My word for the year is…
Mischief, mirth, magic, and mushrooms below.
🍄 ‘Gnome’ is my word for the year 🍄
Do you suffer from plant blindness? Do you wander the streets regretfully unaware of the rich network of fungus beneath your feet? If you were to visit the Mushroom Village, would anyone gknow your gname? Are you constantly losing your keys to the Divine Doorway and the Arcane Access? Do you have a deep desire to enchant the disenchanted, charm the charmless, and delight the dismal? Me too! I hear there’s one simple trick to leave the mundane world behind and awaken to the magical aliveness of reality…
If it’s magic that you seek
You could have it in a week
Mages hate this simple trick
It’s easy as a swish and flick
Ah, if only it were so easy. I’m no stranger to fantasy and myth. My backpack carries a fair share of 20-sided dice. I was in middle school when The Fellowship of the Ring movie came out and I have a proportional nostalgia for popular fantasy stories. And yet, in my day-to-day routines and creative practice, I’ve tended to lean toward the mundane and “classic” over the arcane and “romantic.” I’ll often choose a D&D character that doesn’t have the ability to cast spells, I’ll choose words for the year like “Diver” that have a hint of adventure but not spellcraft, and although I see creativity as both arcane and mundane, I often emphasize that it’s a practical, everyday skill.
I’m curious about why this is. Perhaps in a quest to find magic the way to make magic stand out is to create contrast with it — to be ordinary. If magic is something special and rare, it stands out more against a neutral background, like the drama of stars against the blackness of space. If everything is magic then nothing is magic. I want glimpses, whispers, and hints of magic, not magic that dazzles, shouts, and is plain for all to see. The slow mystery enchants and beguiles.
Of course, the line between the mundane and the sacred is imaginary anyway, but this emphasis on the mundane is really a deep desire for more magic, and perhaps a hidden belief that it isn’t mine to claim. And now… I’m bored with it. Why sit on the sidelines watching everyone practice spellcraft? If everyone is tapping into the eldritch potion reserves, I don’t want to miss the party! Maybe it’s a bit of FOMO, but it’s also a bit of “Yes, Enchantments and Spellcraft In My Backyard. This year, I had an inkling early on that I wanted to choose a Word that fully embraced the magical, the fantastic, the mesmerizing, not from the outside looking in but from the inside, directly participating. It’s time to enchant.
The work of the eyes is done. Go now and do the heart-work on the images imprisoned within you.
— Rainer Maria Rilke
Metamorphosis and the Magician’s Path
As I began considering magic-related Words, my first thought was to become a Magician. On the magician’s path, I learned about a new form of creativity I hadn’t fully acknowledged before — metamorphic creativity. The Magician is associated with mysterious powers of instantaneous transformation and manifestation. Rather than a slow series of improvements and gradual evolutionary steps, metamorphic creativity is a complete, and seemingly sudden, transformation of one form into another, leaving behind almost all vestige of past characteristics. This is the creativity of the butterfly and the phoenix.
The Magician also reminds us that “what got you here won’t get you there” — to proceed you may need to completely let go of past modes and habits, and embody something entirely new. Linear steps and incremental changes might work in some cases, but the magician brings a fundamentally different perspective that may not be accessible linearly. The Magician’s Path is the recognition of and participation in this change.
The way to extraordinary growth and changes often involves a fundamental ontological or ‘lens’ shift in how you see the world. Magicians are wearing not just better, but fundamentally differently shaped lenses to the rest of us.
Perhaps, magic itself is really all about co-creative change.
All of our experiences are shaped in some way by where we are at the time of the experience: our physical, emotional, and spiritual status among other things. Magic enables us to alter all three to some degree. And as such is inherently participatory and co-creative.
The Magician’s Blunder?
However, as I began trying out the mode of the magician, I soon noticed myself simply defaulting to and amplifying many of same patterns from the past. Rather than a transformation into new modes, I had turned up the volume on the same old inner dialog I had hoped to release. I leaned even further into the idea that productive creative output equals self worth, I gave myself even more self shame about “procrastination” (my favorite form of self-sabotage), and I tried to rely on action and force of will over open receptivity and sensitivity. I felt a strong sense of something that wanted to be transformed and to become real in the world, but my mind was fixed on the outcomes and stubbornly determined to will them into being one way or another.
No matter how well I planned out projects, defined a clear vision for what I wanted, and gathered resources, something kept throwing a wrench in my plans. One part of me blamed this on my own inability to focus on a priority and my tendency to delay and procrastinate. It suggested that perhaps even more discipline and structure was needed to “be the boss of my own brain.” Mostly I just felt exhausted.
You can’t keep your gaze tightly fixed on the outcome you want because it will lock your mind onto the strategies you currently have for meeting them, which by definition probably don’t work.
Slowly, and with a lot of help from my friends, I realized that this was perhaps the first step toward transformation. The Magician mode revealed in detail some of the more shadowy parts of the psyche that I hadn’t acknowledged fully. It revealed external messages that subconsciously shaped my perspective, as well as parts of my creative ecosystem that I had neglected and needed my attention and awareness to thrive. It revealed a chorus of thoughts and parts of myself with conflicting and entangled needs. It was clear for the first time how stuck I was and how necessary it was to go even deeper into sources of magic, not to get unstuck or forcefully “fix” anything, but to find new ways to help the entangled creative ecosystem thrive.
