Katie Dickieson
From page 147 of my book
I live in the triple p
int.
Cornell engineer. Analog astronaut. Licensed cosmetologist. Drag king. Author of Remember Who the F*ck You Are. I read people and the mess they’re in, and I tell them what nobody told them.
First, the physics
What a triple point is.
Hated chemistry? Good. This takes one minute.
- Everything comes in three states. Solid, liquid, gas. Ice, water, steam.
- Two things decide which one you get. Heat and pressure.
- Normally it’s one at a time. Heat ice at normal air pressure and it melts, then it boils. One, then the next.
- Then there’s one exact point. A single temperature and a single pressure where all three exist at once. Same glass. Ice, water and vapor, with none of them winning.
- That’s the triple point. For water it’s 0.01 °C at 611.657 pascals.
Three facts
Three things nobody told you.
0.6%
It only exists when the pressure comes off.
611 pascals is about 0.6% of normal air pressure. At the pressure we all live under, it can’t happen. Normal pressure makes water pick.
2019
It looks unstable. It’s exact.
Change anything and one state disappears. That’s what makes it so precise. The kelvin itself was defined by it until 2019, and labs still calibrate thermometers against it.
610
Mars sits right on it.
Air pressure on Mars averages about 610 pascals. Water’s triple point is 611.657. For decades, zero elevation on Mars was set at 610.5 pascals because of it.
Now, me
Why I’m that.
- Most people get one state. The scientist who can’t feel it. The performer who can’t prove it. The mystic nobody can check. At best they switch. I don’t switch. I read a birth chart next to the engineering, in the same room, in the same breath.
- The pressure made me pick. Scientist or artist. Serious or too much. My whole book is about that pressure. “Who were you, before the world told you what to be?” Take the pressure off and you get all three. I do that for other people, too.
- I’m the calibration point. I look unstable to anyone standing in one state. I’ve been told my whole life that I’m a lot. People find out what’s true about their business and their life by standing next to me.
- Mars is literally my planet. Analog astronaut. Thesis on Martian regolith. An LLC called Life on Mars to Martian Girl. On Mars the pressure is already right.
“I never chose if I were to be a solid, liquid or gas. There have been times when I was more solid than the rest, at times even more liquid and gas. But when I am living at my full expression I am the triple point.”Remember Who the F*ck You Are, p.148
The part that costs money
I was the world’s side piece. Now I have rates.
“I am used to being the world’s side piece. People really like me. They always have. I make life easier for people to be themselves, until that mirror I am becomes more than they can tolerate.”Remember Who the F*ck You Are, p.221
People have been taking me out when they need to feel seen and putting me away when the mirror gets to be too much. For free. For 37 years.
So now there’s a menu. It starts at $17 and I’m the one who says no.
In my work
Three states. Three lanes.
What can be checked. What can be felt. What can’t be proved yet. Most people will only let you be one. I need all three to tell you what’s wrong.
Solid
Receipts. Science, engineering, contracts, numbers, Mars. Anything you could check.
Liquid
Feeling. Story, body, grief, jokes, the stage. “like a drag queen but make people cry.”
Gas
The unseen. Sky, charts, pattern, what I know before I can prove it. A language, never a cause.
Sourced
Three receipts.
Savanna
572 to
8,068
Accounts reached. Nov 1 to Nov 30, then Dec 16 to Jan 14.
Julia
3,072 to
6,609
Views. Dec 1 to Dec 21, then her first two weeks with my system.
My own account
30 days
85,577
Views on my Instagram, to Sep 20.
The Letter
The Triple Point, by Katie Dickieson.
My letter on Substack. It’s free. It has no schedule.
First drafts of Forget Who the F*ck You Are go there first.
“To those who’ve thought of me as too much before this, just wait.”Remember Who the F*ck You Are, p.170