Ascorbic acid & flow
CHRISTIAN ROCK
I have a confession to make: I love christian rock. I’ll stop there. I started to write a piece about this, but when I sat down to finish, I felt the whisper of procrastination and got sucked into the flow of writing about Ascorbic acid. Shall we go with the flow?
ASCORBIC ACID
I have a confession to make: I bought a jumbo bottle of 250 capsules of Asorbic Acid, Vit C in March 2020. I, Shannon DeJong, hoarded Vitamin C at the beginning of the pandemic. I didn’t think it was hoarding. I believed at th;e time it was a very realistic and even health-forward amount of Vitamin C to purchase and consume.
Regardless, I’m asking for your support: I’ve only taken like 50 of the 250 bottle, and the expiration date is May of 2022. That sounded impossibly far away in March of 2020, but lo and behold, here we are, just months away, and I’ve failed to ingest my abundance of C.
I am hoping, that on your way out today, you will each take a recommended serving size of 1 capsule with you, thus relieving me of my shame. You can use the chopsticks to fish one out, please, we’re not out of the pandemic yet regardless of the fact that our president decided at that the State of the Union was coincidentally the perfect time to drop the mask mandate in Washington and proceed to kiss and hug 70-year-old senators on live broadcast TV despite the fact that while numbers are falling, we are still multiples more infections than we did at the height of restrictions. I’m a-political. I’m not here to judge. It’s also just good hygiene. Use the chopsticks. After you’ve used the chopsticks, please use a hand sanitizer. If you don’t like goop, use a wipey. If you don’t like the smell of the wipes, I have some French perfume-scented eau de toilette towels. And if you’re sensitive to fragrance, I have some dry, unscented towels from the doctors office they gave me to wipe my woohoo after an OBGYN visit. I haven’t used them! They gave me too many and I didn’t want them to just get thrown away. This one’s doesn’t help with the Covid.
The point is: with full participation in Project Vitamin C , we can achieve this ambitious but realistic goal: waste not, want not.
I’ve worked it out: With an average of 30 people in attendance over three shows, at 1 capsule per person per show, that’s 110 capsules. I will do my part, of course, and continue to take a daily dose of 1 capsule per day. I looked on the calendar, and from today that’s 86 days, if I may include May, which I may, so 86 capsules.
86 is kinda funny, because in the restaurant industry, when something is “86ed” it means you’ve run out of something in the kitchen.
[marin lady] “Hi, I’d like to order the salmon”
[calm server] Wonderful. The chef prepares it pretty raw with a gentle seared crust. Just want to make sure you’re ok with very pink?
“Sounds wonderful. Doesn’t that sound wonderful, Henry? Can you recommend a wine to go with that?”
But of course. If you’re interested in something unconventional, I can recommend a grenache rosé, actually.
“Oh! So not a white? I’m intrigued.”
Of course a white will go perfectly, but a grenache rosé can supply more fruit, which can be charming with the nuts in the panko. For something a little youthful, we just added the Hogwash to our wine family, a grenache rosé, very aromatic, clean finish, lingering notes of lemon zest and honey, which could go nicely with the pistachio crust on the salmon.
“Oh fun - I’ll take that.”
My pleasure.
*
“Hey, Sam - we’ve got salmon table 3”
“Yep - last one. 86 on the salmon”
“86 on the salmon. Gotcha”
I have no idea what it’s like in the kitchen at a high end restaurant with fast-moving orders, but I like to imagine it’s always a good time to say “86 on the salmon”... “86 on the salmon”.
But let’s stay focused: So 86 on the Vitamin C if I can get your help. To summarize: 250 - 50 - 90 - 86 = 24 remaining pills. I’ll make you a deal: I’ll meet you halfway. I’ll take an additional 12 capsules over the next 3 months, and 12 of you out there can take away 2 capsules today instead of 1 and thus be sure to erase the previous grosse miscalculation I made on supplement dependency during a global pandemic, for which, I’d be really grateful.
