Chemistry

• 享即

  2019-01-24
  To be fearless means what? I ask the shrink. Does it mean to be without fear or to have courage that is equal to or greater than fear?The courage one, she says.And where do I find courage?
• 享即

  2019-01-23
  One night, Eric leans over in bed and says, I want you. His voice cracks a little. He gets on top and the dog jumps on the bed and licks him from behind.
• 享即

  2019-01-23
  Some advice on happiness: the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.The shrink adds, And if you can’t do that, then fake it.
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  2019-01-23
  The steps in my logic, thus, ergo, hence, are now all in English.
• 享即

  2019-01-22
  You cannot be two things at once: You are not light, both wave and particle. You are not Schrödinger’s cat, both dead and alive.
• 享即

  2019-01-22
  Kudos to the student for making it to seventeen years. I would have shot someone at ten.My advisor is more reasonable than that, which is why he is still alive.
• 享即

  2019-01-22
  If alchemy doesn’t work, I will move on to desalinating all of our oceans and providing freshwater to the people.
• 热可可加盐

  2021-06-11
  When I hear this story, I am stunned. But why had he never mentioned the sister before? Why am I learning about her just now? If I knew about her earlier, maybe I would have understood him more. The need to succeed, to be fearless. But it is the Chinese way to not explain any of that, to keep your deepest feelings inside and then build a wall that can be seen from the moon. Fast-forward a few years. I have just moved in with Eric. I have just gotten the dog. I want to tell everyone about the dog. But I am nervous to take him back to Michigan because I think my father will be annoyed. He has never shown an interest in animals before. Also, what a dog would do to their beige house. When he first meets the dog, I cannot read his face. It is a blank face. But everywhere he goes, the dog fo...
• 热可可加盐

  2021-06-11
  The most emotionally charged experiences, particularly those linked to fear, activate parts of the brain responsible for long-term memory. This makes sense evolutionarily, since being able to recall fearful events is critical to not dying in the wild. One example is childbirth. Mothers are often amazingly accurate in recounting the duration and intensity of pain but are less so with the specific details of the child. It takes my mother ten hours and twenty-three minutes to give birth. I am induced. No pain meds. What did I look like? I ask, age seven.Like a baby.Anything else? Like a potato.The reverse must also work, that of the child recalling memories of the mother. This is also what the shrink has asked me to do.
• 热可可加盐

  2021-06-11
  Studies have shown that the brain feels exclusion not like a broken heart but like a broken bone. It is physical pain that the brain feels.
• 热可可加盐

  2021-06-11
  Once I hear the first snore, I say, Why is your trajectory so straight? Why is your family so nice? It seems unfair how easy everything comes to you. In your last life you must have been a dung beetle. Or someone who gave up his life for someone else. Perhaps a pregnant woman crossing the street. Do you remember?Then I part his autumn hair and bring my voice down to a whisper. Please stop, just for a little while, and let me catch up. How do you expect me to marry you if you never let me catch up?
• 热可可加盐

  2021-06-11
  Catalysts make reactions go faster. THey lower activation energy, which is the indecision each reaction faces before committing to its path.
• 享即

  2019-01-23
  J.K. Rowling said during a commencement speech: There is an expiry date on blaming your parents for steering you in the wrong direction; the moment you are old enough to take the wheel, responsibility lies with you.
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  2019-01-23
  I often wonder what I would have been like if I had been raised like him—notes, stickers, complimentary questions asked at the table, by the hearth. I would probably socialize better in large groups and not stare so intently at shoes. I would hold my neck up high like a giraffe, the most confident of mammals.
• 享即

  2019-01-22
  A guy in lab strongly believes that women do not belong in science. He’s said that women lack the balls to actually do science.Which isn’t wrong. We do lack balls.... Women lack the balls to do science, he still says. With the exception of your lab mate. She has three.Later I ask Eric, How many balls do you think I have?It is poor timing. We have just gotten into bed and started to kiss.Uh, none? he says.
• 享即

  2019-01-22
  In ancient China, there are four great beauties:The first so beautiful that when fish see her reflection they forget how to swim and sink.The second so beautiful that birds forget how to fly and fall.The third so beautiful that the moon refuses to shine.The fourth so beautiful that flowers refuse to bloom.”I find it interesting how often beauty is shown to make the objects around it feel worse.