Issue 4: Echoes

When I think of my first apartment in Montreal, I remember all of the times my roommate Charlie and I pushed the coffee table out of the way to bask in the sun and sip mushroom tea. We tripped together so often we had a routine. I’d put on Mort Garson’s Mother Earth’s Plantasia and we would lay spread out on the carpet waiting for something to happen. The stucco on our ceiling gave us a great visual to test the effects. Slowly, the white folds would begin to shine and sway to the music. Iridescent shadows appeared first as abstract lines before morphing into images. Sometimes I only knew what an image was by instinct rather than shape. On one perfectly sunny day in June, we took more than our usual amount.

“I always feel so real when we do this,” I said, craning my neck this way and that.

“I always feel like a god,” Charlie said. He had a tendency to vanity that was often amplified on shrooms. I admired this about him. It allowed me to feel a sense of pride vicariously through him that I didn’t often allow myself.

We spent most of the day outside, walking down to Place des Arts, wading through crowds of tourists, linking our arms like pretzels. From behind our sunglasses we watched as the city came alive with street art and installations. We stopped to watch water fountains spurt in a synchronized stream and droplets fall in slow motion. Everything seemed to flow intentionally, as if it were all orchestrated for our enjoyment.

We eventually made it all the way down to Old Port. Each building had a unique texture. Divots and grains buzzed in front of us. Along the way we talked about life, our place in it—all that hippy dippy stuff that only feels relevant when you’re on drugs. The ways we were cosmically linked to everything else were so apparent. Life stretched beyond me. The way the waves and wind moved in sync with my breath was not a coincidence, but proof that I was at the whim of the world. Our insignificance became comforting.

“Humans are so stupid,” I said, giggling. “We really think we’re all that, but we actually don’t know jack shit.”

“I don’t think you give humans enough credit,” Charlie said. “Look at everything we’ve created. It’s kind of incredible.” He talked about society, democracy, architecture. While I looked through everything material that surrounded us—buildings, sidewalks, merchants—he reveled in man’s creation.

The first time I did shrooms was in a little inlet in North Vancouver surrounded by mountains covered in Douglas firs and hemlocks. When I saw the sky open up for the first time that summer afternoon, I felt like I finally understood the allure of religiosity. Mandalas thick, almost tangible, bloomed before my eyes. Eight hands, joined at the wrist, spinning in the sky, folding out to make eyes and pothos leaves. It was a secret code I couldn’t help but try to decipher. The trees that crowded the shorefront transformed into wolves with necks craned up, howling in unison. I had never felt that way before. Something grand had granted me the privilege of witnessing the miracle of its own becoming.

Back in Old Port, above Place Jaques-Cartier where artists set up shop and servers balanced trays of pints and cocktails, I felt the sky breathe.

“It just feels humbling. I feel so small but like… good small?”

“Really? I feel like a superior being. Like any guy would be lucky to fuck me right now,” Charlie said. Sometimes I wished he wouldn’t make everything about sex, but I knew it was how he was able to feel right in his own skin.

We sat on a bench by the boardwalk overlooking the river and people-watched. In front of us, a woman wearing an expensive purple gown was posing for a man with a professional camera. I thought she looked like a Disney princess, almost expecting woodland creatures to come out of the trees and start singing. I watched her sway for the camera, enchanted by the way the satin of her dress shone when caught in the light.

As we sat and watched the photoshoot, we lit up a joint. I’d found that smoking weed on shrooms didn’t have the same effect that it did on acid. Once, on acid, smoking weed made me believe an Uber Eats driver was the security guard of the sushi restaurant I wanted to order takeout from. I tried showing him my ID to prove that I was of age to eat a california roll, before my friend pulled me away and made me wait on a bench while she ordered. With shrooms, weed only made the visuals more intense. But drugs work differently every time. As we continued to smoke, I started feeling strangely sober.

“Why do I feel like I’m being put back into the cave?” Charlie said, looking suspiciously at the joint. He looked over at me with such sadness. “It's all going away.”

I felt it too. The sun passed behind a cloud and I felt returned to my body unnaturally. My hands felt morbidly human on my lap. My breathing regulated itself. The woman posing for the camera didn’t look like a princess anymore. Her dress looked like a cheap costume that wrinkled as she flounced around inelegantly in public.

“Shit,” Charlie said. “I hate it here.”

