A Pinch of DMT on a Tuesday

Black-and-white version of Jenna Cha’s cover for last week’s issue.

By way of an update: my idea for “a serialized epistolary novel of sorts“ that I described here last week has grown in my mind considerably, to the point where it has to get re-invented again if it is to get done in any way at all.

It has done it all on its own, while I was sleeping or smoking, which I take as a good sign. I haven’t had the time to write this developing vision down yet.

Here’s one note I did take early on. It’s a very rough and somewhat outdated sketch of the first half of the idea as I think of it now.

And here is another thing I wrote down this week.

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There’s something quietly intimidating about a little lump of changa¹ laying in one’s drawer.

When will you be ready to smoke it?

What does it mean to be ready to smoke it?

My way of approaching these questions—a Tuesday afternoon, no urgent business to attend to—was to roll a very small amount into an unassuming little joint and take a few puffs. I wanted a gentle reminder of what the experience is about.

I was also thinking of this as research for the art project I described in Out of a Death Cult last week. I liked the idea of the protagonist smoking DMT in the casual way tobacco addicts smoke their cigarettes: crack the window open, lean out slightly, watch the hotel’s parking lot while breathing in, breathing out, tapping the cig to make the ash fall down.

My wife, a DMT virgin, was on a work call in the other room. When she caught the strange chemical smell and followed it to investigate (is our electric wiring burning?), she found me laying on a bed, silently watching a bird outside the open window.

“Hey what are you doing?”