Dear Vincent, All your sadness is in your lungs. Also the World is a Heartbreaker

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Subject: All Your Sadness is in Your Lungs

Dear Vincent,

What’s deeply embarrassing is that when I can’t sleep I listen to Oprah, and sometimes I imagine that if only I could think the right thoughts and get myself on the right vibes and wavelength, that I’ll manifest some magnificent and magical life and end up on the plushy emerald green chairs in the middle of Oprah’s emerald green Oprah Forest and I’ll get to tell Oprah all about what I know for sure, and what makes my heart sing, and finally I’ll be rich and happy and well fucked.

Circa 2009, Back when I used to believe in Digestive Enzymes,
Also tequila.

(dot. dot dot. Every time I write about toenail fungus, the fungus takes over and then there is heaps of confusion. Like in university, I tried to write a play called, Clap Loud If You Believe In Digestive Enzymes, and the protagonist's name was Amy, and Amy believed in Digestive Enzymes, and she had terrible toenail fungus, and unrelated to the toenail fungus, she quite literally puked in her mouth for a very large portion of the day. Amy's next door neighbour had a five-year-old son, and also vagina cancer. And the five-year-old son liked to jump on the trampoline, and he wanted his mother to live forever.

Now I remember that the kid's name was Gordon, and one day, Gordon was jumping on the trampoline, and Amy's organs - her esophagus and colon and liver and kidneys emerged, human-sized in Amy's back yard. And then somehow everyone became tiny and ended up in Gordon's mother's uterus, or maybe her vagina or maybe a little bit of both? They were trying to fight the cancer and the fungus all at once. There could have been human-sized fungus as well. Either way, it was all kinds of confusing.)

Oprah does not feel embarrassed to feature her own self on the cover of every single Oprah magazine. And she was not too embarrassed to feature herself on her Master Class Podcast. Why I am like Oprah. I feature myself all the time.

Everyone's life is a class you can learn from, that's what Oprah says. And Oprah told her own story of when she really wanted to get the role of Shug Avery in the Color Purple and Shug Avery’s husband’s name was Harpo which is Oprah’s name backwards and so when she got an audition it all seemed like a magical manifested meant-to-be miracle. Then Oprah called a casting director to follow up on her audition, and the casting director scoffed at her and said that real actors were in the running for the part, and the real actors were skinnier and much more experienced. Oprah felt deflated so she went to the Fat Farm to jog.

I have never been to a Fat Farm, or heard of one until now, but it is somewhere I might have liked to go as a teenager. At the Fat Farm, Oprah jogged around and around the track, and she talked to God and asked God to please help her let go of all the grief and resentment around her heart, and she didn’t need to let go enough to be able to go see the movie, but could God please make her a little bit happy for the actress who got the part she so wanted. 

And Oprah jogged and jogged and jogged and gradually the plaque resentment around her heart lifted and she thought, well, maybe I can go see the movie, and after a while, she even became so happy for the skinny actress who got the part, and eventually her whole heart was light and healed, and Oprah surrendered to whatever big or not big plan that God had in store for her and then Stephen Spielberg called the Fat Farm and he said, you got the part. Oprah couldn't believe it.

"I hear you’re at a Fat Farm," said Stephen Spielberg. "Lose a pound, and you might lose the part." So Oprah stopped at Dairy Queen on the way home. She said that getting this role in the Colour Purple was proof that if you surrender fully to God’s plan, he will give you back a life far greater than anything you ever dreamed. Stephen Spielberg will call. People will skip work and lock their doors and unplug their phones to watch your face every afternoon on television. Or something like that. It was approximately 3 o'clock in the morning on some Thursday morning in February when I heard the Master Class that is Oprah's life. 

