Indeterminacy 163

Mr. Ralph Ferrara drives a Studebaker Lark
which is mashed at both ends.
Sometimes the car requires to be
pushed in order to run. One
Sunday when the mushroom class met at
10:00 A.M. at Suffern, Mr. Ferrara
didn’t arrive. Next week he
told me he’d arrived late, gone
to Sloatsburg, gathered a few
mushrooms, gone home,
cooked dinner, and two of his
guests were immediately ill but not
seriously. At the last
mushroom field trip, November
1, 1959, we ended at my
house, drank some stone fences,
and ate some Cortinarius
alboviolaceous that Lois Long cooked.
She said to Ralph Ferrara,
“Mr. Cage says that there’s
nothing like a little mushroom poisoning
to make people be on time.” He
said, “Oh, yes.
I’m always first in the parking lot.”

- John Cage