see it from up here and it has been misunderstood for decades and I think that I think that's so many good and subversive things are happening in underground networks. Yeah, things that are like fighting back against individualism and imperialism and all of these really destructive systems and they work they have longevity they're like they were here before people like who are you who are you to think that you're a standard or higher any of these things or that your intelligence is superior in some way like what what life are you creating. That's just what I love about those plants and that the story about them I love what you said about the transactional nature versus the reciprocal relationship that the ghost pipe flowers have like yes if you look at them like the people online who are saying that their parasites look at them it's like yeah from a transactional standpoint they've got no money. Yeah, you know, but if you look at it from reciprocal I saw somebody I think it was just a comment on this TikTok so I don't know if this is true but somebody was like you can actually use ghost pipe like the nutrition or something I don't I'm not very science minded so yeah, I forgive me but you can use something in the ghost type in order to create different medicinal properties for humans and there are probably so many other things that the ghost pipe flower is doing for the human. It's just not as straightforward as other beings that are doing it in this very like they'll ask the little what's the catch yeah where what's this thing getting out of it and I really think it's come down to the way that when most people hear the word parasite they think of the like disease and infection. So what's the word parasite where to be like what does parasite mean outside of the sciences the word parasites specifically means to eat from someone else's table. Oh, wow. And there's a lot of people who don't like that who don't like the idea that will not with my money for and they weaponize this use of the word parasite against other people who have what I would call capitalistically inconvenient needs. Yeah, and I'm hardcore defensive of those people at the beginning of this we talked about which is how important narratives are and the way that we pass narrative down without a sense of intent and we pass them down ritualistically without intent and I think that the word parasite and the way that we use that and weaponize that capital and natural phenomenon against people is one of the rituals one of those narrative rituals. Yeah, for sure the capitalistically inconvenient needs is such a good way to put it because I also saw people responding to that that we're like as a chronically ill person I really, really appreciate this take or as a disabled person I really, really appreciate this like just hearing that it is okay to be where I'm at and to live for the sake of living. And that's absolutely enough. Yes, yes, exactly that all of us can work together to like get get you what you need right there's not as long as you're going to be here. Yeah, there's not this like scarcity that we need to constantly be outrunning we actually are abundant in and of ourselves. Yeah, that's and that it is it is in our ancestry to create more abundant that is that is what we did before before resource extraction and like resource hoarding because you know one of the other things I love that Robin while Kimmerer says is that if you have a garden and you're the only one eating out of it you're not a very good gardener because so many people are trying to keep all the bugs out and the deer and the bunnies and everything else that wants to the bird. That want to come eat out of the garden that you grew right that if you are working so hard to keep everybody else out you aren't actually creating enough abundant or you you aren't creating abundance that there should be many other living things eating from your garden and that's how it goes. Yeah, there's a documentary called the big little farm have you ever seen that I think so is this one where I think I'm specifically remembering where they brought all the ducks in to eat all the snails. Yeah, probably it's like the whole progression of they take this farm in California that used to be a monoculture plot of land and it was like completely dead the dirt was so dry there was nothing growing there and just very slowly over the years it became a regenerative farm. And every time an issue would pop up where they're like okay, we don't want to use like a bunch of chemicals in order to solve this problem they would have to consult with all of these people with all of this with them and be like okay so because we're having this issue we actually need to bring in another animal. Yeah, who will eat this thing that's eating all of our apples for example we're not going to just like spray something that takes away the thing that's eating all the apples we're going to bring in like a whole ecosystem that balances each other out and that's kind of what we've lost is we've tried to make it so that it's like well I just want this one thing and I'm going to make this plot of land only work towards that one thing and anything that tries to eat this thing kill it kill it kill it kill it and that's just not how you create an abundant ecosystem. I feel here we're going to ruffle some feathers I feel the same way about like the nuclear family. Like some of these other institutions that we participate in where like we really are just gardening and protecting our own box right the way that this is for me and only my family yeah which I really do think I think we somebody smarter than me in in you know actual anthropology would be able to expound on this even more. Peter Michael Bauer I will throw that name out as somebody that I highly respect in the field of anthropology but that we