Ever since the story of Oprah and the Fat Farm and the Colour Purple, I’ve once or twice imagined that someday soon, I'll go to Parc Laurier, and I'll trudge round and round in a rectangle until all the plaque around my heart will dissolve, along with all the cravings for the exquisite prizes in the plushy emerald green Oprah chairs, and the exquisite fucks in the kitchen and this all-consuming feeling that I love you, and I'll be so happy for everyone else's black-out orgasms, and my toenails will grow back all happy and healthy and pink, and then God will reveal his real plan which will hopefully be more beautiful and lucrative and well-fucked than anything I ever could have dreamed of.

More Love from Eighteen-year-old Erica:

“One of my friends said today:  in 200 years Mother Theresa will get about one sentence in a history textbook.   Being young can really bring out questionable contemplations and aspects of our personalities.   I do hope that we can survive it all, without becoming old and bitter or prematurely dead. I am not going to become an academic, because it requires that you be much too logical and sane.  I feel that I have neither of these characteristics and oh well, I'm going to be an artist. …  

Do you think inner peace is possible or do you think I should just accept that I will be forever bouncing off the walls? 

I was thinking that maybe next year I would start hard core yoga and meditation and become composed and un-unstable but I'm afraid that unfortunately I'm addicted to this unpredictability and strangely believe that I'll be bored and uncreative and uninteresting without it."

At Grown-ups Read Things They Wrote As Kids, I was effervescent and I told all my friends how I was doing so great for February, and I gave them the speech about last February, when I wept from deep behind the bottom of my lungs  in the snow in Parc Outremont, and who was that person, and where did she go?

So many views from so many meltdowns.
Where did she go?

In fact she returned yesterday morning on Tuesday, February 12, at 9:32 a.m. in front of the bathroom sink of the Champion Meltdown House where I have melted down at least seven times in the past seven months, while shining the bathroom sink chrome, or while negotiating refrigerator drawers, or while wiping down the wooden kitchen island that seems perpetually covered with tomatoe sauce chunks, and expensive breadcrumbs.

In fact, I wept from deep behind the bottom of my lungs for a bunch of the day and would have appreciated round-the-clock care (dot dot dot by the way the cute base of my tongue dude bought me a beet latte, and I am not sure he is old enough to stand in as a potential father figure; however, he may be a solid candidate for a Wounded Bird Complex.)

At 5:34 P.M. I called my friend Sherwin with a meltdown, and Sherwin was drinking tequila and drawing a pile of garbage for the sixth last page of his tenth book.

“Every time I make a new book, I think, oh, maybe this will be the one that lets me not struggle. After all these books, it’s less and less likely. But I keep doing it, because I enjoy it.”

One of Sherwin’s first books is called,

The World
Is a
Heartbreaker  

and it is a collection of 1600 3-line pseudo-haikus, and me and blank (not Wounded Bird Complex Dude. Also not Sherwin.) and I read them to each other the first time we ever cuddled and made out, and I got to hump his leg and have an ugly-cry orgasm.

The World

Is a

Heartbreaker, by Sherwin Tija

(For sale)

A really great poem by Sherwin is

the

people who

eat pain.

(TWIAHB, by Sherwin, p.68)

and another one is

my inner life

became this

massive thing. 

(TWIAHB, by Sherwin, p. 91)

and another one is

babies screaming

like the end of

everything.
(TWIAHB, by Sherwin, p. 141)

My poem is

This morning 

2:30 a.m.

sleep fucked.

Last night, after I hung up the phone with Sherwin, I'd imagined I'd go to Parc Laurier and under the snowstorm, I’d trudge round and round in a rectangle, until all the plaque around my heart would dissolve, along with all the cravings for the exquisite prizes in the Oprah chairs, and the exquisite fucks in the kitchen and this all-consuming feeling that I love you, and I’d be so happy for  everyone who gets to have Black-Out Orgasms,  and my toenails would grow back all happy and healthy and pink, and then God would  reveal his real plan which would hopefully be more beautiful and lucrative and well-fucked than anything I ever could have dreamed of.

