{"id":348,"date":"2005-05-22T01:37:00","date_gmt":"2005-05-22T09:37:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/?p=348"},"modified":"2005-05-22T01:37:00","modified_gmt":"2005-05-22T09:37:00","slug":"a-thing-about-marbles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/a-thing-about-marbles\/","title":{"rendered":"A thing about marbles"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/blog\/images\/0505\/marbles.gif\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Taking ecstasy is like this:<\/p>\n<p>You swallow a small pill. After anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour you look down at the table in front of you and you think, &#8220;Wow. What are all these marbles?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>They&#8217;re arranged in a neat little pile, glossy, irridescent and shot through with color. Thanks to the little white &#8220;S&#8221; they look like Skittles from Heaven. But the little &#8220;S&#8221; actually stands for <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Serotonin\">serotonin<\/a>. The fun begins.<\/p>\n<p>During the next three to four hours those little marbles pop, one by one (not like a balloon or a bubble might pop&#8211;it&#8217;s rather a smoky bloom, quiet expansion and then disspiation, like mist.) When they pop, something interesting happens. Exactly what can vary, but here are a few examples:<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; You might yourself spreading your hands across the nearest soft pillow, impressed beyond words by its texture.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; You might smell your friend&#8217;s skin in a way that you might not in, say, a church or a board meeting.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; If you&#8217;re in a club, you might wonder why none of the world&#8217;s scientists have figured out that beat and melody might possibly cure the world&#8217;s ills. Especially this particular mix of &#8220;Star Guitar.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; You might discover a passion you didn&#8217;t know you had for the color of your new friend&#8217;s eyes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; You might find yourself utterly convinced that if the leaders fo the world could sit down in your living room under similar circumstances there we&#8217;d all enjoy world peace.<\/p>\n<p>Sometimes the marbles cease their popping for a moment. Sometimes they go off like champagne. As the evening deepens and your collection of marbles has dissipated to nothing, you gather and watch a quirky comedy.<\/p>\n<p>The next day you float like a glider angling towards the earth.<\/p>\n<p>Then a few days later, you might be, oh&#8230;at work, say, and you might have had a conversation with your supervisor about your performance level maybe, and about how people are worried that your lower-than-usual work standard is the result of some tragic entropy of the will and you might say no, no, no, you&#8217;ve just been busy herding cats for the past month and you&#8217;re plumb knackered. You could really use some of those Skittles from Heaven.<\/p>\n<p>But since you used up your weeks supply last Sunday your body&#8217;s busy making more. None of them are off the assembly line yet.<\/p>\n<p>Welcome to the midweek comedown. Some are okay with it. Some hit the Earth like a meteor. (For me, there&#8217;s a clouding of the mind. A dark kind of quiet settles. My sense of humor slinks off to a corner to sulk.) Then after a day or so, the first new marble rolls off the conveyor with a clink. It unfolds. And your on your way back up. During this stage I always seem to cultivate an obsession with a band or a certain kind of music.<\/p>\n<p>Oh and by the way, here&#8217;s a Wilco song for you to enjoy. I&#8217;ve been strangely obsessed with these guys this week.<\/p>\n<p>Wilco: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/media\/Kingpin.mp3\">Kingpin.mp3<\/a> (8.8 Megs)<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/blog\/images\/0505\/being_there.jpg\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Taking ecstasy is like this: You swallow a small pill. After anywhere from fifteen minutes to an hour you look down at the table in front of you and you think, &#8220;Wow. What are all these marbles?&#8221; They&#8217;re arranged in a neat little pile, glossy, irridescent and shot through with color. Thanks to the little [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44,15,16,30],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sixsquare.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}