The Funny Game
Gently, I began to slow down and start listening to these entangled thoughts. What was going on? Why was I in such a rush? What kept derailing my plans? Was there some part of me that was hiding and actively resisting my schemes? Some mischief maker playing a game or tricks…? That’s when I received a strange message from the Fungisphere…
Now you see my funny game
You thought to gain some coin and fame
But board and pieces are illusions
It’s time to play without conclusionsIf it’s magic that you seek
You could have it in a week
Mages hate this simple trick
It’s easy as a swish and flickBut first let’s play a funny game
And then I’ll give you my true name
And all the secrets that you wish
And maybe share some tasty fishCome and find me if you can
I’ll keep messing with your plans
Until you best me in a match
But careful now there is a catch
I was hearing voices (“Hearing voices no one else can hear isn’t a good sign, even in the wizarding world.” –Hermione Granger). Where did this message come from? Who was this trickster? They seemed to be offering me a path to magic, but only if I played their “funny game” of hide and seek. And, they admitted they were purposefully messing with my plans. Thoroughly disoriented, I decided to play the game… I began to look for signs of this hidden part of me that I hadn’t listened to before. As I went through my daily routines, I paid careful attention. Where did they seem to be hiding? What areas were they avoiding? Was there a way I could coax them out and “win” the game by finding them?
I gradually realized that all my “important” plans were missing one key element. In all my eagerness to see my dreams become realities, I had forcefully drained all the fun out of them. And for that reason, this playful part of me not only avoided them but gleefully set up mental barriers around them. What I thought was the Magician was revealed to be the Inner Critic in disguise, having distracted the real Inner Sorcerer with a gift of pondering orbs. Rather than employing structure and discipline as a way to make creativity into a fun game, they had been wielded as punishment for imagined weaknesses of character.
Having reached this twist reveal in this Foolish Journey and learning the rules of the funny game, I realized that I wasn’t yet ready for Magician Mode, or perhaps Magician Mode didn’t go deep enough. To learn to enchant, I was ready to 🍄 go full Gnome Mode 🍄.
It is a return to a new normal of sorts, with a different set of priorities. A condition of convivial mutuality with other life. A reboot into an entirely different operating system. Entirely different patterns of relationships with everything, starting with the laundry.
How to Gnome
Find the funny lines
One of my favorite chess streamers, Eric Rosen, has a catch phrase: “Oh, there’s a funny line.” Typically it’s a sequence of chess moves that looks reasonable at the start and then has a twist at the end via a move that looks slightly ridiculous but ends up being very effective, or at least somehow humorous or surprising. It’s hard to describe a chess move as a punch line if you’re not a chess player, but it’s similar to the unspoken language musicians have on stage, or two best friends sharing a look over their secret mutual understanding.
“Finding the funny lines” in the Year of the Gnome for me means to look for these little jokes in my day to day activities, from enjoying time with friends and family to working on projects. Funny is a kind of magic, an intuitive ingredient for transformation that opens up possibilities and leads to unexpected places. Funny is a hint toward quiet, mysterious yearnings ready to emerge.
Funny also works best within a light structure with rules and guidelines, similar to a chess game. Funny typically happens when these rules lead to emergent situations or when the rules can be played with in a novel way. Structure and discipline around time, space, and movement in a creative routine can be a way to create more fun, spontaneity, pleasure, and freedom, rather than being a punishment or exhausting force of will. The vibe here is the wonder of opening a new board game and finding a delightful rule book where you slowly unfurl layers of structures to play in like a playground. The structure becomes the roots of play.
All that is a long way to say, “All work and no play makes the gnome go away.”
Remember what the mushrooms know
In Avatar: The Last Airbender, humans learned their elemental bending abilities from animals, the “original” benders, who have a wider sensory perception range than us dulled and inattentive humans.
In order to learn the art of metamorphic creativity and magic, I need an original source to learn from. Luckily, gnomes spend lots of time around particularly effective teachers. If magic is about transformation, fungi are the original wizards of the world.
The ability of fungi to prosper in such a variety of habitats depends on their diverse metabolic abilities. Metabolism is the art of chemical transformation. Fungi are metabolic wizards and can explore, scavenge, and salvage ingeniously, their abilities rivaled only by bacteria.
— Entangled Life, Merlin Sheldrake
There are many lessons to learn from fungus, and I’m only just beginning to turn my attention toward them. Fungi reminds me to pay attention in the shadowy, hidden places, to see the beauty and messages in entangled ecosystems, and to notice how both the light and the shadow can be transformed through metamorphosis. And besides, the Wood Wide Web is too fascinating to ignore.
Practice gardenwatching and gardentending
The Magician’s “Blunder” was rushing and forcefully pushing things into action. I’m slowly learning that the magician’s powerful active manifestation and force of will must be balanced with receptive listening and stillness. Speed and action might feel like progress, but can often be a delusion of progress.
The gnome isn’t all fun and games. They mirthfully chuckle, play pranks, and snooze among the mushrooms, of course, but the gnome has skills and is eager to craft too. The gnome will get to work making wondrous items, coaxing the garden into its full bloom, and repairing the broken places in the neighborhood. But the gnome knows that gardentending is preceded by gardenwatching, and that much of the garden is out of direct control but can still be cared for.
The gnome’s approach isn’t very interested in “doing things” directly. The gnome is more interested in tending to the conditions that support an idea to emerge and then watching how it grows. Through quiet listening, noticing, and by giving the structure and creating a supporting environment the seed is much more likely to be able to take root. Of course, it still might not pan out the way you expect, and it still might not grow at all. But that’s all part of the funny game.
What’s your word?
I chose my word with the wise guidance of the Choose One Word program by Dr. Jason Fox. I’m deeply grateful for the rich insights I found in this video course, and for the charming, caring, and generous space Jason created for self-knowledge, self-development, and self-actualization. I highly recommend trying it yourself. If you do, let me know what your word is! Until then, see you in the mushroom village 🍄
