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The Iced Caramel Latte of Confusion

Mon, 05 Sep 2011 16:11:00 -0500

There is an empty Starbucks cup next to me. It used to have an iced caramel latte in it. I drank it.

Most people would not see this as occasion for remark. First of all, I would not buy this Starbucks iced caramel latte, because it came from Grinders, and I am rather upset by their recent switch to Starbucks instead of Pura Vida fair trade.

Second of all, this caramel iced latte was bought by a young woman whose name I don’t know.

I was walking into the library, and I passed someone talking on the phone. I looked at her, because her head was shaved and upon first glance I had thought she was male, but her voice sounded female. She smiled at me, and I smiled back, just enough to be polite.

So a while later, as I was sitting at my table in the library, rather near Grinders, doing my Pchem homework, this same girl comes up to me smiling, sets down this caramel iced latte, and says “Hi, this is for you.” Actually, I thought I heard her say “Hi, Diana, this is for you,” but I’m almost positive I’ve never met her before, and I didn’t hear her very clearly.

Naturally, my jaw dropped open, and I thanked her in a rather confused manner. She asked me how my studies were going, and I said, “Well, you know, they’re going.” She smiled again and told me to have a nice day, and walked away quickly.

I don’t even know what to say. I can’t even focus on homework anymore.

My first instinct was to be suspicious. Then reason caught up with me, and I took a sip. I thought about how to pay it forward - I wondered why I felt guilty about receiving a free gift from a stranger - I realized I didn’t know how to pay it forward. There was an ex-friend of mine sitting at a table catty-corner, I had never liked him much and when he started being clingy I told him so, to be honest, so that he wouldn’t trail around trying to be my pity-friend and hurt himself by it, so I wouldn’t be tempted to use him. I thought of buying him a drink from Grinders, or even just talking to him and giving him a hug.

But I didn’t know if he drank coffee (I know I generally don’t drink caffeine after two pm, but of course I drank the latte given to me), and I did know that I still wasn’t interested in being close friends with him. It would have made him feel nice, maybe, or maybe dug up old bitterness for him, but in the end it would have been dishonest.

He’s gone now, and I’m left feeling puzzled still. The rules of expected social behavior have been broken, and I feel the need to react, but in an honest way, not driven by guilt.

I’m not sure what to do. A friend of mine tells me that I will know my opportunity to pay it forward when I see it.

http://xkcd.com/923/

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 15:43:54 -0500

http://xkcd.com/923/

Dripping

Wed, 06 Jul 2011 16:13:00 -0500

A coppery storm, bright white with fat drops, and sirens somewhere in the neighborhood. It’s loneliness that’s on my mind, but there must be something else, something less cloying and cheap for me to taste. It’s not the looming, significant emotions that give us our handholds on life; it’s the little things that keep us here, open and engaged, digging our fingernails into dirt for the satisfaction of wrenching a root from the earth and eating it.

I didn’t expect this rain to drench me, as I sat on my porch with a glass of tangy, bubbly wine. At first it was just thunder, and then cracks of lightening along with it. Finally, after what seemed like hours of flirting, drops pattered around me. I thought they would get thick; but this drenches, soaks, this is what plants pine after and trees slurp up in the mud, this is enough to make gnats hide in secret sanctuaries and worms race to droop on sidewalks.

One gnat’s sanctuary was not so secret – it came into my home and hovered above my wineglass. It’s dead now, ended in a clap like lightening.

My door is open to the rain. I hope to wash out the heavy odor of massing trash and sloppy living with the sharp, copper smell of Colorado storms. I don’t expect to succeed; in the corners of my room, it will hover and settle into the carpet.

Rain always prompts me to write, like every storm or shower is somehow a new thing, pregnant with significance and beauty, inescapably alien and therefore worthwhile. We hide from rain. We cower under umbrellas and rain coats, we run for a door when the downpour starts, we keep devices in our pockets that could be destroyed by a single drop of moisture. Our skins are waterproof, but our socks and our cell phones make it inimical.

