Dear Vincent, The best will be if I heal my knee, and maybe also my personality before irreversible climate change sets in.

Dear Vincent,

The best will be if I heal my knee, and maybe also my personality before irreversible climate change sets in. Hopefully, that will leave enough time for the low-grade literary masterpiece, and the Oprah Projects too.

Today my Pragmatic and Optimistic Darling Bestie gave me bodywork in exchange for when I cleaned her house for free during the second week of July when I was relatively underemployed. 

It seems the part of me that wants to kill myself is at the back of my right rib cage, just behind my liver. Maybe it’s too much trail mix and/or maybe some kind of detox tea will fix it. Inside my shoulders and chest, I am crying and also worried I am dying of the inflamed mole that sits around my sacrum and lowest vertebrae. If I die of the inflamed mole, it will be all my fault for not washing the pesticides off of the grapes, and for being such a bad sleeper, and pathologically accommodating. Life causes a lot of damage and healing takes a really, really long time. I wonder where all your sadness is. 

Love Erica.

Dear Vincent,

Dr. Joel does not think I meet the criteria for borderline personality disorder. Clap loud. He also said it does not sound like I ever found myself. I am not sure where else to look, and I said this to Dr. Joel. The recommendation is to stop seeing you within a few months and try therapy with someone else, either a sliding scale option or subsidized by my father. Dr. Joel said that therapy is not about drying your tears but figuring out what is wrong and acting on it. He asked if I was an empty person, and I said I never understand what that means. 

Simon, my dead ex-ex (ex-point five?) boyfriend who jumped off a building is not quite famous for saying, “I wonder what I’d be like if, like you, I’d been sent to psychologists from the age of eleven. If a bunch of people had played around in my head the way children play in the bathtub-I think that by now I would have died ten times already. I’ve already died ten times anyways.”

The bathtub analogy is not spectacular in English. Do you think it works better in French? Sometimes I feel like I’ve died seven times before breakfast. 

I know we can’t date, but there’s a nearby blood donor clinic on Thursday. Wanna give blood platonically? Just kidding. I recently menstruated most of my blood away anyways. 

Thanks for all the times you’ve dried my tears. 

Love, Erica. 

Dear Vincent,

I forgot to say that Dr Joel calls friends with benefits, friends with privileges. I think that was my favourite thing about him. When he stood up, it looked like he was still sitting in a chair. 

Basically what he said was, get your fucking shit together. In my life whenever someone has told me this, I freeze or sob momentarily, or for weeks, then I might make some vague progress, but often whatever I come up with entails some sort of half assed coasting. And so I confirm how much I suck, although to cut myself a break, most people’s lives end up following some kind of sad and generic default setting. 

The next thing I might write on my wall could be, Fuck Mental Health. I appreciate your relative optimism, but this may very well be my sad and generic default setting.

All that’s left to try is lifting weights, cervical orgasms, improved lunch strategies, and perhaps a more well-paying and/or prestigious job that doesn’t involve cleaning up other people’s messes. Though as you must know, most jobs entail cleaning up other people’s messes. One way or another. The last thing I might like to try is learning how to skateboard. I have a sexy new compression sleeve for my knee. See you tomorrow. 

Love, Erica.

Housemaid’s Knee, Clap Loud if You Believe in Borderline Personality Disorder

Friday, August 17, 2018

Dear Everybody,

Vincent could not come to the blood donor clinic. He said that blood made him uncomfortable, and so I apologized for discussing menstruation so extensively in so many of our sessions, and he forgave me. The blood donor clinic was full. They gave me some water that came in a plastic bottle which innovative entrepreneurs can someday turn into fancy yoga pants.  

Vincent and I will see each other again on Thursday, September 6, and then one more time on Monday, September 17. After that, it will be Mondays without Vincent forever, unless Vincent decides to make an unlikely  generous contribution to a beautiful blogging fairy tale, or to art.

On my way home from the blood donor clinic, I wept delicately on one park bench, and in one alley.