Instead I walked 1.75 blocks to Jean Coutu, and asked how much the toenail fungus drug would cost, and in fact, the cost was better than I thought, 37 bucks for six weeks, and despite anguished vacillation and the risk of diarrhea plus liver and kidney failure, I swiped my Visa card and bought the drugs, and everyone stared as I trudged around the perimeter of Jean Coutu, sobbing intermittently from deep behind  the bottom of my lungs.

After seven minutes, I switched to sobbing and pacing up and down the aisles of PA Nature, and then I calmed down and bought yogurt on sale, and a poppy seed baguette.

Maybe in addition to diarrhea and liver and kidney damage, the toenail fungus drug will bring fame, money, weightloss, prizes, sex, while also curing me of the tragic belief that some generic to extraordinary dude and his cock is the only thing that will ever be able to set me free.

Dear Nandi, love Erica, 2004:

“This morning I am deeply questioning the human condition, mocking and rolling my eyes at today's society, feeling intensely lofty as I come to the existential conclusion that nothing really matters, all is futile and what the hell let's eat drink and be merry. 

But no, something does matter or nobody would have lasted this long.

Oh, who am I kidding, what is the point of thinking anymore, why write, so much has already been thought and written, and it's all doomed to become a blip.”

The World
Is a
Heartbreaker.

Love, Erica. 

Spoiler Alert: This is the second last letter to Vincent. Send your worlds of heartbreaks to the secret email address ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.

View from the hole in my crotch,
Also the view from Irreversible Climate Change.

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Dear Vincent, I still wish I / Was Miranda July

Dear Vincent, I forgave myself for not being Lena Dunham

Dear Vincent, It used to be that the last time I felt home was in a tiny blue penthouse apartment in Mysore, India on the 10th avenue of the 3rd stage of a neighbourhood called Gokulam in November of 2014.

Dear Vincent, I still wish I/ Was Miranda July.

Subject: I still wish I/Was Miranda July

Friday, February 8, 2019

Dear Vincent,

I have a saying that goes,

All your sadness is in your lungs.
I still wish I
Was Miranda July.

Just around this time last year, I published a tragic blogpost entitled, Everyone is one with the birds except for me. And I remember trudging downtown to teach yoga to the insurance people who did not like my Animal Flow routine, and on the way, I ignored a call from my optimistic and pragmatic bestie, since I was beyond Optimism and Pragmatism, and, 
adamant that I could not possibly get old if days like this were to prevail, I planned my death for March 18, 2025, the 14-year anniversary of not puking in my mouth, and I’d be 39 and four months and a couple of weeks, which is approximately my favourite age of dude, though soon this may prove to be somewhat too young for me.

Later that week in 2018, while everyone else was being one with the birds, I remember lying in the snow in front of some trees in Parc Outremont, and weeping from deep behind the bottom of my lungs.

On Wednesday night, I walked myself by those same trees, and I'd had the afternoon off, and I'd just bought the domain name Deep Cleans with Erica, and I felt bouncy and happy and I wondered, who was that, weeping from deep behind the bottom of her lungs? What a relief to be someone else, at least for now.

Everyone is one with the birds.

I got in to read at Grownups Read Things They Wrote As Kids again, and I am reading a couple of the emails from my Hotmail account during first-year university, and I was 18, and the emails are to Nandi who was my boss when I coached little kids on the swim team, and then Nandi moved to Calgary and he was 38 years old, and I had a crush on him, and we wrote back and forth. 

And so I have been into writing to distant 38 to 40 years old crushes for quite some time now. It feels so easy to love who I used to be, with all the hope and all the optimism. It's all very beautiful, though heartwrenching at times.

What I know for sure, by 18-year-old Erica:

“What I know for sure, as Oprah would say, is that life inevitably fluctuates, some days may feel like the act of falling into a sewer while other days see you soaring euphorically around the world.  Everyone around you wonders what it is that causes you to glow so intensely legally, morally, uncorruptly.  It's all very interesting though heartwrenching at times. 