***

On a brisk November day a few years ago, me, Charlie, and our friend Shauna took two grams of magic mushrooms. Charlie had introduced Shauna and I a few months prior. We were from the same hometown but had never met before moving to Montreal. We got along instantly and soon became a trio. Shauna hadn’t done shrooms before and Charlie and I were excited to guide her through her first trip. We started our day at around eleven in the morning, gathering art supplies around Shauna’s kitchen table. I put on music, which filled the room with swanky guitar and synthy melodies. While the mushrooms soaked in lemon juice, we told the first timer what to expect.

“You’ll feel it in your breathing first,” I said. “It slows down like you’re sleeping.”

“The body high is amazing,” Charlie added. “I always want to be naked.”

“Please don’t do that again,” I asked him, only half joking. Shauna nodded in agreement. He laughed it off, but I wanted him to know I was being serious. I wasn’t in the mood to watch his flaccid penis swing around that day. 

The kitchen table began to look like an elementary school art class. Construction paper was ripped and shared. Drawings of cartoonish creatures popped up around us. We filled notebooks with pre-trip thoughts, documenting a ‘before’ state. Eyes drawn on paper began to dart across the room. I looked up from my doodles and noticed Shauna had put her pen down and was staring at the curving lines she’d drawn. I watched as she twisted the paper around and cocked her head. I took a deep breath and noticed the feeling in my chest had changed.

“Guys, I think I’m starting to feel it,” Shauna said, smiling as she held up her artwork for us to see. A friendly beast with scales and wild hair winked at me with lopsided eyes. We erupted in a resounding giggle and me toos.

After that, we spent time in the basement exploring our new reality. The only light that shone was the blue light of the projector that illuminated the small space. We stood transfixed in front of this one poster hanging on the wall. We’d seen the poster hundreds of times, but now, we couldn’t take our eyes off it. The sun in the middle had a face that grew a personality and smiled at us knowingly. The abstract design that surrounded it bobbed in and out of focus like buoys in a sea of shapes and tones. Soon, I began to feel claustrophobic, like an animal in need of breaking free.

“We have to go outside,” I said.

Shauna whimpered from the couch where she lay upside down with her feet dangling in the air. “It's just… the thought of putting shoes on right now…”

“No, Teomi’s right,” Charlie said. “You have to see what outside looks like.”

It probably took us another half an hour to leave the house. We couldn’t stop melting into walls as our knees gave out beneath us. We had to wait for a valley. Peaks and valleys. When you’re at a peak it's impossible to move, speak, do anything other than stare out in front of you with a stupid grin on your face. When I gained control of my legs again, I knew it was now or never.

“Now’s our time,” I said. I felt like a camp counsellor rallying a group of children made of putty. “Shauna, stop melting, you're gonna make me do it too!”

“I can't, it's just—it’s so soft,” Shauna said as she pet the wall fondly.

Once everyone had their shoes on we ran to the door, down the hallway, and out the front of the building. It all happened so fast that I’d forgotten exactly what we would see once we were outside. I stopped short and gasped, inhaling a sharp breath of fresh air. Our eyes widened but our pupils stayed dilated.

Shauna’s jaw dropped. She made me pinky promise her to never let her go inside again.

“See?” Charlie said, gesturing to nothing in particular as his nose grew red from the late autumn chill. “We told you so.”

Perhaps too ambitiously, we decided to go on an adventure to the top of the Mont-Royal Mountain. The air outside was crisp but we didn’t feel the cold. We walked slowly, admiring every tree, collecting leaves, watching as brownstone bricks vibrated on houses.

“Beautiful day for birdwatching, eh?” an older woman said to us as she passed by.

We made sounds of agreement. Once she passed, Shauna turned to me and said, “I wanted to answer her but the building was moving towards me.”

Rue Jeanne-Mance tunneled in front of me. I had the urge to make a run for it. I turned to Charlie. “Wanna race?”

“Ready, set, go!” Charlie said as he sped ahead of me to the end of the block, ready to beat me to it.

I wasn’t in control of my body, but my arms and legs knew what to do. My peripheral vision streaked orange and yellow as I raced down the block. The only thing in focus was Charlie’s face next to mine. My friend and confidant, whom I’d known since we were thirteen-year-olds. Our shared history gave me comfort in this new, unfamiliar city. My smile grew as I remembered the first picture we had together, licking ice cream against a bright pink brick wall.

“You’re my best friend.”

“You’re my sister.”