Last November I thought maybe I could walk across Canada for mental health the year I turned 33, but then I started micro-dosing on mushrooms, and then I became a low-grade famous cleaning lady, and I got distracted, and now I have what’s called, Housemaid’s Knee. Life plans always seem to stress me out or elude me. I will be 33 on October 29. My favourite things to do are to walk and to talk and write letters. My favourite things to buy are laundry soap, dish soap, and vinegar.

This morning I woke up at 2:20 a.m. Six hours later, I was still awake, and I wrote the names of The Beautiful Dead in smelly markers on the wall underneath my mildly distorted foot whose chronic toenail fungus is not illustrated. The names of the beautiful dead sprawl over to underneath my highly disproportionate right leg, and symbolic pelvis and Vincent’s quote, “I’ve heard worse.” Everybody likes Vincent’s sentence the best. Sentences that start with everybody are my favourite. Both of these sentences are written on the wall, beneath my highly disproportionate right leg, and symbolic pelvis, and Vincent’s quote, “I’ve heard worse.”

At 8:47 a.m. I left to clean the Self-Mutilating Parrot Family’s house. Everybody knows their parrot now flies free in a refuge in Oka. Or else it is dead with the rest of the Beautiful Dead. Either way, the shit on the walls is long gone.  

Vincent said that my love for him was presenting a challenge to his narcissism, both professionally and as a person, a person I only know eleven to thirteen and a half real things about. Vincent says that everybody has narcissism.  

It was the second week in a row that I wept not all that delicately while bending over the Self-Mutilating Parrot Family’s bathtub. I did an excellent job, both on the weeping, and on the bathtub, but then I set off the Jacuzzi function and the bathtub threw up, and I had to clean it twice.

Likely it was better that I ended up keeping all my blood for myself. I needed my blood for the tears and for the bathtub. The second time, I used bubble bath instead of dish soap. The Self-Mutilating Parrot Family never tends to have all that much dish soap. Now their bathtub smells like a baby.

The Beautiful Dead are Simon Girard, Penelope Parkes, Jadwiga Lukasik, Michael Stone, Tolulope llesanmi, Lia Kidner, Yarrow Viets, Doreen Wilson, and possibly the Self-Mutilating Parrot.

Sometimes we are so lucky to weep not all that delicately while bending over some overcommitted and chaotic household’s bathtub at 9:33 on a Friday morning. And sometimes we are not all that lucky.  

Everybody has to dry their own tears sometimes. Everybody has hard days.

Love, Erica.

There will be one to three more Mondays without Vincent posts. Then I'll get to working on the screenplay. Unless Vincent decides to make an unlikely and generous contribution to a beautiful blogging fairytale, or to art. Either way, your letters to Vincent and to me remain forever welcome at the secret address ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)come. Everybody has hard days sometimes. Someone is there for you when you feel most alone. Love always, Erica. 

Toilet paper is on sale at Jean Coutu for $3.99.
Sometimes we are so lucky.


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What a Beautiful Face
Dear Vincent, I went on my adventure. Everything is green. I love you.
Dear Vincent, I was floating on the joy of feeling seen, heard, felt and loved by you last Tuesday, November 21
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, You are not the only person I write letters to.  

Dear Vincent, On Thursday, January 4, 2018, I did not end up flying to the edge of Newfoundland and embarking on a long westward frigid and impossible walk across Canada in my boots that tend to become damp and cold within seven to 98 minutes of putting them on for the benefit of everyone’s mental health which feels like an emergency and also chronically neglected and in memory of Simon Girard who jumped off the roof of Sherbrooke Street’s le Tadoussac on Sunday, January 4, 2015.

Dear Vincent,

On Thursday, January 4, 2018, I did not end up flying to the edge of Newfoundland and embarking on a long westward frigid and impossible walk across Canada in my boots that tend to become damp and cold within seven to 98 minutes of putting them on for the benefit of everyone’s mental health which feels like an emergency and also chronically neglected and in memory of Simon Girard who jumped off the roof of Sherbrooke Street’s le Tadoussac on Sunday, January 4, 2015. Instead, I meditated while balancing Women Who Run with the Wolves on my head, worked my one and two-legged squat, and earned $60 cleaning one of my beloved attractive families' attractive home whose attractive Owl Lamp that once needed to be dusted is now nowhere to be found. Then I ate carrots and tahini butter and sugary trail mix for lunch, napped briefly and trudged to a woman’s singing circle that was supposed to help me get in touch with my inner wild woman.

