Saturday, August 15, 2026

Looking for little people

I'm sure there are people traveling to the Northern Cordillera of the Philippines right now (Yunnan would involve more surveillance and New Guinea more wicked insects) to find mushrooms, either to try them themselves or to sell to curious Americans. And quite a number who are finding similar-looking mushrooms and lacing them for sale to those curious Americans.

That particular hallucination is so specific... little humans running around, swimming in your drink, climbing the bookcase ...

We tend to see faces in things, so maybe there's something hardwired in the brain to reconstruct people-images, but these are supposed to be always small, and dynamic. If everyday experience weren't so devoid of traces left behind by little people, it would be fun to imagine these as invisible imps, but it's hard to write a story about characters that don't seem to do anything.

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