A wave of gratitude washed over me. I held that feeling in my smile, with every swish of my arm against my jacket, every breath I took. I ran faster and faster, feeling more alive with every step. We tied at the end of the block and plopped down on the sidewalk with our legs spread out in front of us like babies in a sandbox.

We never made it up the mountain that fall day. We got as far as the corner of the park at the intersection of Avenue des Pins and Park before we collapsed in catatonic wonderment. At the start of the path, there’s a little grove of maple trees that surrounds a part of the ground that’s trenched out by an old pipe that used to run through it. We sat in that autumnal tunnel for hours, staring at the park as it stretched out before us.

I had a charged moment with the tree in front of me. It was bare. Its bark was dark and contrasted with the sky behind it. I couldn’t take my eyes off it. From below, the tree seemed to arch over me, its stringy frame taunting me. The tree and I stared at each other so intently, so furiously, that its edges began to throb. Something about it intimidated and intrigued me. All at once my vision was shot into its trunk and dispersed through the branches and twigs. I gasped aloud.

“What is it?” Shauna asked as she stared straight ahead of her.

“I could die,” I said.

Shauna turned her head towards me, her brow furrowed. From behind her, Charlie’s head poked up with that same look.

“What do you mean you can die?” they asked, partially amused, partially concerned.

That semester I had read Lucretius’ On the Nature of the Universe. He believed that there are four reasons humans fear death and countered with reasons why we shouldn’t. I only remember one of these reasons: pain. We’re afraid of the afterlife being painful in some physical, emotional, or spiritual way. As an atomist, Lucretius believed that everything is made of atoms, including our body and soul. When we die, the atoms that we’re made up of disperse and dissolve into the universe, joining everything else that has come before us. We will not be able to experience death the way we experience life, since we will no longer be individual beings. We have no reason to fear death because we will never exist at the same time it does.

I didn’t know how to explain all of this in the moment. The tree had taken me in, shown me in the blink of an eye what it was to be with it, to be with all of it. Other trees that lined the side of the park looked like skeleton’s hands reaching out of the ground, grabbing nothing but dust and light. The clouds came to me in rows of eyes, winking like they were trying to let me in on a joke. The grass waved welcomingly. Nothing at all was menacing anymore.

“I feel like… if that’s what death is,” I said, pointing to the tree, “and you just go like—” I wiggled my fingers outwards, “I think I could do it.”
Shauna nodded and seemed to understand what I was saying.

“Huh,” Charlie said. “I think I’m too scared.”

***

The next time, it was just Shauna and I. We sat in Jeanne Mance under a canopy of lush trees, enjoying the way everything becomes cinematic. Two old men sat topless on a bench, a smoke in one hand and a beer in the other. Old friends, good times. A group of girls walked past in airy summer outfits, covering their mouths with their hands as they laughed.

“It feels strange to do this without Charlie,” I said, surprising myself.

It had been almost two months since I’d moved out and just as long since we’d spoken. Until then, my whole Montreal experience had been informed by him—living with him, being friends with him, tripping with him.

“It’s strange,” I continued. “I almost wish I could talk to him right now, just to feel this way with him again.”

I associated the feeling of being on mushrooms with Charlie. Nostalgia was creeping up on me in the strangest way. It was a curious feeling, to think back on good times and know how everything turned out. Eventually our philosophic tug-of-war grew too tense and ultimately proved to be unsustainable. I knew we had had our differences, but it felt wrong to hold a grudge.

“You’re mourning a friendship,” said Shauna. I nodded. “We both are.”

“I thought Charlie and I were the same,” I said. “I guess I was wrong.”

We turned our heads to look at each other, shards of grass poking up between our faces. The earth felt like it was breathing beneath us like one large lung, rising and falling softly. Looking at my friend, I felt no distance between us, as if we were made of the same clay. I could see myself in Shauna’s eyes, getting absorbed by the blue of her irises. They looked so like Charlie’s, and for a split second I saw him sitting in her place, staring at me like we were strangers trying to be something closer. He seemed to want me to say something just to have a reason to disagree. Still, I wanted to reach out and touch him, feel the warmth of my friend under my hand. Without a word, Shauna laced her fingers in mine and gave me a soft smile. Charlie was no longer in front of me. He returned to his comfortable seat in my mind as a collection of contradicting memories. As a breeze blew away my thoughts, Shauna and I were whisked away from the park and into the clouds that shape-shifted above.