The Wild Woman’s Singing Circle was at a yoga palace. The Yoga Palace had extra special extra dark mahogany floors that are likely a pain in the ass to keep clean though I could not tell because there was not enough light. Inside the Wild Woman’s Singing Circle lay a drum, a shaker, a digeridoo and a rain stick decorated with turquoise tissue paper and medium-sized heart stickers. A woman with bright and exciting tights and a young, ecstatic face welcomed me.

“Thank you for being here,” she said kindly.

She could play the drum the ukulele and had travelled extensively through South America where she felt extra close to the divine, especially when singing in Spanish, or in Portuguese.

My voice felt muted and self-conscious as we warmed up with unstructured chords and syllables.

“Just follow your intuition,” she urged the group. “Sing what sounds beautiful.”

Probably there were five women with soft open faces and spiritual pants seated on the circle’s varied and various cushions. Out of my mouth, nothing sounded beautiful. A few minutes into the spontaneous vowels and chords, three or four more people walked in. One of them was a man wearing a bright yellow t.shirt with the words LOVE written on it in big black letters.

“This is a women’s circle,” said the woman with the exciting bright tights and the ukulele.

“Oh,” said the dude in the bright yellow love t. shirt. “I didn’t realize that meant just for women. But we’re all one. We’re all love. I can bring my feminine energy.” He also offered to leave, but the woman with the exciting bright tights and the ukelele said that since he was already there, he was welcome, as long as nobody objected. Obviously, none of the women objected. You don’t want to be that woman, but I was tightening and repressing what I actually thought and could sense everyone else doing the same. Almost certainly, the Bright Yellow Love T.Shirt Man qualified as a prototypical SNAG. Everyone knows this stands for Sensitive New Age Guy, and that SNAGS are not my favourite. As soon as this SNAG sat down to sing, he sighed loudly, the kind of sigh that invites everyone to look at you and witness how happy and at peace you are. Happy and at peace, and miraculous.

Probably the sigh also says, look, my cells are undulating and dissolving and this makes me extremely special. And we are all one.

Sometimes my cells feel as though they are undulating and dissolving, and this is quite a comfort though it always passes within very little time. Painfully, the group attempted a song in Portuguese. The octaves were far beyond me and I picked up the rain stick covered in tissue paper and red medium sized heart stickers to try and mask the fact that there was no way I could sing. Not next to the Bright Yellow Love T.shirt SNAG, not in Portuguese, not so high. We tried an easier song about standing on top of a mountain, and God's universal, victorious, empowering and all-redeeming love. Bright Yellow Love T. Shirt SNAG kept moaning and sighing and I kept looking outside and thinking about escaping before twilight and sneaking into Simon’s building le Tadoussac and throwing flowers off the rooftop except that the rooftop would be locked and I didn’t feel like forking over money for flowers with the $60 I’d earned that day if the flowers would only dissolve and perish by the time I got to Sherbrooke Street and Simon would most likely not give a shit, one way or another.

Write your fucking book, Simon would surely have said to me some time in the past year or so, if Simon were still alive and the two of us ended up not being estranged which is not particularly likely.

Dead, dead and more dead, I’d say back.

We started singing sounds according to the vowels of each chakra and I decided I needed to play the card, My ex-ex boyfriend jumped off a building three years ago today and I need to get the fuck out of here. Even though I was not exactly irreparably sad. Only vaguely twitchy, and vaguely teary. Vaguely twitchy and vaguely teary, I played the card, and got the fuck out of there.

On the steps of the yoga palace lay a stray and saggy, soggy glove and this made me think of when Simon used to warm his hands and mine with the forgotten gloves that people scattered all over Montreal in the dead of winter. Almost all these gloves were chic and black leather, but sometimes you were stuck wearing two right-hand gloves, or two left ones.

As it turns out, when you say no, you disappoint people, and they won’t like you as much. Still, we are all love and we are all one. It says so on so many t. shirts, bright yellow and otherwise.

