From Kudzo to Home

I'm reading a draft of a good friend's novel right now which collects tales from the magical woods of the South.  To be objective - it is tremendously good.

 However I'm not a good critic. I tend to look for what I need in the moment when engaging art, music and writing. I collect and interpret the nuances of the work to meet my immediate emotional needs without looking at the creator's intent. Which might explain why his humid Southern forest is less a kudzu growth and more the English Ivy of my own Northwest.
But that's exploring right? Making our own maps and curating our own museums from the scraps and collections we acquire is kind of the whole purpose of creating. Keri Smith's fantastic book "How to be an Explorer of the World" has become a bit of a bible for me in this regard.  She sums it up perfectly on the back cover when she points out - "At any given moment, no matter where you are, there are hundreds of things around you that are interesting and worth documenting." It's through that documentation that meaning is applied and importance is assigned to the objects and experience that happen.

(How a book with such a whimsical aesthetic could be so affecting is an ongoing concern)

So in this novel I'm reading there is a tree that collects the dreams  of nearby sleepers, weighing it's branches heavily with the mixed up  collections of the subconscious. It's like a metaphysical version of  the way lichen collect nitrates and chemicals from the air too tiny for the rest of the forest to process. The lichen carry more nutrients than any other member of their ecosystem, but as air pollution nears the woods lichen death is one of the first indicators.
Realizing the role the tiniest filters in the forest play makes one look closer at the scars and inconsistencies covering even the tiniest surfaces in the forest. Every one carries some weight - nutrients, genetic blips, parasites, pollution, 4-track recordings, diary comics, jokes about penguins - shit like that.