can trace some of these things back to marriage and like marrying off women and specifically the control over women's bodies and the control over women sexualities is the trying to control where somebody is hordered resources go. So if you've hoarded all of these resources and you want to make sure it doesn't go to some other guys kids then you got to make sure that you know exactly where her kids came from. So let me make sure that I put a name on it and that that name is the one that gets passed down so all of these resources only go towards that name and you know let's hire police and other types of systems to protect those resources at all costs and so on and so for. As opposed to what would naturally happen is this like this dissipation that's what's going to even down to the fact that we seal ourselves in a hermetically sealed box and put ourselves we don't even give ourselves back. We put ourselves in a box and then we bury the box in the ground yeah all of the nutrients that you exist as never never get returned those are mine you know still those in a box and keep them forever how. Selfish oh my god that's so true i've never really thought of it that way but that's absolutely true like why do we do that yeah it really reminds me of like me and all of my friends are constantly like yeah we. Want to have children at some point we want to like do the thing whatever but we're all constantly like how the hell are we supposed to do that and we have this sort of quote unquote escapism picture in our head of like well we'll just all buy a house together like we'll buy a huge house of all of our friends together and we'll take care of each other and blah blah blah and if you think about it that's how villager. So we just have gotten so far away from that ability to take care of each other even the nuclear family now has become like we're all so scattered we all leave immediately and then you don't even really have your nuclear family and even also to just because i don't know. The concept of motherhood or parenthood and having children raising children you've got like the group who's like this is the best thing you could ever do. Yeah when there's other people who are like don't do that it's the more thing for the planet or when you have kids you end up like kind of only like your village quote unquote just becomes other people with kids and then they they all parent differently and it's all weird. We desperately need to value our friends who do not have children we need like every clear on an uncle and every woman or person who chooses not to give birth because i'm also still a person right i have like all of these other like facets of myself that i want to relate to people with and also. I can't always ask for the things that I need from another person who needs the same thing. Oh absolutely it's like talk about like drying up resources or talk about like depleting the soil in a way but we really separate. I think this happened from both directions we separate families and people with young ones from people who aren't doing that because you know a lot of times people don't want to be around screaming kids I get back. And also it's like there's sort of an elitism within families that's just like oh you're going to be out until nine o'clock drinking beer at a bar it's like so judgmental about what other people are choosing to do with their lives that just like like like the farm like into seeing seeing somebody else's problem as actually something really nourishing to somebody else if you just brought in a different speed. I think it brought in a different group that it would actually be so reciprocal in so many like beautiful ways so anyway to anybody who feels weird or bad you know about not wanting to have kids but thank you so much for the possibility of making that decision I really appreciate it. Yeah I've been thinking about this a lot lately actually as I'm nearing the age none of my friends have children but we are at the age of pairing off and going and getting in your your little couple and whatever and it has to become a very intentional thing to be able to be connected to your single friends that are not in your little pair because if you decide to go out and create your little pair and then create your little nuclear family and suddenly you've isolated everybody outside of that nuclear family then the only person that can come in and help you is this transactional relationship of a babysitter say yeah yeah nurture those relationships then it can be a better ecosystem. Yeah I think absolutely everything is an ecosystem if we look at everything through lenses of ecosystems whether it's relationships or parenting or like actually building you know restorative ecosystems or it's money everything is an ecosystem. I love that that's a great thing to grab on to walk me through your co creative process with nature because you also do collage art and like actually take pieces of you know like leafs and that kind of thing to create your art so walk me through what that process looks like for you. That was another thing that sort of happened by like the practice influence the philosophy it wasn't something that I set out to do but I think one of the things that I love about it is that in the fine art world there's a lot of emphasis on control and like mastery and I don't really care. I love that if I press flowers and then I make something out of those there's an element to that that I could never create I could I couldn't paint that I couldn't make that I didn't make that I collaborated with that and I feel the same way about watercolor there's a lot of people who hate water color and like people in the fine arts are like oh my good never because they can't control it because there's an element of it that you kind of have to just love it. I kind of have to just love