It’s healthier not to give a fuck, Simon always said, and I’ve considered writing these words on my wall in smelly markers, though I fear I’d become very sick of the words very quickly.

From Apartment Number 814 of the Tadoussac where Simon lived, I walked to the dreary grey stairwell and climbed. Simon’s apartment number 814 added up to 13, and this could have been unlucky for him. Like most apartment buildings, the Tadoussac skips from the 12th to the 14th floor, and I find this sad and hilarious and strange. The sounds of my boots that tend to become damp within seven to 98 minutes of putting them on echoed and I remembered climbing these stairs with Simon in January of 2011. My knees had become sore since at the time, I’d been so obsessed with yoga that my body was far too flexible, and not exactly strong enough. Simon preferred climbing the stairs as opposed to the mountain to ensure he wouldn’t run into to very many people. At the 23^rd floor, I came upon a boy, perhaps four or five years old who descended with his father. They’d just gone swimming and their hair was wet.

Est-ce qu’on devrait compter les escaliers en français et en anglais? asked the boy's father. The little boy didn’t think so and they continued to count  the stairs in French. Un deux trois, etc.  The door to the swimming pool that used to lead to the rooftop was locked.  And anyways, likely they locked the rooftop in the winter to protect the other Simons. I walked down the stairwell back to the eighth floor and took the elevator, exiting through the back of the building where Simon had fallen onto the pavement. I’m not sure exactly where.

My calves have been sore ever since, and it could be from the stairs, or from the one-legged and two-legged squats, or from cleaning and walking somewhat excessively, just about every single day. But my legs are strong and my knees don’t hurt.

Rumi says, “The Light Changes. I need more grace then I thought.”

Elizabeth Gilbert says, “Grace says nothing except that I am splendid.” She says this to Oprah on a Super Soul Sunday. I want to be one of those people with an Important Hero’s Quest. Like Oprah and Elizabeth Gilbert.

We are all love.

I’ve thought of drawing my victim wings on my wall in smelly markers. Around the border of the wings I will write, “Grace says nothing except that you are splendid.”

“Grace says nothing except that you are splendid.”

Every Friday with vinegar and a magical micro fiber cloth, I clean the door of the same stainless steel fridge. On the fridge hangs a butterfly, decorated according to the kindergarten technique where you dabble a bunch of paint on one half of the picture and then fold the paper in half so that the paint spreads to other side, and you have double the colours and double the art. I remember doing the exact same painting routine in Ms. Strotman’s kindergarten class, and then the evening my parents invited Ms. Strotman for dinner I showed off and did the painting routine again. And I folded the paper like an accordion, and clipped it with a clothespin so that my butterfly was 3-dimensional and the wings were nothing but splendid.

The fridge belongs to a lovely family. Attractive, though without an Owl Lamp, they once owned a self-mutilating parrot whose angst had caused him to pluck out all the feathers around his neck. Apparently this is quite common. Now the self-mutilating parrot is flapping his wings in a bird refuge in Oka, north-east of Montreal. There he can fly freely amongst birds with feathered and un-feathered necks and wings that are nothing but splendid. After he went away to Okay, it took about six weeks before I got rid of all the self-mutilating bird shit on the walls and on the floors. The fridge stayed as shiny as ever, at least every Friday.

Selfie, with Vinegar

Outlines of victim wings also look a bit like floppy ears. Floppy ears, a bow tie, and I can’t think of anything else, except perhaps an elephant head, or the shape of certain elbows when someone places their hands squarely on their hips. Or fingerless gloves, their mouths placed side by side.

I like to imagine my victim wings, undulating and then dissolving behind my shoulder blades until they fall to the ground and perish. And I listen for Grace and she says very little, but enough.

Love you always,

Erica.

Send your letters to Vincent and/or Erica to ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. Vincent may say very little, but Erica will surely say that you are splendid.

Simon Girard 1979-2015
"It's healthier not to give a fuck."


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What a Beautiful Face
Dear Vincent, This is what the Dead Inside Man says about Killing Yourself
Dear Vincent, I was floating on the joy of feeling seen, heard, felt and loved by you last Tuesday, November 21


Professional, Depressed

Dear Vincent, This is what the Dead Inside Man says about killing yourself.