Why do I write when it rains? Why did I buy a bouquet of roses and sit it on my table? Why do I sit on my porch with a wineglass? Why do I shake trees’ leaves like hands in passing? Why, when I lie in bed, does my heart curl in on itself and sit like lead in my chest, but twist with every little sound of the air conditioner or a passing car?

The rain has stopped, but the gutters are still dripping.

The Hard Truth

Fri, 24 Jun 2011 11:06:20 -0500

The Hard Truth

I want to become a connoisseur of Canadian surrealist porn

Wed, 22 Jun 2011 20:18:00 -0500

I want to become a connoisseur of Canadian surrealist porn

Itch

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 23:30:00 -0500

I’ve added to this strange little bit that I wrote sometime during the semester on this blog. If anybody’s interested….. it’s still not finished.

———

God’s unknowing wilderness,

twisting and twining and twinning and eating,

everything equilibrates and dies,

eats energy to drive, desperate,

winning and whining mosquito wings, a sting straight to the jugular
plunge, penetrate skin and under-epithelium, suck disposable life

It itches for days.

***

Tell me the truth, Doc.
All right.
Have you ever lived your life?
Lived?
Lived completely and in the moment the way a prothonotary warbler lives flashing holy fire?

***

What’s this about, then? It’s all very well and good to go on about Living and Dying and Holy Fire, but what of it? What of itching? Is it an itch for touch, for a fingertip to breathe on your skin? Or itch that says STOP DON’T EAT ME STOP when their probiscus plunges into your veins and suck suck sucks your life away but they NEED it to live, just long enough to fuck and make babies so their babies can come back and suck some more? Don’t those people make you itch?

They need it. You need it. Can’t we all just live on each other? Suck suck suck and itch itch itch back and forth and back and forth and eventually someone says “You bit me!” and someone else says “You bit me first!” and they can’t agree whose fault it is, who started all the fucking biting and itching and who cares WHY we do it just STOP, you’re sucking me dry and it ITCHES

***

When a system is in equilibrium, its change in free energy is zero. The temperature in Kelvins is equal to the ratio of its change in enthalpy and its change in entropy. But, as we all know, energy is conserved in the universe – so living things take their own little piece of energy in the universe and burn it to push their little corner OUT of equilibrium so they can move, slide back toward equilibrium, just to burn themselves out again so they can slide back in and that’s what this is: life and movement and heat; this is a fight, a knock-down, drag-out fisticuffs against the balance of the universe.

***

Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I’ve tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.

***

We all itch to eat, because we all itch to fuck. We all itch to fuck, because we all itch to fruit. We all itch to fruit, and the fruit we bear eats fruit and fucks and fruits and eats and fucks and fruits and

electrons cascade down

to a froth of water, rock-bottom

***

Jack, Jill

Up hill

Fetch pail

Water

Jack down

Broke crown

Jill

Tumbling

***

Electrons fall and protons climb, bustling, crowding uphill through channels. Protons climb so the pump will run, gushing acid, to crank, crank, crank away, to store energy for a little envelope bursting with order.

Here is where the proteins are packaged; here is where batteries are made; here is where waste is wrapped and shuttled out; here is where we keep the book that we read and rewrite every day to remind us how to make a human.

***

Mosquito ate your blood because You ate your steak because Cow ate your grass because Grass ate the Sun that burns forever.

My God, I could just eat you up.

***

Ugh! How can I live without feasting on you? I can’t just buzz in your ear and pierce your skin.

It’s okay, you can have a taste of me too. We will itch and itch and itch until our skin burns.

——

Again, references to Walker Percy and William Carlos Williams

A Silly Poem (unfinished?)

Wed, 15 Jun 2011 23:08:00 -0500

I have in my body

linings and valves,

placenta and string,

poison and splinters,

blue things, and green,

and teeny weeny bones

that vibrate when I sing.

There’s froth and mold,

mutations; free radicals

zip around knocking holes;

there’s colonies, whole societies,

killer cells, and babies

unborn. Those are called

germ cells; germ

means begin,

but I also have bacteria

and even viruses, crawling

all over my skin

and in my guts

where a blueberry muffin

and some chicken soup

are gurgling to make a fuss.

