Question: In 7 words, can you write your memoirs?

I’ve set the table with the finest of my mismatched wine glasses, chilled the 3 Buck Chuck and rouged my knees in anticipation of a very special guest this week. In the interest of expanding the dialogue of the Questions Project, this week’s question will be posed by a guest.  So starch your collars, mend your stockings and join our soiree.

This week, The Seductress asks: Please write your memoirs in 7 words.  Since Ginsu knives envy her sharpness and she is known for her questioning mind and whip-smart analysis, please make sure your answers at least give us a mental papercut with a sharp insight into what you should know best so far, your life. 

Current obsession

Current obsession: Lewis Hine, an early American photojournalist best known for documenting American labor, in particular, for exposing child labor and helping to end it.

When the “breaker boys” in the photo worked fourteen or sixteen hour days, any daydreams of the childhood they were missing were snuffed out by sheer exhaustion. What exhaustion didn’t kill, physical ailment mangled; one stray thought meant pieces of slate and coal went crashing into fingers and hands, breaking small bones. Thoughts of school or lazy Saturdays went up into the air along with the dust that went into their lungs and aged them from within. “Black lung” it was called, but the small miners knew it was just another side effect of the American Dream. Youthful energy didn’t go away; it clung to the coal, burned and ascended heaven like unheard prayers, blackening and condensing into smog. The hopes of a generation went into the incinerator along with the anthracite that fueled the Industrial Revolution, leaving instead massive amounts of CO2, soot particles which still gnaw away at the ozone layer.

So today, as you consider global warming and climate change and ways to “green” your life, it is the dead dreams of children that float over our heads. As the mercury inches up, crossing every line the scientists draw in the sand, the sins of our laisse faire fathers literally decide the fate of our children and us. Ultimately the ghost of child labor gets its revenge as the byproducts of burning coal still create the acid rain that chips away at the Carnegie and JP Morgan marble shrines to Industry and Wealth and Progress, built by youth mortgaged away ton by ton. Ironic that the small miners’ most lasting contribution is as visible and as invisible as they were.

Happy Earth Day.

Answers: Where do you kick heaven?

-I sucker-punched heaven once. Now heaven sends an unending string of bastards to kick me in the heart, and we call it even.

-In rehab.

-Fuck you, I won’t do what you tell me?

-In the nuts!

-In the teeth.

-I would prefer to finger, rather than kick, heaven.

-Kick heaven in the shin.  There’s something that amuses me about the thought of heaven scowling, hopping up and down on one figurative leg, sucking air between its pearly white teeth.

-Barefoot and outside in the backyard, at night.  Down and dirty and in the eye.

-In the ass.

-At the Methodist clinic.

-I would kick heaven outside of the grocery store while it is carrying a few shopping bags. I’d kick it in the ass and then hopefully have time to run away before it put down the shopping bags to chase me.

-I’ve already kicked heaven. Heaven, as it is classically defined, sounds dreadfully boring.
Good girls go to heaven. Bad girls go everywhere.

-1998: Heaven refutes my existence and I, it.
  1999: I play the “I’m-not-touching-you” game until the universe smacks me and then we eat brownies and  watch the Simpsons.
 2000: I used to kick heaven. Now, I just beat it with a stick until candy comes out.
 2001:I’m a masochist.  Heaven kicks me and I like it.  Please sir, may I have another?
 2002: Heaven has a restraining order against me. I have a restraining order against heaven.
 2003:June found me at 23rd and Broadway, Madison Square Park.  I stood in the park, took off my stockings, took off my shoes and looked around. I took a deep breath.  This is therapy for the uninsured.  When rich people need therapy, they lay on upholstered couches in Upper East Side psychiatrists’ offices but when you’re down and out, any place will do.  I yelled and yelled and waved my arms aordnu, which is to say, around, but far closer to the actual movement.  Then, I put on my stockings and shoes, picked up my portfolio and got on the N train like the fitter, happier and more productive person I am. 

So to answer the question,I kicked heaven in Madison Square Park, barefoot, in the afternoon, surrounded by sleeping homeless, and while shouting obscenities.  I planted a big one in its dimpled cellulite ass.  Heaven applauded at my vaudeville act and made me lactose-intolerant.

-In the teeth.  Because teeth are easily accessible and there are a lot of them, you can do maximum damage.

Question: Where do you kick heaven?

This question presupposes that if you were texting the universe right now, your text would read “WTF, Universe.  WTF.” 

Of course you get no reply. 

When that happens, like most humans, your fifth reaction is to take matters into your own feet, as it were.  Oh sure, you tried faith, summoning inner-confidence, bravery in the face of these newest unfortunate adventures, honesty, drinking (lots).  But really, your inner toddler is unsatisfied with all these bullshit attempts at constructively dealing and at some point, that yowl you’ve kept down is going to come tearing out, as your limbs go flying with angry abandon.  You’re going to kick heaven.  Even though the act itself is akin to dropping a pea onto a waterbed, you’re going to do it anyway. 

So, puny worm, where do you kick heaven? 

Answers: Chemistry Pop Quiz: 1.) What is the halflife of love?