Dear Vincent,

This is what the Dead Inside Man says about killing yourself. Last fall, along with the Married Man, the Dead Inside Man was one of my texting boyfriends, following five to seven solid fucks and leg humps in Toronto. The Dead Inside Man has been seeing the same therapist one to two times per week for 31 and a half years. One rainy day, I sent him a blubbering text as I blubbered in my red rain coat after a session with you last October or November of 2016. It didn’t like the system I’d come up with for dealing with my organism and with me life could ever be made viable. And whatever it would take to reprogram the system, I certainly did not have. Also I’d awoken that day between three and four o’clock in the morning. For whatever reason.

This is what the Dead Inside Man texted back:

As someone who has stood on a bridge, contemplating suicide more times than I can count, I keep coming to the same conclusion: just keep going a bit longer because why not.

T’es important. Suicide n’est pas une option. That’s what it says on a poster along the hallway that leads to your windowless office. You are important. Suicide is not an option.

“I’m sorry, but it is an option.” That’s what you, Vincent, said on Thursday, January 4, 2015, two years after my ex-ex boyfriend Simon threw himself off his 23-story apartment building and died in a parking lot between Coloniale and de Buillion street, just north of Sherbrooke. “But it leaves a fucking mess for whoever gets left behind.” Blood on the pavement and an excruciating silence. Everyone always says something about this mess, but they forget that the mess is never just one person’s fault.

Dead Inside Man:

You can do whatever you want with your life.

You owe no one anything.

If you want to travel the world you can. If you want to live on the street you can.

If you want to commit suicide, you can.

But not all of it is easy.

The day that you admitted that suicide was an option, I knew that I could trust you. Last Saturday evening, I went to a meditation class and as I sat in the circle, it occurred to me that almost absolutely the teacher to my left had thought about killing themself. Who meditates without thinking about this? The only solution is to pretend that you’re too busy. Build your plastic empire, build your plastic house. Build your plastic house which soon enough will float away to the massive plastic continent somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean where maybe some business savvy rich guy will try to build a condo development.

Dead Inside Man:

Getting better is hard.

Really hard sometimes.

And if you want to give up in a year or two years or five you can.

But it's worth trying to get better. The option is always there to quit.

Life is changing because now when I weep somewhat delicately at the stand-up corner of a popular café and I see the woman behind me has a full box of Kleenex and I ask if I can have one, she says yes and she does not bat an eye. In the new world, strangers offer Kleenex for your grief and they do not bat an eye. The people who weep somewhat delicately at cafes for no apparent reason are not quite aliens. Not anymore.

Dead Inside Man: Think of it like this: you're in a crowded theatre. You start to panic that you're trapped. You look to the exit and just knowing it's there fills you with reassurance.

Doesn't mean you're going to use it. Just means you like to know there's an escape.

Don't kill yourself. But don't beat yourself up for having suicidal thoughts."

For Simon just the exit sign wasn’t quite enough. We can be angry at him for leaving us with the image of him crashing down on the pavement. But the mess was not only his fault. Though he could have had one more good day, or even ten more mediocre to alright years, probably it wouldn’t have been enough. I respect his choice.

Stored on my phone, I keep screenshots of the Dead Inside Man’s texts.

Don’t kill yourself. But don’t beat yourself up for having suicidal thoughts.

In the new world, everyone knows all the options. And they bring Kleenex.

“Do you need one more before I leave?” asks the stranger as she put on her coat.

“Oh, I’m okay. Thank you,” I say. After she leaves, I weep delicately one last time, and then I trudge out. I remain in the income bracket of people who use toilet paper for Kleenex. But life is always changing. I know all my options and I love you. Outside the world looks so sunny and fresh. It is unimaginably cold, and, you’d think that the air would be so clean, but really it is not clean at all. No, in fact it is not clean at all.

I know all my options and I love you.

Erica.  

Send your letters to Vincent to ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.

Happy Face with Onesie.


