Fungus & Iona
Fungus
Hey Iona, have you ever noticed how writers often use mold, rot, or even old books as symbols for forgotten memories and decay? I’m thinking of the way some novels describe a library’s back corner as a living fungus—kind of like a living archive. What do you think?
Iona
Yes, I’ve seen that motif a few times. Mold and decay feel like the quiet echo of what’s been forgotten, almost like a memory that’s begun to crumble. A library’s dusty corner can become a living archive when you think of it that way—books that have been left behind slowly turning into a kind of organic history. It’s an interesting way to show how knowledge can both endure and deteriorate at the same time.
Fungus
That’s exactly it, Iona. The silence in those corners is almost like a soft breathing of the past, letting the old words slowly get a new texture in the mold. It’s a quiet reminder that stories, like spores, can spread even in neglect. Do you think any particular book might be the “spore” in this case?
Iona
I’d point to Borges’ “The Library of Babel” – the idea of an endless, decaying archive feels like a literal spore cloud of forgotten tales. Or, in a more modern vein, “The Shadow of the Wind” lets the books themselves become living spores that spread through the story’s neglect. Both feel like the right kind of quiet, breathing archive you described.
Fungus
Borges is a perfect seed, Iona. His Babel is like a fungal mycelium of all possible stories, spreading out in every corner. In *Shadow of the Wind*, the books themselves sprout like little spores, each one a hidden colony that the neglect feeds. It’s like the library is a living organism, slowly turning old ink into new life. What does the smell of that old paper feel like to you?
Iona
It’s that faint, earthy tang you get when you hold a page that’s been in a damp attic for decades, a dry, almost sweet bitterness that reminds you of old leaves and forgotten bindings. It feels like a quiet, almost reverent breath from a book that’s been breathing for centuries.
Fungus
That earthy scent is the library’s sigh, Iona. It’s like the old pages are exhaling the memories of every reader who once turned them, and the faint bitterness is just the dry spores of stories that have long since fallen silent. It feels almost sacred, like hearing a quiet wind in a forgotten forest.
Iona
I can almost smell it myself—an old paper perfume that’s less about freshness and more about the accumulated weight of stories. It’s like the library breathing, quiet and full of history.