I guess I am discovering that I am a very intense person and though I have to go through some amount of sewer moments, to put it cheesily, the rainbow/butterfly/pot of gold always reveals itself after a time… I don't buy that you're as happy as you make your mind up to be.  I think you're as happy as you're able to love and accept yourself and the people around you, life as it is, with and without miracles, its unpredictability, dissatisfactions, surprises, love, joy etc.  From the movie ‘kiss of the spiderwoman’ I heard the words ‘the best thing about being happy is the feeling that you'll never be unhappy again.’” 

Erica, 18
That feeling that  you'll never be unhappy again.
Plus groomed hair, skinny eyebrows, turquoise lasenza hydralift padded bra
and a watch.

The first half of the Every-Other-Wednesday-to-Thursday Vats-Of-Oatmeal-At-Least-Two-Half-Dying-Ferns-Plus-Expensive-Granola-Multiple-Baby Hump was cancelled this week. During the second half of the hump, the baby twins babbled, and kept reaching for the vacuum cleaner, and then in the afternoon, I got a cleaning buzz at the Self-Mutilating Parrot Family’s and even though my livelihood might be dipping back down to the poverty line, somehow I am not all that worried. When I die, I am sure I’ll have enough money to pay for my funeral. Will you come?

The best thing about being happy is the feeling that you’ll never be unhappy again.

Happy Friday!

Love, Erica.

Saturday, February 9, 2019

Dear Vincent,

I forgot to say that the day after the folding workshop, the base of my tongue told me to give the rest of the anti-keto-diet chocolate chip cookies to (dot dot dot) and his selling points are (dot dot dot)  and it seems he is old enough to stand in as a potential father figure. Let's hope he's not married, or gay, that he has an insatiable sex drive and believes in sexual transcendence, and thinks I’m vaguely awesome and that our attachment trauma is compatible. Yah, no pressure.

I’m just kind of tired of longing for my cells to dissolve in the kitchen as I get fucked. I am worried about menopause, and that it will come on fast.

Bonus from eighteen-year-old Erica:

“Some people have and always will have a tough time being happy.  I don't plan for this struggle to be a chronic aspect of my life but I do believe that an amount of suffering is essential for growth.
I have begun to religiously sing in the shower, I derive much pleasure from creative endeavors, not including essays, and also I think that there is a lot to be said for being honest. 
Real. truthful. 

Barely anyone lets it all out, due to a handicap of language and the human condition, which is apparently fallen, but there exists hope in unexpected places.  And no this does not necessarily refer to mind altering substances.  Anyways, I am eighteen years old.  That's it.  Young, but life can prove to be fleeting sometimes.  Therefore, the endeavor begins, to live fully with no regrets, climb out of the sewer when necessary, sing in the shower, and nap." 

Some days see you soaring euphorically around the world.

Some days see you soaring euphorically around the world.

Hope you have a great weekend!

Love, Erica.

However and wherever you may soar around the world, your correspondence remains welcome at the secret email address ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. 

Let's hope he's not married, or gay, 

that he has an insatiable sex drive and believes in sexual transcendence, 

and thinks I’m vaguely awesome and that our attachment trauma is compatible.

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Dear Vincent, You will be so thrilled to know

Deep Unyielding Depression 

Dear Vincent, Some other Vincent coerced me into a blowjob

Everyone is one with the birds except for me.

Dear Vincent, I forgave myself for not being Lena Dunham.

Dear Vincent, 

I have a saying that goes, Aren’t professional boundaries a bummer.

Also, Most people’s lives are a total disaster. Their lives and their Tupperware drawers and the corner at the side of their beds.

Also, the permafrost is melting in Siberia. 

Years ago, I forgave myself for not being Margaret Atwood. Today I am forgiving myself for not being Lena Dunham. I always thought I’d excel at being a Lena Dunham Sort of Person. But listening to an interview, it all sounds rather strenuous. She just detoxed from benzos, and she had to get a hysterectomy. Beyond cervical orgasms, I don’t have much need for my uterus, and yet, I’m glad I still have one. 