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Guillaume, Part Two
Dear Vincent, It seems no matter who I'm having sex with, I ugly cry every other time.
Professional, Depressed
The Magical Rock Vagina Cleanse

Today is Holy Thursday, and Meditating is a Holy Hell of a Time.

Title:


Today is Holy Thursday
and Meditating is
a Holy Hell
of a Time


Text:


There are weeks and
months
of my life
when I have a total hell
of a time
meditating.


Everyone knows I like to meditate while balancing, "Women Who Run with the Wolves" on my head. "Women Who Run with the Wolves" is the only hardcover book I own.


In fact, that is not true.


I have a small hardcover book written by Eric Emmanuel Schmidt which I found in the Mile End Armoire where all the hipsters leave their junk. Altogether I possess five books. This includes Ina May's Guide to Childbirth which I'm only borrowing. 


The novel by Eric Emmanuel Schmidt is not big enough to balance on my head.


I like to keep
French novels on my bedside table
in case that helps me learn French
while I'm sleeping. 


Matthew Sanford is a yoga teacher and paraplegic and he says that balancing books on your head has similar benefits to handstand.


Other yoga teachers are somewhat concerned about headstand's risk to the cervical spine. 


Headstands are one of the three things I know about my therapist Vincent.  Vincent is learning to stand on his head. The thought of this warms my heart. Good for Vincent.


The other two things I know about Vincent are:
1. He seems to like citrus and apples.
2. He is skeptical about cooking with a crock pot as he believes that excess moisture might disrupt potential flavour. 


It's possible that Vincent also plays tennis, but this I cannot confirm. 


I did not quite finish what I had to say about balancing a book on my head. 


While I was in Delhi,
I balanced Lena Dunham's book,
Not That Kind of Girl
on my head.


I meditated in the beautiful living room of my Cool Friend Fern's swanky apartment.
(I don't have a lot of experience
with the word swanky)
One time at my sister's house, I also balanced Not That Kind of Girl on my head.
(I wonder if Lena Dunham meditates)


That book was reasonably entertaining. I finished it on the train to Agra on the way to see the Taj Mahal and my billionth fort in two and a half weeks. I ended up giving Not That Kind of Girl to some fourteen to seventeen year old rickshaw drivers. I hope they made it to part about female orgasms being like a sneeze or like a seizure. For whatever reason, this was one of my favourite parts. I also liked the chapter about death. Just like Lena's brain, my brain is constantly permeated with the possibility of death and imminent catastrophe.


Me and Lena. 
Such kindreds.


In addition to our death fixations, me and Lena both like sex and have each had our times in the sun with psychiatric pharmaceuticals. Unlike Lena, I never had a boyfriend who left me with the unforgettable knowledge on how to avoid tangling up your headphones forever. None of my boyfriends have helped me with this. Alas, and alack, more or less.


What I do
when I'm having
a total
or holy
hell of a time
meditating
with Women Who Run with the Wolves
on my head:


Some people claim that to meditate for 30 minutes per day holds immense benefits. In many cases, this is true. One time on Facebook, I came up with the brilliant equation, 3+6+9+12=30. That is to say, you can meditate in chunks and do laundry in between. Everybody loved this tip. Today I did not bother with chunks, and bailed after fifteen minutes. I also did not bother to stretch my hamstrings or exert my ass muscles.


But here are some other tips, for you, or for Lena Dunham or for anyone else who wants to meditate:


1. Instead of sitting, lie down. Lying down is badass and radical.


You can stare at the clouds,
or the clotheslines, or the squirrels.
Or, close your eyes. Give the earth yours cells, and unravel, with tears, or without.


2. Think METTA phrases:
Toward yourself:
May I be safe,
may I be happy,
may I be healthy,
may I live with ease, and/or be free, and/or taste the perpetual and delicious goodness of lovingkindness as often as possible


Toward your roommates and/or your mother: May you + the above phrases.
 
For the whole world: May all and/or may we + the above phrases


3. I'm sorry, I love you, I forgive you, I thank you.


Simon, my ex-ex boyfriend the Hermit told me this one. You repeat it to yourself slash to your ego. Or to people who are driving you nuts. After two days of this meditation, Simon claimed he was cured. Simon jumped out of this world on January 4, 2015. He gave the earth all of his cells. By now his body has transformed into something entirely new. I was lucky to know him.


