SOMA | The Meme Dump
Levon approaches a second portable toilet. It is lying on the lakeshore amid the thistle and buckthorn like a piece of storm debris. He opens it. It’s been converted into a multiwrack dehydrator. Levon lays out the red mushrooms on a rack and labels them “SOMA” in balloon lettering. As an added flourish, he draws cartoon lightning bolts flying out from the word in all directions.
TERENCE McKENNA
I suggest this factor was the presence of psychoactive plants in the environment, specifically psychoactive plants in the environment in which human pastoralism evolved. The plant must have been African. The plant must have been extraordinarily noticeable in the environment. The only plant that fits this description is a mushroom of the Psilocybin containing variety.
Levon scoops a handful of dry mushrooms from a separate rack.
He chews them into a fine cud.
TERENCE McKENNA
Low doses of Psilocybin increase visual acuity. Medium doses of psilocybin produce an increased interest in erotic activity. But slightly higher doses produce a Jungian state of the numinosum, an experience of the divine, a mystery in the human psyche that is no less mysterious to us today then it was to our ancestors when the last glacier retreated over Canada.
Levon lies in the grass chewing mushrooms and staring at the soft line dividing the blue sky and the big blue lake. He pokes his phone and looks at the photo of June once more. Her image begins to vibrate with a psychedelic intensity. He pokes his phone again.
Terence McKenna's lecture ends, and the breakup conversation is replayed.