Ten months. This past year has not been as outwardly productive, and yet there have been so many internal shifts and changes. It continues primarily as such, both comforting and uncomfortable in its processes.
On and off as I have done lab work, there was always the vagaries of the fountain pump to contend with. That's what you get when you accept a gift of a free, used pump and then do things to it that are non-fountain-like. After many experiments where I felt the pump was on its last legs....I took a bit of time and online credit and now have a new pump for the condenser portion of my distiller. When I last searched for new pumps, pricing was double what I found this go around.
All philosophers tell us that there are four elements, which compose all things, and, by means of their diverse combination, produce various forms. But the truth is that there are only three elements, i.e., those which of their own nature are cold -- air, water, and earth. The defect of heat which we perceive in them is in proportion to their distance from the sun. Fire I do not acknowledge as an element. There is no fire, except the common fire which burns on the hearth; and its heat is essentially destructive. The heat there is in things is the product either of light, or motion, or life, or alterative processes. Fire is not an element, but a robber that preys on the products of the four elements; it is a violent corruptive motion caused by the clashing of two active principles. Thus, we see that it is an operation of two other substances, not a substance in itself -- a result of the active co-operation of a comburent and a combustible.
-- The Three Treatises of Philalethes
Also over the mundane holiday season, I had the opportunity to unpack a shipment of gifted meat for another person, stuff where pounds and pounds arrive, specially packed with dry ice and sent overnight. The sort of shipment that comes in an incredibly dense and thick foam insulation container. The sort of thing that can act as a cooler, but with a few easy modifications, could potentially become a macerating vessel. This would be a simple as making just enough of an opening somewhere to run a power cord into the container and then it's your pick of either a low wattage lightbulb or an old heating pad that preferably doesn't have a shut-off feature. This is where you can then gently warm things.
Why would you gently warm things? Because that's actually how most lab processes start, with Putrefaction or Maceration. Only purely inner alchemists are the folks who think you just zip straight into 'burn it to white ash' and even the ones who really know what they are doing don't act like that. They hang back and start ritual slowly, letting others get all hot and bothered right off the bat. Warming up slowly before getting on with it actually works well for the predominant number of human activities but we have a really good thing about "do as I say, but don't watch how I actually do it" going in our modern culture at the moment.