4. Look at yourself in the mirror and repeat, "I love you just the way you are," or some other version of this. You can use a full-length mirror or just look at your face in the circle of your cover-up's compact. Please refrain from this exercise if it feels oppressive. I first learned of this sort of thing while reading Louise Hayes' book, "You Can Heal Your Life" as I considered various options for healing toenail fungus. One of the first things Louise gets her clients to do is to stare at themselves in a compact mirror and whisper to their faces, "I Love You." Most people cannot do this without weeping. I believed Louise and did not bother trying for a solid eight years. Now it is 2017 and the approximate anniversary of when Jesus washed his apostles' feed. I have taken up painting my ugly toenails purple. And somehow I am able to stare at my face in the tiny compact mirror, and whisper, "I LOVE YOU, ERICA."


On Tuesday, April 11, while I was staring at my face, I plucked only one stray hair between my eyebrows.


Like Lena Dunham, as a child of the nineties, I suffer from odd eyebrow chunks, and arbitrary bald patches. There's me and Lena, once again. 


The last thing
I have to say
is about citrus. 


But the second last thing is about Holy Thursday
when the Catholics get together
and wash each other's feet.


When I was nineteen years old, I was a bit of a darling. And I signed up to live and work in a L'Arche home for people with intellectual disabilities. For two years, I attended some sort of Catholic function at least two times per week. Many of us have a deep aversion to anything Catholic. I get that. The homophobia, anti-abortion discourse, and priests raping children - these make for quite the buzz kills. And yet, in my two years of kicking around the Catholics, I found that this brand of Jesus people are some of my favourites. Especially the nuns. I met so many spectacular and generous and delightful nuns. These humble women embodied service more deeply than anything I'd ever seen.


Anyways, the first time I ever ended up at a Foot Washing Ceremony was rather astonishing. I felt shocked to discover that it wasn't a metaphor. We were actually gonna take our socks off.  Everyone washed someone else's feet and everyone's feet got washed.


Through the whole thing, the song they sang over and over again went,
"If I your Lord and Master, should wash, should wash your feet,
how much more must you, wash one another's too?"


I have often thought that as the baby boomers age, becoming one of those foot technicians who clips ingrown toenails, shaves off callouses and vacuums corns would almost certainly secure a solid income stream into this digital age, and beyond.


Now I will conclude with a short poem about citrus that was written on Monday, April 10, the Full Moon's Eve, and 2017's most beautiful day so far, on which I felt devastatingly oversized and rather weepy:


The world is in bloom.
I'm having a fat day.
I did not know
that worms do not
like citrus.
Once I brought a mason jar
of citrus
mixed with vodka
up the mountain.
Two minutes ago
I looked into the window
and saw white pieces
of citrus in my hair.


The End.

A holy hell of a time
meditating
to you.


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Not That Kind of Girl 
We have no idea if the squirrels are happy/or/ if anyone is
The Lying Down Club

First no boundaries on the Internet. Then psychotic break.

Flying away
Like butterflies
In poetry
Is probably over.

Stunned.

Or dead.
The bird might appear
both ways.

Seratonin

Intoxication.
The squirrels are
the homeless people.

Jumping off buildings.

Running into windows.

Professionals of drama.

How to make this lucrative.
First no boundaries on the Internet.
Then psychotic break.

I love you and I miss you.

Two nights ago
I dreamt I shattered
the Selfie Mirror
on purpose.

Still in tact,

its lightning bolt border
of purple nail polish
pissed me off.

Several years

Of misfortune ahead.
I still felt there
was more to destroy.

The broken glass

nearly reflected
my rage,
but not quite.

The End.


The Selfie Mirror


Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go

Bodhisattva Business Ventures:

Deep Cleans by Erica J. Schmidt (@deepcleanswitherica)
Montreal Hippie Threads (@mtlhippiethreads)
Instagram: montrealhippiethreads


Hi, my name is Erica. I'm having thoughts of Death.
Why you are a hermaphrodite.
Simon Girard (1979-2015)