Indeterminacy 114

While hunting morels with
Alexander Smith in the
woods near Ann Arbor,
I mentioned
having found quantities of
Lactarius deliciosus in the
woods in northern Vermont.
He
said, “Were
the stipes viscid?”
I said,
“Yes, they were.” He
said, “It’s
not deliciosus; it’s thyinos.”
He went on to
say that people go through
their entire lives thinking
that things are that when
they are actually this,
and that
these mistakes are necessarily
made with the
very things with which they
are the most familiar.

- John Cage