The trick is not to deliquesce.
Some people will tell you to keep your powder dry, by which they mean keep your firearms available for a fight. Others will keep their face powder dry by holding back their tears. Some people will not stay dry; they will melt – or rather, since we’re mostly liquid, they will lose the solids that are holding them together. They may give off a little liquid, and that’s OK, in fact it can be good; but they may melt altogether, and that is not good. And on the other hand, some people will help others keep dry: they are nature’s desiccants; they absorb the moisture. It’s a good role to play in the world, but it, too, can be taken too far. Either way, whether you melt into your own tears or melt into someone else’s, if you deliquesce, you are lost.
A quick etymological excursus here. If you deliquesce, you are deliquescent, which, I need you to know, is not delinquent. And on the other hand, deliquescence is not deliquium either – not any more (at one time they could be synonyms). You will see something liquid in this word, and not just the /l/ (or the susurration of the /s/); the liqu is the same one as in liquid and means the same thing. But while liquid is in the middle of the word, a deliquescent thing is quickly in the middle of liquid. The esce is the same as in coalesce and somnolescence and adolescent: it refers to becoming. Becoming liquid, in this case.
There are two ways for a thing to deliquesce. One is for it simply to melt and drain away. The other is more chemically devious. Here’s how it is: substances that draw moisture from the air are hygroscopic. They can serve as desiccants, drying out things around them, and as they collect that moisture, they of course become less dry themselves, going from powder to paste, perhaps. But some things – such as sodium hydroxide and calcium chloride – don’t stop there. Given the chance, they keep drawing moisture until they are dissolved in it. And even then, that solution will continue to draw more moisture. Look at this time lapse, 22 minutes compressed into 12 seconds:
The calcium chloride readily bewitches to itself all the water from a neighbouring vessel, until it is lost in it.
We all know people like this. People who take on so much from others that they lose themselves in it, and still they take more. People whose very existence is just to keep taking others’ tears – or sweat, their worries or fears or stress or work overload. They are the people who always have a solution, but the solution is their own dissolution. They are still in there somewhere, but can you see them? No – they didn’t keep their powder dry. You can only see their effect.
And we all know people who deliquesce the other way: they may seem solid, but if there is any heat or pressure, when you try to grasp them, they will run through your fingers and drain away.
It’s a lovely-sounding word, deliquesce, and deliquescence is a useful property of some substances at some times and in some ways, and it is human to melt a little and human to want to help others be a bit drier, but excess humanity and excess humidity can make the solution the problem.
Thanks to Chris L. on Patreon for suggesting deliquesce.
Sesquiotica 