Spit and snot and juice

of all kinds fill my skin

to fit around my meat

and bones and oozy

brain, soft, and gray like tin.

***

NB: this may be the first time I’ve ever rhymed a poem even remotely maybe successfully

Western Storm

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 22:01:00 -0500

Storms out here in the West are different from the ones at home.

For one thing, the light. Storms at home waste all day brooding, rolling themselves out, spreading and massing before they finally crack. Here, they coagulate in a matter of hours, focusing over one spot like a cartoon bad day, with a fringe of light sky visible from all perspectives.

Raindrops are fatter, and fiercer. At home they kiss, or at worst, tap your face. Here, if it’s really raining at all enough to get you wet, you daren’t look up for fear of losing an eye. They flick; they hurt. But they’re thinner, more spread out. There’s almost no wind to speak of, just enough to send leaves fluttering in the storm way, but the front of your body gets soaked, while your back remains dry, if you’re walking. And as soon as the drops relent, just a little, the hedonistic swarm leaps out to cluster-fuck above the sidewalk like there’s no tomorrow. Of course, for them, there’s not.

The storm doesn’t smell green, like back at home; it smells copper. It’s acrid, almost, like the taste of a wet penny, and if you’re close enough, there’s the undercutting smell of pine.

The sound of thunder cracks, rather than rolling; almost all the lightening comes in skinny, sharp jags instead of flashes.

And no matter how many trees are around, you feel as though you will be struck.

The longer I can make this post, the longer it will be until I start studying.

Mon, 09 May 2011 17:35:00 -0500

There is now only one thing left. Just one. Just one stupid little final to take tomorrow morning.

Why is it that I’d rather walk up the last hill instead of sprinting it? This was always a problem during high school soccer two-a-days… Lifelong laziness breeds more laziness, I guess.

I find myself almost missing the forced masochism of two-a-days. I was always very satisfied with how in shape and exhausted I was after them. My calves would bulk up to a fearsome size, and I would gain various raw patches on my legs from the hard, parched dirt that I would slide and dive through. Down, up, down, jump, down, up, down, jump, dive, up, down, up, dive, jump, and tackle that offense bitch who thinks she’s got an open shot on goal. Suck it, ho. Bounce back up, punt it to the midline, hope to God your midfielder will actually try to settle it on the first touch, no bounce, thatta girl, go, go, see the forward waiting, quick pass, run, sprint for the cross, crash the far post…!

There’s a lot of satisfaction to be had in using your body violently (or, at least, “violently,” by 21st century American standards). I won’t be able to do that for much longer, ten more years at most. Sometimes I wonder if I’m already too soft.

Then my brain says, “Bitch, go get some sleep before you go gallavanting about tackling people and getting smacked in the face with a ball. We’ll talk about this later.”

Then I say, “Brain, you need to learn Quant. Quit bitching and buckle down to it.”

And so we buckle down.

I am now done with Organic

Fri, 06 May 2011 12:01:35 -0500

Now to finish my Quant lab report, start my Physics problem set, grade my Physics problem set, do my Quant problem set, revise my essays and blog posts, somehow study for both Quant and Physics finals (Monday and Tuesday), all this weekend, in which I need to go home for my step-niece’s birthday and Mother’s Day.

It helps to have a list. Somehow I thought I’d have more things checked off it by now.

Naming

Wed, 04 May 2011 15:16:00 -0500

2,2,7-trimethyloctane

4-hydroxy-5-methyl-2-heptanone

5-methyl-2-heptanol

sodium 2-propylhexanoate

propyl ethanoate

2-methyl-3-pentenoic acid

N-benzylethanamide

cis-2-bromocyclohexanol

(E)-3,5-dimethyl-2-hexene

4-bromo-2-ethylaniline

What’s in a name?

The appearance, the structure of a molecule.

I’ve been called a lot of different incorrect names in my life: Rachel, Susan/Suzanne, and Diane were the ones that have occurred more than once. Do I have the appearance and structure of a Diana? What would that mean?

Diana was the Roman goddess of the hunt, the moon, and childbirth. She was a wild, untamed virgin, and a twin.