I have another confession to make: only after writing this and seeing the red squiggly lines did I realize that it’s spelled AsCorbic Acid, with a C: A-S-C-O-R-B-I-C, not A-C (pronounced like an S)-O-R-B-I-C. Like Asorbic, which is how I used to pronounce it.
I looked it up and it is, in fact, pronounced Ass-Core-Bick Acid (that’s how the US guy pronounced it) or, for our Brits in the audience, Uh-Scoh-Beek-Acid, which we all know is more lovely, 1 point America winning the Revolution, 1 point for the Motherland, maintaining phonetic elegance.
PROCRASTINATION
Ok, last confession: I wrote this all this morning to avoid working on my piece about Christian Rock, which was also about prejudice, and war. I just… didn’t want to write about predjuice and war, so I wrote something different. I’m sure you can relate: While some of you out there might not consider yourselves a writer, or even a “creative person” you are all, in fact, creating works of art everyday, and sometimes you create the things you planned to create and sometimes you create something different, but you are nonetheless ever-creating: your identity, your lives, your speech, your thoughts - well, we could talk about whether you are creating these things or whether they just happen as appearances in consciousness, but presuming you are not antagonistic to the notion of an elusory boundary of the self, I’m going to define “you” as “everything” and “create” as “suddenly appearing” so “you creating” is synonymous with “everything existing”, and isn’t that a beautiful thing, indeed? By merely being aware of your own existence, you’re the greatest creator in the world, and those who believe in a creator bigger than the Self capital S or the Source of all things, we can let those two things exist in harmony for a moment, can’t we? SelfSource & higher-power-God, sharing the stage, kind of like how Alia and I do at Da Salon - I’m not going to attempt to figure out which one of us is God and which one of us is Self-Source, but you get the idea.
Here’s the thing: My word of the year is flow. Sometimes we aim to do one thing, but the energy wants to go in another direction. There are times when it’s appropriate to chart the course, and stay there, withstanding the fierce storms of energy blowing us this way and that, horizontal rain soaking our resolve while onward we trudge. Sometimes. But sometimes it’s appropriate to drop our expectations and grip on control and let the storms yank and blow our boats with the tumultuous tide. To recognize we do not need to live life the way a 4-stroke engine produces thrust: intake, compression, power, exhaust, intake, compression, power, exhaust. We can actually live, like, water. We can unhook our tethers to the chords of right and wrong, desirable and undesirable, being in control and whatever-the-scary-thing-not-being-in-control-is (is “out of control” really such a bad thing?” #rebrandopportunity). When we are out of control, we are afraid of doing or saying or writing something bad or boring or unlovable. But with courage we can trust-fall back into the arms of time and life, watching excitedly with all of creation this movie of existence:
[kid] “What’s gonna happen?”
[adult] She’s looking at the crowd. The crowd is looking back at her, expectantly.
“What’s she going to say?”
We don’t know. They don’t know. She doesn’t know.
“Now what’s happening”
She’s just saying words, staring. Waiting. Filling with the pregnant pause unfolding.
“Why isn’t she doing anything? Is everything ok? Is something bad going to happen?”
Nothing bad is going to happen - or maybe it will! We don’t know. But I think she knows it’s not going to be bad. In fact, I think she knows it’s going to be very, very good to just… watch.
“What’s going to be good about it?”
It’s going to be beautiful. Or fun. Exciting! Heart Wrenching. No matter what happens, it’s worth watching. She’s trusting the moment, and inviting the audience to trust the moment - to really just be there, not needing a story or an answer or promise of safety. Just… to be there with her.
[whispering] “What is this called?”
[whispering] I think it’s called flow, being present in the flow.
“Let’s keep watching. I really like this “flow”
Me too, me too.
So I procrastinated and followed my flow, and here we are.
Ok, ok last confession for reals for realsies i promise: sometimes I love letting go of needing to make meaning out of the existential wash of incomprehensible beauty and pain in an otherwise ultimately meaningless existence. I hope it’s been as liberating, healing, enjoyable for you as it has been for me, riding along in the flow.
Wishing you a great rest of your weekend.