Wednesday 16 September 2009

Memories #1

He once said "there's something tragic about you".

I once thought "there's something phoney about you"

He once gave me a salmon fillet and a plated single chocolate.

I once turned away to cry silent sobs in that hollow downtown apartment.

Wednesday 9 September 2009

As shallow and empty as an American Flirtation

Your face, for cancerous gold
Was sold.
What now? Just this.

Tuesday 8 September 2009

How to kill yourself with apple seeds.

Apple seeds average around 0.6mg hydrogen cyanide (HCN) per gram of dry seed. Since the lethal dose of HCN is estimated to be around 50mg, you will need around 85 grams of dry seeds. This is around half a cup... it requires a lot of apples.

However:

1. Plants are variable; eat enough - at least 3 times the minimum dose; Cyanide is not a drug on which to skimp, since it can cause brain damage in sublethal doses.

2. The HCN must be liberated from the sugar it's chemically attached to. This occurs when the moistened seed is crushed, releasing an enzyme, emulsin, which does the job. You need to crush and eat the seeds fairly quickly, both to avoid evapouration of cyanide from the crushed seeds and so as not to lose consciousness before ingesting a lethal dose. A blender or a coffee grinder would be a good way to break up the seeds.

3. Effects are fastest if the stomach is empty and gastric acidity high. With minimally lethal doses, death may take up to an hour.

4. Some claim death by cyanide is painless and quick, others that it is painful and quick. Cyanide is commonly used by suicidal chemists but rarely by suicidal physicians.

Wednesday 2 September 2009

Uprooted People.

I'm one.
Me.
Over here.

I sneered at the concept at first (as I'm wont to do). The truth is, I didn't even consider it. I hadn't read Weil (my high calibre misogny in play) and I didn't like (my ego didn't like) how he threw the notion out at me. It wasn't a learned discussion, he wasn't seeking new perspectives and coffee-house enlightenment. He was challenging me... testing me... and I failed the second he finished his sentence.

But days fade, weeks meld. Every night I set the two alarm cocks that would run the same race. As he himself said to me; 'Rachael that's the fabulous thing about time.... it passes."

...And when, some time later, I remembered that charged exchange, I thought how right he was. How we (the glorious multitude) need roots. How uprooted people are damaged and disfigured. How we can't live in the populised cohesive utopia that the young, the affected and the left, sell to us.
He knows it. I know it. Weil knew it.