I hear and read all the time about the power of naming. Naming is supposed to cause something, to define and create relationship, somehow. I never quite grasped it. I never quite found my own name.

The other thing embedded in the name is how the molecule will react. I know just from looking that the only thing 2,2,7-trimethyloctane will do is combust or crack. 5-methyl-2-heptanol, on the other hand, will accept or donate a proton, participate in simultaneous substitution with a good nucleophile if you have it in the right solvent - but these are lab reactions, manmade relationships. These are not what interest me, though I might take pleasure in knowing them.

What interests me is what 5-methyl-2-heptanol will do in your body. In your stomach I’m sure the alcohol group will be protonated, but will it then leave the main chain? That would create a primary carbocation, a big no-no in organic synthesis, but what would the stomach do to that? What would that do to the mucus and cells that line it? Could your intestine absorb it? If it was in your blood, what would it do with the proteins and nutrients floating around? How would it react in your catalysts, your flattened cells, your immune cells? Would it clump in your organs, or be able to permeate the blood-brain barrier? Would it invade your bones?

These answers are beyond the power of the molecule’s name. The body is so complex, so full of mixtures, so individual, it is nearly impossible to know exactly what would happen in every aspect of your physiology unless you actually ingest the molecule and get tested to see what it’s doing.

How a diana reacts in a test tube is an interesting question. How a diana reacts in the body of life - that’s a much more interesting question. Unfortunately, neither are very helpful from an objective standpoint.

Metaphorizing scientific nomenclature is dangerous. I’ve rendered myself senseless.

WTF?

Mon, 02 May 2011 10:16:00 -0500

Last day of Quant class. Last day of Orgo class. Last day of Physics class. Last day of English class. Tomorrow is the last day of Physics lab, and that’s my last class of the semester.

I have a Quant homework set to hand in at 8 am on Tuesday, right before I take the final. I have an Orgo lab report to hand in at 8 am on Friday, right before I take the final, and a Quant lab report to hand in later that day. I have a Physics problem set, which I have to self-grade, to turn in at 8 am on Monday, right before I take the final. Good thing I asked for an extension on the English portfolio till Monday!

Somehow, the end of classes is not as relieving as I rather thought it would be.

What a weird semester. I’ve yearned for its end because of Physics, but dreaded it because of graduation. I turned 21 and started going to bars with my friends. I fell for a new boy for the first time in 3.5 years. I’ve been a worse student than usual - I will be getting a B in Physics, at best. I will be in Colorado as of this time two weeks from now. Not to mention I got my own apartment and became pseudo-financially responsible for myself as of the beginning of this year. My older brother has been succeeding in college, and my little brother dropped out of college. And, of course, the Middle East is exploding and they killed Osama bin Laden.

What a weird semester. For the first time ever in college, I feel like I’m a different person than I was at the end of my freshman year. I’m a little scared that I’m not really different, that this is a passing phase. But I rather hope I can maintain my new self, and improve her. She’s a little less crazy, a little more functional, a little less self-righteous, and a little less self-critical too. She still needs more motivation, and discipline, but she’s emotionally open while still being sensible, and she knows what she wants.

What a weird semester. Here’s hoping for a weirder summer.

Madness?

Tue, 26 Apr 2011 23:59:00 -0500

This is not the time for your creative impetus to flag. This is not the time to obsess over details. This is not the time to be distracted. This is certainly not the time to be distracted by a boy. This is not the time to think about everyone leaving. This is not the time to get emotional. This is not the time to get desperate. This is not the time to sleep. This is not the time to eat well. This is not the time to relax. This is not the time to be content. This is not the time to bond. This is not the time to miss your niece. This is not the time to forget important things. This is not the time for little things to be unavoidably necessary. This is not the time to start coughing up your lungs. This is not the time to make pierogies, teriyaki chicken, and noodles for five friends. This is not the time for spooning naps. This is not the time to go on walks till midnight. This is not the time to go a day without coffee.

This is finals.

Wonderful World pt 2

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 19:09:06 -0500

Imines. Hydrazones. Enamines.

