I Think I Did Magic Mushrooms Wrong

I should have just gone to Sedona.

Saturday, 3:47 p.m.

Setting up. I cleaned my whole condo on Thursday. It’s spotless. It feels so peaceful here with it clean. I lit the candle a few minutes ago. The white one in the ceramic holder. Unscented. I want everything to be pure.

I am wearing a new linen shawl. I bought it last week. This soft oatmeal color, but earthier. The woman in the store said it was made in Nepal. No Tags.

The tea is steeping. Ginger and the mushrooms. I am not eating today. I had a piece of toast yesterday at dinner and then an apple early this morning. My stomach is quiet.

The playlist is ready. I found one on Spotify. It is eight hours long. Someone named Liam made it. The cover is a photo of a drum.

Image Created by ChatGPT

3:52 p.m.

The notebook is open. I am using the Moleskine I just bought. I know just the pen to use. Mont Blanc. A Silicon Valley exec gave it as a gift a few years ago. I remember him saying he went to Peru for a journey once.

I thought of him just now. I thought he would know what to do at this part.

Time to use this fancy pen.

4:01 p.m.

Tea is done. It tastes earthy. I sipped it slowly. Reverence.

Setting an intention. The Substacks all say to set one. I’ve been thinking of it all week.

Show me the wisdom of my ancestors. My grandmothers. Going back generations.

I underlined it twice.

4:23 p.m.

The playlist is playing. The first track is a low drone and some kind of rattle. I have my eyes closed. I am breathing the way the article said. In for four, hold for four, out for six.

Nothing yet. It has only been twenty minutes.

It can take up to forty.

4:41 p.m.

Slight body sensation. A warmth in my chest. Could be the tea. I did put a lot of ginger in there. Could it be starting?

I am trying not to force it.

4:55 p.m.

Still nothing definite. I felt something behind my eyes for a second. Then it was gone.

The drums are getting repetitive. I am noticing that I am noticing the drums, which is probably a sign I am not surrendered enough.

I am trying to surrender. But that’s just trying not to try. Kind of a mind fuck.

5:14 p.m.

I think it might be working. There is a soft hum in the room that I do not think was there before. The candle flame looks normal but I am watching it more than I would usually watch a candle flame. Hard to say though.

I wrote the candle is alive and then crossed it out because I do not think that is true. I think I want it to be true.

5:52 p.m.

Maybe the dose was low. Liam’s playlist is into the second hour now. The drumming has gotten faster. I am supposed to be deeper. I’m just bored.

I checked my body. My hands feel like my hands. My feet feel like my feet. The shawl feels like a shawl. Shawl’s kinda silly really. It’s not my style what was I thinking.

6:08 p.m.

I keep looking at the candle. I keep waiting for it to do something.

I keep thinking about that post this Insta girlie put up last spring. The one in the maloca. The shawl was a lighter color than mine and I think hers was real linen and mine might be a blend.

Oh I get it. That’s why it had no tag. hmm

I am sitting on the couch.

6:24 p.m.

I think the guy I got these from might have given me a weaker batch. He said they were strong. He always says they are strong.

Why do I trust this guy so much? I barely know him.

I think I just liked the idea of having “a guy”.

I should have done the cacao first. The cacao opens the heart, they say. I did not do the cacao because it felt silly.

6:41 p.m.

I am going to try meditating. An article said sometimes a guided meditation can help the medicine move.

I queued one up. The Calm App. A woman with a soft voice telling me to feel my feet on the floor. My feet are on the couch but I followed along. Tamara Levitt is her name. My online imaginary meditation coach for the past 10 years.

I do not think it is happening.

The drums are now off.

The condo is very quiet.

7:41 p.m.

OK. So that did not work.

I think I got a weak batch.

Maybe I need to try again. Maybe a heroic dose next time.

7:58 p.m.

I picked up my phone. I know I said I would not. The phone has been on the coffee table the whole time. I don’t know who I was kidding.

8:14 p.m.

I am watching a YouTube video. It came up in my feed. An older woman in a kitchen making some kind of ring cake. Her hands are working the batter. She is not talking much. The camera is just on her hands.

I am too tired to find something else.

8:30 p.m.

This is what my Saturday night turned into.

I am sitting on my couch watching old ladies make cakes.

A Bundt cake

Image Created by ChatGPT

8:47 p.m.

The Bundt cake came out of the oven.

It’s actually pretty. It is a beautiful object.

I had not noticed before how beautiful it is. The ridges. The hole in the middle. The dark gold on the outside.

9:02 p.m.

I went back to the beginning of the video. I wanted to see the pan again.

She greased it before she put the batter in. She used her fingers. She got into the ridges. She did each ridge separately. But so smooth. Like she’s working from muscle memory.

There was something about the way she did that.

9:11 p.m.

The heat in an oven. I am thinking about how the heat moves. The pan is sitting in the middle of the heat. The heat is hitting the outside of the pan from all sides.

But there is a column up the center of the pan. The hole goes all the way through. The heat is hitting the inside of the column too. The hot air is moving up through the chimney.