how unpredictable and wild it is and that sometimes the most beautiful thing happens completely by accident and you are not allowed to take credit for it. It just is what you allow to happen in the moment and then other times it's infuriating because something gets ruined because this this wet thing touches this wet and it's gone forever and you could never in a million years like recreate that exact same dispersal of pigments and you know it matters how humid it is outside. And it matters how dry your brush is it's like being in a relationship with a complicated person and I love that this summer one of my goals is to learn cyanotype which is that it's a sun based kind of negative photography where you can you treat paper and cloth with this certain chemical and then you you know layer things on top of it and you can use photo negatives or plants or drawings and things and then you lay it out in the sun. And it has a photographic reaction and then when you rinse it everything that that the sun touch turns bright blue it's gorgeous and then everything else is like white where it didn't didn't touch and there's some other like really fabulous watercolor artists who then take that cyanotype and then add more watercolor to it but I love the idea of making art with the very things that I'm wanting to be in relationship with whether it's like water or plants or. Or the sun or sometimes they're like doing spore prints with you know mushroom caps you can lay them down and bars drop yeah into making art with other living things yeah okay so you grew up in Maine and now you are in Texas are there as many mushrooms and. And I feel like that must be so hard it is really hard because I spent I spent a few years living in Washington state which is where I fell in love with mushrooms this is really where I kind of fell in love with I mean watching watching is such a wet womb of an ecosystem if there ever was one yeah I loved it so much and then I live in Tennessee for a number of years which is also like humid and moist constantly so there were just like. Like you just stumble upon them it's like no big deal and they're just happy to see you but in Texas I have joined if anybody else is in Texas the central Texas and my logical society and they do you know forging. And things but it's always like guys it just rain so in like 48 hours let's head out to this thought to find like these specific things it's so much more like exciting I guess when you see them because it's a little bit more rare but to be fair absolutely everything that you see growing that has a green leaf attached to it there's my ceilium underground like there is a fungal network the mushroom is just the fruit of. That my ceilial network and so it is everywhere like right I do take solace in that but I just I love a good I love a good mushroom i've never met one I didn't like. I know mushrooms are the best and I grew up in a really really dry part of Texas so I really hadn't seen mushrooms until I moved to New York and of course i'm in the city but if I go up state or like outside of the city i'll see them and every time i'm still like. I'm talking about another narrative that's gotten passed down in like the wrong ritualistic ways you know i'll be out with my kids and you know they can identify two dozen species of plants and mushrooms and there will be like random people walking by like don't touch that like it could be poisonous it's crazy that's right it's like here again there's like maybe a few like poisonous species instead of just learning those few people are like don't touch any of them. Yeah yeah we have to have this separation between us it's so interesting okay so I just have two more questions this second to last one I don't know that I told you that I was going to ask this so if you need to take a second like your Spotify you can but I ask all of my guests to tell me about a song that's meaningful to them and then i'm putting them all on to a Spotify playlist so that okay check them out. I love a Spotify playlist that's like i'm your girl I will look it's going to be hard for me to pick just one i have a playlist called songs about decomposing that's just. All right then we're songs that mention or allude to decomposing in any way you'll have to send me the link so I can. Okay for everyone to go but yeah i will i will find that for you and then yeah you can either like link it in the notes or something i'll try to find like a super niche one that like. Perfect you wouldn't take okay perfect all right and then my last question for you is just how can my listeners get connected to you a couple of different ways I am pretty active on social media in like waves and so sometimes you. Here a lot for me and sometimes you won't but I am at holy Chloe on take talk in instagram w h o l o i period Chloe and then in both of those links I have like the little bio thing you can get to my sub stack where I write essays basically about all of these things that i've been talking about and i'm kind of trying to move over in that direction a little bit more because you know social media is kind of a hard place to add. The amount of contacts that I would like to provide for people in like the level of of depth because I wish I could have this conversation with everybody that sees anything that I put out and then my website is holy clowy calm and i've got like all my prints and stuff there and I do commissions and things but if you're either on my social media or my sub stack you'll like hear about things that i'm. And then if you're local, sometimes I do classes and shows and I really love getting offline and meeting people in person and stuff so. Yeah awesome thank you so much for joining me this has been such a great conversation. Thank you for having me for like all of the best questions that I get to talk about. Amazing.