Imines - nucleophilic addition of a primary amine to a carbonyl group creates a nitrogen double bonded to one carbon and single bonded to another

Hydrazones - supposedly addition of an amine to a carbonyl group, used with hydroxide to reduce carbonyls to alkanes [Wolff-Kishner]

Enamines - nucleophilic addition of a secondary amine to a carbonyl group creates a tertiary alpha-beta unsaturated amine.

Enamines act like enolates. They are also Dr. Cook’s favorite kind of molecule. Dr. Cook taught Dr. Kosman when Dr. Kosman was in college. Dr. Kosman is retiring this year. Dr. Cook is a baller.

***

Wittig! = organophosphates = phosphonium salts = square dance! There are a remarkable number of square dances in organic.

Add an organophosphate to an alkyl halide to form a phosphonium salt. Add a strong base to create a ylide (which has a carbanion that is stabilized by extra orbitals on phosphorus). Add the ylide to the carbonyl and do a do-si-do.

This reaction forms Z-cis-alkenes.

Alternative reagents involve phosphine oxide/LDA [Horner-Wittig] or phosphonoacetate esters [Wadsworth-Emmons].

***

And now I’m already sick of this again. Poo.

Welcome to the Wonderful World of Diana's Orgo Test

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 17:02:00 -0500

Clearly I just hate all you people. That’s obviously why I keep doing this. That, and it really actually helps a bit.

***

Nitrogen stinks. I dislike it, and it should go suck something unpleasant.

NH3 and primary amines add to carbonyl groups in the presence of acid to form imines. This is a mechanism I think I can actually follow. I like mechanisms. They make sense. I don’t like memorizing. But I should do more of it.

Essentially, in this mechanism, we protonate the carbonyl oxygen and add ammonia to the carbonyl carbon. This pushes the electrons in the double bond off the carbonyl carbon and onto the oxygen. If we deprotonate the amine group and protonate the oxygen again, we form a water leaving group. The nitrogen double bonds to the originally-carbonyl carbon and gets deprotonated again. Voila, we have an imine - a nitrogen double-bonded to a carbon.

Imines can also be formed with a base catalyst.

We “like” imines because they are decent electrophiles (electron-lovers/negative-lovers) and good building blocks for more complex nitrogen compounds. A good nucleophile (proton-lover/positive-lover) will add to the carbon double-bonded to the nitrogen.

To kill an imine (and make it back into into a carbonyl group), we throw some acid at it in water.

***

Just in case you want to reduce a carbonyl group down to an alkane, but don’t want to use a strong base like LiAlH4 or NaH because you don’t want to deprotonate the shit out of the rest of your molecule, you can use…. hydrazones! Yayyyy Wolff-Kishner. You must first convert your carbonyl into a hydrazone - apparently not a big enough deal to explain it to me.

A hydrazone is a compound involving a carbon double-bonded to a nitrogen, which is itself single-bonded to another nitrogen. Wolff and Kishner would have you deprotonate the latter nitrogen with OH- , which creates an anion, which can be resonanced down to a carbanion, which is screaming bloody murder until it manages to seize a proton to patch its bloody, mangled wound. The OH- deprotonates that nitrogen AGAIN, which upsets it so much that it grabs its partner nitrogen and rips it off that same poor carbon, which then must find another proton to heal its dripping electrons. Nitrogen gas goes bubbling merrily away and we are left with a very boring alkane.

***

As we noted before, imines are decent electrophiles. This means they are easily reduced by the aforementioned reducing agents (LiAlH4, NaBH4, H2, and others of such ilk) down to the corresponding primary amine. If you use a secondary amine, you’ll pop out the tertiary amine (and maybe an enamine - which is an alpha-beta-unsaturated nitrogen compound).

***

You are fortunate that my attention lags and my tummy growls. You get off easy this time.

Forewarning

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 14:07:55 -0500

I have a Physics test tomorrow, and an Orgo test on Wednesday. I’m not too worried about the Physics test this time - I totally own Gauss, and capacitors are fine, and resistors aren’t on this test so all is well. But Orgo… the last Orgo blog post actually really helped me study. Brace yourselves.

