{"id":3195,"date":"2024-06-15T12:25:24","date_gmt":"2024-06-15T19:25:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/?p=3195"},"modified":"2024-06-15T21:31:34","modified_gmt":"2024-06-16T04:31:34","slug":"what-to-do-what-to-think-what-to-feel-what-a-trip","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/15\/what-to-do-what-to-think-what-to-feel-what-a-trip\/","title":{"rendered":"What to do? What to think? What to feel? What a trip!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

So walking along the beach, amid the sand-dollars, jelly fish, pretty sea shells and whatnot, I came across starfish. It was low tide and that starfish had been washed pretty high up on the wet sandy beach. So I picked it up and it was still alive, so I walked towards the surf, which was pretty far back, tossed it in there (like the good, virtue-signaling believer in the golden rule <\/a>that I am), and then, naturally for me, I wondered, what the hell am I doing, interfering, as if to do some godlike act and save the starfish’s life?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It reminded me of when I was a kid (oh, seventeen or so), tripping with my friend Ted. We were walking through Washington, DC at night, and it was snowing, absolutely beautiful. I walked up to a bush, and I got close, to look at the snow gathering on the leaves. So close I noticed my breath was melting the snow. And I thought, oh, yeah, it was so excruciatingly fascinating to watch my hot breath melt the crystals off a bunch of leaves. And then suddenly the thought shot through me, oh my God, now it has to freeze up all over again! – I felt terrible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(It’s one of the dangers I have with tripping<\/a>, that the slightest thing can make me go plummeting into a depressive state, hopeless, and then after a bit I come out of it and back into the bliss of pure beauty, and then back down after another anguished train of thought, up and down and up and down.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Oh, what is our role here on this planet? Just to survive? Do we have only to exist? Are we a keystone species? Might we consciously evolve? It\u2019s just like a trip to ping back and forth between thoughts like these. Now there\u2019s something with which to consciously ritual<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So walking along the beach, amid the sand-dollars, jelly fish, pretty sea shells and whatnot, I came across starfish. It was low tide and that starfish had been washed pretty high up on the wet sandy beach. So I picked it up and it was still alive, so I walkedContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["entry","author-qualiens","post-3195","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9QShd-Px","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3195","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3195"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3195\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3204,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3195\/revisions\/3204"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3195"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3195"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/planetqualia.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3195"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}