Date: Mon, 21 Mar 1994 11:46:16 -0500 (EST) From: Erik Davis <erikd-AT-panix.com> Subject: Surfing tubers Yes, tubers seem to be associated with rhizomes becuase of the constantly redeployed, non-centralized manner with which they propogate themselves across the land. I'm no botanist either, so I don't know whether this is really the case, but it works for me. And yes, of course we should expect to find "knots of arborescence"--just as we should expect to find pointless chaotic play on tree, hallucinogenic whorls of wood, or nooks and crannies for birds to briefly erect their twig-yurts before wandering south. Any time we think we've found a pure expression of Deleuzian modes--rhizomatics, BWOs, smooth space, etc--we're lost. Rhizomes "go tree" by laying down roots, but they are radically distributed roots, roots on the fly--and they die while the plant itself continues to live. So do nomads or birds build shelters, mini-interiorities justified by their practical dimension, and destroyed by the flight that has already been inititated at the moment of arrival. Another fascinating link of the "line" rhizome/tuber is rhizome/tuber/mushroom (for it is preceisely these lines of assocation that cross genus and species that D*G are pointing us towards, rather than the genetic organization of species in botany or natural history--organizations which when graphed often resemble trees.) Besides the shamanic resonance, mushrooms point to the parasitic dimension of rhizomatics--unlike a tree which, once anchored, "stands alone," a rhizome does not exist apart from its immediate landscape, hugging the turns of the earth, constantly probing a field which it never rises above. Mushrooms are even more blatantly parasitic, upsetting the normative allimentary logic which guides most growing things. We need not grow towards the sun. I say all this knowing that a natural scientist could probably blow these speculations out of the water. Oh well. Does anyone recall the discovery of the "largest organism on earth" a few years ago--it was "one or many" mushroom(s) distributed over hundreds of acres somewhere in the Midwest I believe. Genetically, all the various mushrooms were "the same"--they were clones, and many were still linked to each other through a fine network of fungus fibers, or whatever it is that connects mushrooms. Others, though "independent," were identical genetically. Quite a Deleuzian problem, huh? (Unfortunatley I seem to have lost my news clipping). This problem is not linked directly to rhizomatics, though it is the case that some mushrooms propigate in a like manner of decentered tendrils. Apparently the mushroom was even later upstaged by a copse of aspens with the same genetic material--clealry an arborescent form, but one that perhaps stages "zones of rhizomatics" within a tree formate. [__]~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ \ / ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~[__] [] Erik Davis (oo) Cernunnos sez (cribbing the Fall): The only [] [] erikd-AT-panix.com __ thing real is waking and rubbing your eyes. [] [__]==================== ww ==============================================[__] ------------------
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