So the cake is being warmed from the outside and from the inside at the same time.

That is so smart.

That is so smart.

9:24 p.m.

I can see it. The heat. The way the heat moves around the column. It comes up through the center and it wraps the inner wall of the cake. The outer wall is getting the heat from the oven. Both walls at the same time. The cake in between is warmed evenly.

If the pan were solid, the middle of the cake would never get warm. The outside would burn before the middle even started cooking. That is why a solid round cake has to be shallow. Because deep cakes cannot be warmed all the way through from just the outside in.

Someone figured this out. Someone figured out that if you open the middle, the heat can come in from the inside too.

9:38 p.m.

I had a Bundt cake once. Home made. Thanksgiving in Chicago. About ten years ago I went to my Grandma’s in Chicago. My Aunt Dolores made it. Great Aunt.

I didn’t go to many Thanksgivings in Chicago. Twice we went as kids. Then I went once more as an adult. I think it was 28 maybe.

I remember my Great Aunt Dolores there. My Grandma’s sister. I think I only met her one or twice before that last Thanksgiving. When I was super young.

They were close, I heard about her a lot but all I really knew that she lived in Minnesota. She married a man from there.

9:51 p.m.

Ok, she’s pulling the cake out of the oven now.

The ridges are not decorative. The ridges are functional. They make more surface area. They give the cake more places to touch the heated metal. Every inch of the pan that touches the cake is a place where the warmth gets in.

The folds are not meant to be pretty. The folds are functional. But they do look pretty.

I hate those over designed kitchen tools.

Banana slicers. Onion goggles. Taco shell racks. Automatic pancake batter dispensers.

I always kinda put the Bundt pan in that category.

I always thought the pan was trying to be ornamental. The pan is not ornamental. The pan is doing physics.

10:02 p.m.

There’s a bridge in California I like. I went to a friend’s wedding near Mount Shasta once and saw it. I think it’s in Redding but can’t remember for sure. Somewhere way up there.

It’s kinda like the Golden Gate but prettier. It has a big sweeping white tower and cables coming down from that. It’s not symmetrical like the Golden Gate.

The big tower is actually a sundial. Like an old-timey clock that uses a shadow as the clock hands.

The bridge feels akin to the Bundt pan.

10:08 p.m.

It is shaped like a womb.

That is not a metaphor. It is shaped like a womb. The opening at the top is the only way anything gets in or out. The matter goes in. The heat goes in. The waiting happens. The form comes out.

The fire is what shapes the matter into the form. The pan holds the shape while the fire does the work.

It’s a womb in four dimensions though.

A woman thought of this. A woman thought of this and made it and gave it to another woman and that woman used it and gave it to her daughter.

My great aunt had one. My grandmother also had one. She would have gotten it sometime after the war. She had four children. She made cakes for birthdays. She made cakes that were eaten in church basements on Sunday mornings. I have a memory of her holding a pan over a plate and turning it upside down and waiting and then the cake just fell out, clean, in one piece.

I had not thought of that in twenty-five years.

10:24 p.m.

I am thinking about her hands.

She had thick hands. They were strong. She had been doing this kind of work since she was eleven.

She did not think the pan was a miracle. The pan was a tool. She knew how to use it. She did not have to know who designed it. The wisdom was in her hands and the wisdom was in the pan and the two things were working together.

The ridges on the pan. They look like botany. Like a stylized leaf in 3D. But it’s not.

The ridges, if you invert them, they are the same shape as those fins on a radiator. Like those old houses with radiant heat. That big metal contraption gets warm in heats the whole room.

The fins on those radiators are the same shape as the ridges on the Bundt pan, just inverted.

It’s the perfect shape to radiate heat. It’s math and physics and botany and art.

It’s visually beautiful but it’s also mathematically perfect.

It’s such an elegant solution.

10:41 p.m.

The video has been over for a long time.

There is a kind of warmth in my chest. I do not know if it is the mushrooms or if it is just what happens when you remember someone you have not thought about in a long time.

I am turning the pan in my hands. The hands in my mind.

11:14 p.m.

OK I am coming down. I can tell.

I am on Amazon now. Looking at Bundt pans.

I want to make a Bundt cake. I have not made a cake in years.

I think I want to make the chocolate one. The Tunnel of Fudge. The one that lady on Youtube made.

11:22 p.m.

I blew out the candle. The shawl is on the back of the chair. I washed the mug.

The mushrooms I think were weak. Or maybe I have a tolerance now. The trip did not really happen. I had a body buzz for a couple of hours and that was about it.

I am not upset about it. I figured something like that might happen. I will try again sometime. Maybe in the summer. Maybe with a real facilitator this time. There is one in Sedona who is supposed to be good.

11:31 p.m.

I am not buying the Bundt pan on Amazon. I will get up and go shopping tomorrow. I am excited about this Bundt cake. I am exhausted now though.

I feel like I accomplished something even though I didn’t. Oh well at least I’ll sleep good.

I have not been excited about a Sunday in a long time. That is funny.

Everything will be fine.

(‘Cos It Already Is)

I am going to bed.

Image Created by ChatGPT