 -The halflife is 42 days for every day spent enamoured, making love a generally slowly decaying compound.  It is important to note that even at halflife, love is still a known Class V carcinogen and the necessary safety equipment must be employed to avoid lovesickness.

-Relative to your carbon footprint: the larger it is, the less you really care.

-Through completely spurious logic, I postulate that the half-life of love can be determined by the sum of the half-lives of the medications which can be used to counteract the symptoms of said “love.”
Note that I am not a doctor, nor do I play one on TV.  And my encyclopedic knowledge of the below topics and figures therein in no way infers that I looked any of the information up.
 
Amioderone:  Used for heart arrhythmia.  Lambda = 25 Days
Albuterol: Commonly used by asthmatics, this helps when you have your breath taken away.  Lambda = 7 Hours
Digoxin:Counteracts your Heart Flutter and fibrillation.  Lambda = 36 Hours.
Fluoxetine:  Active ingredient in Prozac.  Not only smoothes out your depression and panic, but limits the euphoria endemic to new love.  Lambda = 6 Days.
Kytril: Antinauseal/Antiemetic; Used to counteract butterflies in the stomach.  Lambda = 9 Hours.
 
So, assuming one goes through each phase consecutively, a best case scenario is 33 days, four hours.

-There is no definitive half-life in love, just lust. Love has the ability to renew, it is inertia that can cause it to decay, but it is not beyond repair.  I refuse to reduce love to a mathmatic equation. If it were that simple we wouldn’t have been left broken so many times.

-The half-life of love can not be given just one answer. I think it is relative to the the scientist, the subject and the timing of the experiment. The intent of the scientist is important because it sets up the manner with which the experiment will be conducted. The subject is also important because they have to be a willing and enthusiastic participant. If they are neither, the experiment will ultimately…fail. Finally, the timing of the experiment is, perhaps, the most important element in the entire equation. If the timing is not condusive to the hypothesis of the scientist (and subject) then the experiment will not be conclusive.   All 3 elements must be in accord for the experiment to reach a conclusion.

-The half life of love is ideally greater than or equal to the square root of desire, though if that love is pure and does not mix with sulfer or cobalt, then love should last for 60 years, on average. That would make the half-life 30, wouldn’t it? You’re asking the wrong guy.

-It is not a constant, but a variable. The “type” of love can affect this - i.e, infatuation / crushes have a smaller half-life than long standing relationships. If the state of love is strong enough, the half-life point will never be discovered. Most people don’t seem to get that lucky.

Answers: Chemistry Pop Quiz: 2.) When does attraction become inert?

-After dinner but before breakfast. Usually at approximately 3:27:02.46.

-Sometime afterwards.

-Attraction becomes inert, in most cases, seconds before I figure it out.

-When all your unheard emotions that were ignored or pushed deep inside, rise up and consume you.  There is no room to feel anything else.

-The presence of the correct catalyst is needed for a chemical reaction. Given the complicated nature of the inert subject (not being able to easily lose or gain electrons), the catalyst must be the perfect…companion. If not, the inert subject will remain chemically inactive and alone. It also helps if the inert subject associates high temperature and pressure with the catalyst.

-Around the same time you start to notice the strands of hair clogging the drain.

-Referencing q. #1 - When the half-life has started to break down.

Answers: Chemistry Pop Quiz: 3.) Is the natural state of indifference a liquid, gas or solid?

-Indifference is liquid. It seeps into your cracks, and freezes and thaws, causing the expansion and contraction of your protective shell.  Over time, the resulting stresses cause chunks to break off, leaving new fissures that expose your molten core to the elements. 

-I thought it was the fog of indifference.

-Indifference is solid – it is a lower-energy state, dense, and difficult to move.  Interest and aversion are liquid, they can change form, but are easy to contain.  Love and hate are gasses, show much more energy, and are much harder to contain.  I guess that would leave all-consuming obsession as plasma – highly charged, with properties that even scientists don’t quite understand.

-All three…You can’t see it, but you can feel it and it leaves you in tears.

-Gas. The state of indifference involves no movement, heat or pressure. However, everything needs to give and let off/ out gases.

-Indifference is all three. It starts out as a very solid idea, like ice.  As you think about indifference, and process it, it changes.  As you think about it more, and the idea dissapates, it melts into a liquid and eventually turns into a gas, as you become indifferent to indifference itself and just don’t care about the idea anymore.

-Well, I’d wager it’s a gas, as one often blows air through their lips when shrugging something off with indifference. Phonetically, this is spelled “pfft.”

-A gas that once it has affected a person turns solid and weighs like a rock on their soul.

Current obsession

Finding these was like one day opening the mailbox to find forwarded postcards from someone else’s trek through my dreams.

Current obsession, addendum to yesterday: Camille Seaman.

The clock is winding down on the exam, class, but I’m not noticing right now because I’m astounded to see photographic evidence of the exact colors and landscape that I didn’t think existed anywhere outside my head.  Use this time to your advantage.

Current obsession

Current obsessions: Subsidence as applied to daily life, dreams of being lost, so many times, (i) tried not to wonder: