Hello, my name is Tameca L. Coleman, I like to be called Meca’Ayo, they/them pronouns; I'm known as a writer. Yeah, resident weirdo. In my first book, I'm talking about familial estrangement, being in between things as a mixed-race Black person, and hopefully moving towards reconciliation. So I actually feel kind of without a place; we moved a lot when I was a kid. I've been in Denver for 22 years, and I still don't quite feel rooted in a place. My idea of interconnectedness is different, though. There are some, maybe a handful of times in my life, where I felt connected, but it always was in nature. It's this moment where nothing else matters. I remember having that thought: “This is everything.” All the other things that we're scrambling to do, it's like, all of a sudden, it doesn't matter. 

The Boise River: that's a really visceral place for me. I floated down that river, taken naps by the river, ridden my bike by the river, been barefoot by that river and in the river. It has this certain smell, and the smell hasn't changed. I went there 10 years after I left, and it was still the same smell. That was something I can go back to. I write a lot about how confusing it is to hold multiple things at once, you know, like experiences and institutions where racism is happening. A lot of -isms are happening. 

I've been trying to write about our relationship with trees and mycelium is really cool. I think if there's a “utopia,” I think it's kind of that symbiosis of the mushrooms and the trees and how they work together and communicate. So I think about that a lot, but I don't have the words for it. And I definitely haven't had that experience of that symbiosis–our society is very disconnected. It constantly separates everyone from everyone else; I really yearn for that connected feeling. And I don't know how to get to it; it almost feels impossible. So I think maybe that's the root of what I write about in all the different contexts. Everyone in the community, no matter what has happened, we are not our mistakes. We are whole people with all of our experiences, and all the things we've learned from them. Our society kind of doesn't teach us that. Nature doesn't work like that; it's like I said, the symbiosis. And it's just this constant state of adaptation. And it happens so fast, and so organically, that we can't possibly always track it. And that–I love that. Despite how we try to control everything and shape everything for human consumption, nature is still happening: everything from the way light is happening on the buildings, and if there's a fountain, the way the light shimmers in that area. And it's just really interesting to me because I walk a lot, so I do get to see a lot of that stuff. It's really fun and comforting in a certain way too, because a lot of times, I'm like, “Wow, we're really fucking up everything. And we're destroying the planet.” That's the dialogue we're having. And, also, nature's like, “I'm gonna nature no matter what.” Roots through the sidewalk pushing up the sidewalk. 

That's why I like mycelium a lot because it works in a certain way that feels more in-tune. It's going to keep doing its thing no matter what. I think we're going to get there, and it takes making all these mistakes, and learning. I also think that all the things we're doing is forcing us to have to work together. Like big, big picture: it’s a big, big trickster joke. It's just like, “You think you're being separated and it's gonna force you all to come together.” Because if our environment is being destroyed, we're gonna have to come together.