So I don’t get to be Margaret Atwood, or Lena Dunham, or have a cervical orgasm, and I’m forgiven. 

Photo Credit equals The New York Times. 
Thanks a bunch NYT!

Likely your professional boundaries are
More of a bummer 
than mine. 

The other thing I want to say is, Lena Dunham named her uterus Judy.

One brutal Tuesday morning last February, I decided I wanted to cut my life off at 39 years, 4 months and 19 days. But now I’ve decided I’d like to be alive when Oprah dies. This might be hard, since I could see Oprah sticking herself in a freezer, to be awoken in the year 2222. Her century-long dreams will be a deep green regal forest, and when she opens her eyes, she’ll feel so grateful, and she’ll know so many things for sure.  

Everything is Green. Love, Oprah
Photo Credit equals the Oprah Magazine, as shown in eonline.com. 
Gee thanks!

"Erica," says Margaret Atwood. "Where are you?"

It’s 6:30 a.m. on Sunday, November 4, 2018. Almost like I’m a normal person, I slept in until 6:13, even though it was Daylight Savings day. Fall Back. The star of my life’s most beautiful blogging fairy tale used to hate that. I’m in the middle of taking a shit. On the stove, the espresso pot is starting to bubble, and then off goes the smoke alarm. All my neighbours likely hate me. After the espresso, I bailed on my exercise routine, and my thighs seemed 1.5 cm. too wide on either side. The menstruation app announced the end of my fertile window. It was a dramatic Sunday morning rage, and I felt like I’d wasted the day. 

When I have insomnia, sometimes I listen to Oprah, and this is only a mildly embarrassing thing to say, and I’m still saying it. I always remember the episode when Elizabeth Gilbert told Oprah that every day, she gives herself a quest. For example, writing down the story of her life onto six index cards, or dragging herself out of the house and not coming home until she finds something beautiful and one time she saw a parade of elephants, maybe in front of the bank. She thought this was beautiful, not thinking of how much elephants in America tend to suffer. 

Anyways, my Sunday, November 4th quest was going to be

1) Buy an irresponsible lunch at the bulk food store.
2) Make an offering out of the massive hardened plasticene erect dick I’d made at Authentic Movement Class. 
3) Maybe try and buy jeggings since mine have holes in the pockets and holes in the crotch. 

In fact, the massive hardened plasticene dick did not get born at Authentic Movement Class. 
In the beginning, the plasticene transformed from a sharp brown rectangular prism, into a non-descript blob, interspersed with little dents from my fingernails. Our Authentic Movement teacher always tells us, Soyez les cadeaux que vous êtes, which means, be the gifts that you are, and she encouraged us to make a spontaneous sentence to go with our plasticene.

My spontaneous sentence was, 
Most people, if they were me, would have given up by now. 
I did not exactly mean this about the plasticene. I meant giving up about everything else. I did not give up on my plasticene.

When I got home, I moulded the generic non-descript blob of plasticene into a massive and exquisite erect penis, which stood next to a vagina type fold that got cradled inside a soothing-looking canoe-shaped brown bowl. All of this hardened into something vaguely permanent.

Now I am trying to remember what happened to the vagina type fold that got cradled inside a soothing-looking canoe-shaped brown bowl. There was no sentence to go with it. It was supposed to symbolize me feeling cradled and held and safe. I can’t remember what I did with it. 

As for the massive erect cock, I’d wrapped it in tissue paper and placed it in a small silver Simon’s bag from when I bought all brand new underwear, and the dick was ready for its perfect offering, and the bag rested at the bottom of my living room closet which is vaguely and scandalously unruly. 

Preparing for my Sunday, November 4th quest, I opened the Simon’s bag and beheld, the massive cock had broken in two. Now the offering would not be quite as perfect or as exquisite. Still, I remained committed to my quest.