Words and Actions

Thu, 14 Apr 2011 20:39:00 -0500

Fugacity. I won’t tell you what it means. Just, fugacity. And molozonide. And volatile.

A volatile substance readily evaporates at room temperature. Diethyl ether is volatile. If you look, when you unscrew the metal cap, you can see it wicking into the air in waves like a mirage. If you lean in close and breathe, vague pain builds behind the bridge of your nose, and your eyes want to close.

Like how, when his nose comes close your face and you feel his breath on your cheek, pain grips your gut and you stop breathing, your mind fuzzes gray just a second before he…

Doesn’t kiss you. Just as you’ve never fainted from breathing ether. But you kindof wanted to, just to see if you really could.

*****

And then he does kiss you, and you feel as though you’ve been etherized.

Hydrogenation and Hyperbole

Fri, 08 Apr 2011 20:53:00 -0500

I was just at the Future Starving Artists of America event, and while I was there one of the performers (I believe it was Vince) used the word “catalyst” in one of his poems. Thus was born:

Platinum pulls me, binds my protons, offers up my pieces to your ravenous carbon mouth - I am bound to you, you will never let me go.

And then another performer, an older man, announced his poem called Coulomb’s Law, and I nearly cried (which made AJ and Kristine laugh). But then it was a really good poem, so I forgave him.

Some words for future days: “sparge,” “tubuloglomerular,” and “interpolate.” I’ve begun to notice that most of the best words in science use gratuitous “b”s and “p”s.

There’s also a GC-Mass Spec poem in the works, but its only a fragment at the moment.

=) I’ll have to show this post to some sciencey friends so they can punch me for that.

April 7th

Thu, 07 Apr 2011 19:56:00 -0500

It’s beautiful outside right now. It’s one of those nights – the air has a light, sweet taste, the sky drips rain like dew; a few birds are serenading each other as they would if it were early morning. It’s twilight and the sky is gray, blue-gray, all gray above and around me, gray enough to be Easter.

It seems like it has rained every Easter of my life, always grey, always gentle and sweet. The one exception was last year - as I remember it, the sun was brilliant through stained glass windows. Words rang out of her mouth: “Christ is risen! Alleluia!” Her voice was full of them, her motherly body flung them out, embracing hundreds of us who were standing, processing, listening to her with our hearts in our throats, leaning forward on our toes to respond: “Christ is risen indeed! Alleluia!”

Three days later she killed herself.

I hate listening to people talk about it. I hate talking about it. I hate sitting in a pew and singing hymns while swallowing that strange lump in my throat – it feels like I swallowed a bird – I swallow it down because I have no right. I didn’t know Pastor Grega well. I saw her frequently, in passing, because I sing in the Chapel choir. She knew my name, and knew that I was ELCA. I knew that she was warm and motherly, that she used swear words in front of the ministry students, and that she was funny. That was the extent of our relationship.

Once, I was walking down the spiral staircase that stretches from home (the balconey) down to baptism and the bathroom. She was walking up. I met her eyes, and noticed that she looked haggard. It stuck in my mind how tired she looked, I almost frowned – but then she smiled at me, and asked how I was doing, and I smiled back and said fine, and I went and filled my water bottle and went to the bathroom and went back upstairs to choir rehearsal.

I hate listening to people talk about it, because we almost always try to make it something else. We talk about how she’s in heaven, how she has her rest now, how we will see her again someday, how she is a beloved child of God, a queen in Heaven. We use joyful words – hollow, glossy words. She didn’t just die – she killed herself. She is not like my great-aunt whose cancer killed her. She is not like my dog who was hit by a car. She is not like my neighbor whose heart gave out. The way she lived was beautiful and powerful, but I can’t detach it from the way she died.

I don’t need answers. I don’t need to know why she did it. I don’t need a story about her afterlife. I might need to cry some more. I might need more stories of who she was when she lived. I need to face her. I need to acknowledge her pain and how she hurt us. I need to love her. I need to let her go again.

Mast cells release histamine and heparin

Mon, 04 Apr 2011 17:25:00 -0500

Two fears have begun to swell:

(1) Fear of the touch that opens

(2) Fear of being left behind