As fate would have it, on Saturday, November 3rd, I had about 45 too many minutes to myself which led me to Google your name, plus the street my friend said you lived on according to reliable and top-secret sources. 

As fate would have it, Google had an address to go with the Vincent!

The address did not match the neighbourhood my friend said you lived in. She was kind and wise enough not to give me the exact number. But I decided that just in case, after my irresponsible bulk food store lunch, I would drag ass to the house with the silver Simon’s bag and the broken and massive

My responsible bulk food store lunch was soothing small plastic bags full of chocolate covered strawberries and almonds, unsalted but roasted no-peanut mixed nuts, and those weird corn chippy flaxseed crackers that likely cause immense turmoil to all your estrogen levels. 

The irresponsible bulk food store lunch cost five dollars and 35 cents and took me about three and a half minutes to eat. 

The Vincent House was just south of Jean Talon and east of the market, and not on the sunny side of the street. With aspirations of discretion, I crossed to the sunny side and looked up to the second floor of the shaded brick duplex. 

Against vast odds, the door opened! I hoped hard, but it was not you. The Other Vincent was taller, younger without a beard and with a tiny girlfriend. Other Vincent and Tiny Girlfriend walked down the stairs and over to a small grey Honda, and drove away. I laughed pretty hard for a pretty sad day, and did not leave the broken dick there. 

You must be so pleased that I forgave myself for not being Lena Dunham.
My friend Caroline’s reading a book called Zapped, and the book says all the Wifi is fucking up everyone’s sperm count, and essentially we’re all getting microwaved.

Faithful to my quest, I walked approximately 5.2 km all the way down to the Bay, and the jeggings did not look spectacular, but I still bought them. Two days later,  I would exchange them, and struggle to make peace with the way my thighs appeared wrapped up inside of them, and by the time I made this peace, they ripped in the crotch, and I might spend all of November buying jeggings and then, taking them back. 

I left the big broken dick on a bench underneath a burgundy umbrella somewhere near Place des Arts metro. The broken dick could be called,

What is your low-grade calling? Where is your testosterone?
Or else,
Some undying love is better off living a short life.

I have a saying that goes, You can’t fuck up a Sunday morning.
Also, The more sane I feel, the more my spine seems crooked. 
Also, You’re so beautiful. Hating yourself is so stupid. 

Love, Erica. 

So Mondays without Vincent is having a little reprise. Please feel free to send your own imaginary letters to Vincent or to me at ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. 

10 000 Years of Buying Jeggings

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Not That Kind of Girl

Dear Vincent, 

If Oprah does not invite you to sit in her decadent plushy green chairs in the middle of the Oprah Forest to discuss your beautiful soul’s beautiful hero’s journey, it’s possible this might be a blessing. It’s possible you might just be spared.

Love, Erica.

Dear Vincent, 

Elizabeth Gilbert says that, every time you have sex with someone, some small part of you dies.

The permafrost is melting in Siberia

Dear Vincent, You are not the only person I write letters to.

Dear Vincent,

You are not the only person I write letters to. Everything I buy comes wrapped in plastic, and sometimes at night, I hide spoons and forks and knives inside my freezer so I do not have to wash them.

Love, Erica.

Dear My Cool Friend Fern,

I am sitting in a bathtub without water and brushing my teeth without water and now without hands, and I am remembering when you used to have your office on top of the washing machine in the upstairs bathroom in Saint Henri. A couple months ago, I started to make homemade clay toothpaste because a right bottom molar hurt and I can only afford the dentist in India. The toothpaste is in a jar and looks like a pile of dark brown shit, and an excess of baking soda causes my tongue to burn. This morning I cannot cope with the burning and the brown specks that end up everywhere, and so I am using the last of my Arm and Hammer, and the bristles in my toothbrush go every which way and the pink plastic on the back of the head is coming off since I often stick my toothbrush in my mouth and bite down on it, hard. This morning the crisis centre counsellor said to try and relax and think more positively and maybe try some activities to make me feel good and that she had to hang up, but she wished me a good day. My right knee is kind of swollen which makes it uncomfortable to kneel, and my bathtub is not embarrassing but it could be more immaculate considering that I am becoming an almost famous cleaning lady.

Love, Erica.

Fern wrote back with the suggestion that I set an alarm on my phone five times a day to remind me that nobody is coming to save me. On Thursday, July 26, 2018, five times per day, my phone emphatically reminded me that,

There is no prize.

You don’t need saving.

Fuck most of it.

There is no prize.

The next day was Friday, July 27, 2018, some kind of full moon and lunar eclipse, and I walked five km with a swollen knee all the way to the second floor of the Greyhound Bus Station to see my doctor. On my i-phone, I’d prepared a less emphatic list about my swollen knee, my borderline personality disorder, my lifelong toenail fungus, the occasional hemorrhoid, and the inflamed mole just above my sacrum which could have cancer but is more likely just inflamed due to rolling around on my floor and rubbing coconut oil into it too aggressively.

“Dr. Hamel n’est pas ici aujourd’hui,” said the receptionist.

Turns out I was an entire month too early.  Dr. Hamel was on vacation, like pretty much everyone else in the city, and once again my life proved itself to be one futile endeavour to another. I melted down hard as I hid behind the curtain in the photo booth in the bus station lobby downstairs. Sobbing, I wacked my face over and over again, where last week’s black eye was only just starting to fade.  I did not pay five dollars to take four tiny photos of my tragic and swollen and vaguely bruised face. The photos are digital and in colour, and thus not as charming as they used to be.

Fuck all of it, I thought. Someone can fucking come and save me. I don’t need the Instagram points, or any of the points. 

And I wandered south of the bus station where people and police frolicked in les Jardins Gamelins, and I scanned the scene for some dead beat who might have opioids.

“Où est le fentanyl?” I imagined calling out deliriously. Where the fuck are all the drugs?

Back at the bus station, I stood in front of the Enterprise rent-a-car booth where all the employees also seemed to be on vacation. In fact, I am not an excellent driver. In fact, I am terrible.

"What happened?" asked some middle-aged man, broad and balding and perplexed. "Why a woman so beautiful so sad?"

As though when I am slightly older, and slightly uglier, I will have every reason to be miserable.

My phone rang, and my friend with a regal name and a relatively sane balance between beautiful dreams and wise pragmatism called and invited me over to her semi-fancy loft in the Old Port. Travelling farmers from Airbnb were coming to rent for the weekend. With noticeable vigour, I scrubbed my friend’s dishes and stove top, plus the ledge where all the spice bottles vomit paprika and curry dust. Then my friend with a regal name and a relatively sane balance between beautiful dreams and wise pragmatism took me out for sushi, and she drove me all the way home, and she fucking saved my life.

Dear Sorrowful Simon, (not to be confused with Simon the Hermit who jumped off Le Tadoussac to his death on January 4, 2015)

Last Saturday, after some plans fell through, I walked all the way to Verdun without my phone. My goal was to swim, though I had zero opposition to  dying at any point along the journey. But the more people I passed, couples in particular, the more I didn’t need my lives to be theirs, or my life to be over. I was not suddenly fueled with the will to live, but I had the vague sense that my life was just as dull and just as pleasant as everyone else’s. When I got to Verdun, I swam up the weak rapids and coasted back down three times. Some old couple stood in the middle of the river and yelled back and forth to each other, even though their faces were less than a foot apart.

“Il y a une autre nageuse,” the man exclaimed excitedly.

Out of the water, I walked along the shoreline in my red polyester two-pieced speedo. The bathing suit chafed my inner thighs since despite extensive exercise and frequently flakey lunches, I do not have a thigh gap. Oh well, what the hell. And I climbed up the riverbank, and came upon some strangers’ wedding party where everyone looked hot and overdressed, anxious to get the pictures over with, and possibly also envious of my shoelessness and red bathing suit.  And as I felt the grass beneath my feet, it seemed perfectly valid to take the metro home, and eat a cheeseburger while reading a novel about rich families in New England.

Love, Erica.

And the same red bathing suit crashes a wedding in India.
Arombol Beach, Goa

Dear Vincent,

On my way to see you on Monday, July 30, 2018, a man rushed by me on Beaubien Street, and the man was carrying a sandwich in a plastic triangular box, and it’s possible the sandwich was made with a croissant, but it didn’t not look particularly delicious. To drink, the man had some Gingerale, and as he charged around me on the sidewalk he said,

“Ready to buy a lake house and get out of here.

Work, work, work, work, work, work, work.

I have everything except sanctity.”

Everything except sanctity and a lake house.

Wishing you and all of us, sanctity and a lake house.

Love, Erica.

Dear Tim Ferris,

When I imagine going on your podcast due to some brilliant Oprah Project I finally pulled off, and you ask me, “If you could put anything on a billboard and have millions or even billions of people see it, what would it say?” in fact, I have two answers. In fact, I cannot decide.

The first billboard says,

“Your life is of supreme importance. May you be free of your pain.”

And another one says,

“This is your strange and beautiful life. You can do all sorts of interesting shit. But you don’t have to. Your life does not need to be a spectacular TED talk.”

Sometimes your podcasts make me very tired, but I’d love to see you optimize menstruation.

Love, Erica.

This is your strange and beautiful life.

Dear Vincent,

Last November, soon after my 32nd birthday, I was considering my life goals and potential Oprah Projects, and I wrote this sentence:

Two things I really believe in are

Deep Cleans and Mondays without Vincent.

I always remember this sentence.

Love, Erica.

Interlude from the Self-Mutilating Parrot Family:

The Self-Mutilating Parrot family has guests. Grandmother, Aunt, and the Aunt's daughter, the Blonde Cousin from Australia. Soon it will be the Blonde Cousin’s fifth birthday. Over a breakfast of toast and butter and jam, her mother remarked, wow, that went so fast, and the two of them played a game in the hammock where the Blonde Cousin wrapped herself in the fabric and then emerged out of the crack, as though the hammock were a vagina, or a caesarean incision, and as though the Blonde Cousin were a baby being born. “Mama,” the Blonde Cousin said as she emerged, and her mother said, “You wouldn’t just come out and say that. It took you two years to say Mama. Before that it was always, Dada, Dada, Dada, and I felt so inadequate.”

In case you missed the very old news, the Self-Mutilating Parrot is spending its last days at Oka, and I wish the bird deep sanctity.

Dear Vincent,

What a thrill to run into you on Rue Beaubien, somewhere between St André and St Hubert. You were carrying a paper bag from Jean Coutu, and what a coincidence, I was headed there to, all set to buy deodorant and cinnamon gum so I could carcinogenically freshen up for Butt Club. (For those who wonder, Butt Club equals  a Democratic and sometimes Diplomatic Butt Exercise class in the park, and as fate would have it, it is the most famous poorly attended event I have ever invented, and truly the joy of my life.) Also, I needed to buy rubber gloves for the newest cleaner of my Deep Cleans empire. “Oh,” I said, when I saw you. “I am going there too.” Afterwards, I was rather proud of my very reasonable composure. Kindly, you smiled kindly.  I hope you liked my shirt.

Love, Erica.

It is approximately the one-year anniversary of Mondays without Vincent on the Internet. This is one of my most favourite un-famous things I have ever come up with. Send your emails to Vincent or Erica at the secret address ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. Your life is of supreme importance. May you be free of your pain. Love, Erica. 

Two things I really believe in are, Deep Cleans and Mondays without Vincent.

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Instagram: @deepcleanswitherica

Dear Vincent, Thank you for responding to my hysterical phone call.

Dear Vincent, Now you have three pen pals.

Dear Vincent, Long title about Oprah and her decadent plushy green chairs in the Oprah forest.