Dear Vincent, Sorrowful Simon has written you a letter.

Dear Vincent,

Sorrowful Simon has written you a letter. He sounds quite sad. Sorrowful Simon initially reached out to me on the dating site, OkCupid. We’ve never met in real life. My excuse for not going a date with him was that I had already experienced a Sorrowful Simon in a rather extensive way. You, and some other people know that the first Sorrowful Simon in my life ended up jumping off a building. Perhaps my excuse for not going on a date was adequate. Now I have repeated the name, “Sorrowful Simon,” four-and now five-times in one paragraph. That’s enough times. It is time to address Simon’s plight.

 

Simon says,

 

By habit, or because they sense that I’m not doing too good, friends have been asking me how I am feeling more frequently lately, and I’m finding it difficult to answer them with any degree of clarity. Like Erica, I had a therapist which really helped me a few months back, and in the same way I ran out of allowed sessions so we had to part ways. Since then, I have strived to keep clarifying my feelings and emotions in my head, but inevitably I get lazy and stop doing it regularly, which then makes it harder to do so, and the cycle leads to where I’m at right now, I guess: having so much in my head that nothing can get out, or just barely, sometimes when I get drunk/high and start writing poems, or if I start talking with a friend or a lover and I’m in the right frame of mind (but then sooner or later I start thinking that I’m boring that person, imposing, or just not making sense, and I reel back my outspoken outburst).

 

Dear Simon, How are you?

 

So easily this question can trigger such performance anxiety. It sounds like your friends genuinely care and want to know, and yet you feel like you can’t quite open up, because what if the true answer is actually too much? My sense is that many people feel as though if they were to honestly reveal themselves, all their feelings and suffering and struggles, that this would be way too much for those around them. An unacceptable and tedious burden. And so you hold back. But this doesn’t sound like a viable option, since it is building up to more than you can bear. You need a mode of expression, a means of release. I’m sorry that therapy is no longer available. How can you replicate some of the relief it provided?

 

Alcohol and drugs, well, these can have their place, as long as they’re pursued without desperation or addiction. But substances have their limits as long-term sources of comfort. In my experience, they tend to isolate over time, in addition to generating shame and/or oblivion, whether immediate or in their aftermath. Thus, with as clear a mind as you can access, I think you need to reach out to real people, either your friends, or the kind voices at the end of a crisis helpline. Choose the most non-judgmental and compassionate person you can find, perhaps not your mother, but maybe. And then speak. So frequently I hear of people finally opening up to their loved ones, disclosing the deep and seemingly intolerable darkness on their hearts. And you know what their loved ones say? “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

 

Simon:

 

There are so many things I could say right now, things which I know are weighing down on me, but to explain them in a coherent manner would require so much back-story… I don’t know if you would think it relevant or even intelligible.

 

Some of those things concern my ex-wife and children… some are about the situation with my current lover… some are about my day-to-day life and yearnings… about writing, which I still consider to be my vocation, but a failed one… but mostly it’s about Loneliness, which (I realized recently) I am more afraid of than Death (which is paradoxical, seeing as I am a solitary person by nature, and quite enjoy solitude).

 

At some point it will likely be worthwhile to rehash and unleash all the backstory. But right now I want to talk about writing. Writing and then Loneliness. But first writing. Although failing at any vocation sounds immensely painful, writing is a particularly loaded thing to fail at. There are all sorts of so-called empowering self-help books on how to awaken your creativity and write incessantly, prolifically, uninhibitedly, and with unrelenting joy, great brilliance and then you get rich and famous. I have read most of these books. Last summer, I threw out a book called, “The Right to Write” and I hope to avoid encountering such publications for the rest of my life.

 

No book will grant you with “The Right to Write.” It is all yours. Always. As for vocations and failure, humans invented both of these things, and while I don’t want to invalidate your perception, it could be helpful to challenge your beliefs on what it is you are “supposed” to be doing, and what it means to be successful.

 

On the bathroom wall of where I am staying, there’s a list written by a 90-year-old woman, containing 45 lessons that life taught her. The woman’s name is Regina

One of Regina’s lessons is, “All that really matters in the end, is that you loved.”

It’s possible that this sentence provides you with absolutely no relief. It might even fill you with cynicism. But I want you to consider what your list would be. Will becoming a successful writer truly provide you with the redemption you think you need? What societal bullshit are you clinging to? What personal bullshit are you clinging to? When you are 90 years old or younger and dying, what choices will seem like excruciating mistakes? What memories will bring you peace? What does your meaningful life look like? As Oprah would say, “What do YOU want?”

 

I used to think I wanted to be a best-selling novelist. Over and over again, I would write the first 80 pages of “My Life’s Work.” Then one morning after cranking my various spines through a sweaty yoga practice in India, I realized, the hell with it. I don’t want to write novels. The act of writing novels entails a whole slew of tasks I don’t particularly enjoy. For example, making things up. Rewriting drafts of long and imaginary stories over and over again. Writing about something other than myself and my own life. Well, this embarrassing, but honest. And what a relief to let that so-called dream unravel.

 

You get to choose the terms of your own success, creative or otherwise. During the spring of 2015, I decided that I would combat the unrelenting notion that I was perpetually failing creatively by committing to publishing two blogs per week, no matter what. This became my creative practice, and though I only maintained it religiously for a few months, it got me out of an angsty stagnant funk. I came up with a whole bunch of work that I am proud of and that even made me feel more at peace about the possibility of dying. Some people read it and most of the world didn’t. To a certain extent, Margaret Atwood’s experience is not all that different. We are all like Margaret Atwood, and not at all.

 

So I am wondering, Simon, if perhaps you could somehow take the “failure” and “vocation” out of your story about being a writer. Is there some sort of tangible and low pressure creative practice that might bring you a sense of accomplishment and joy? Ten minutes of rambling on the bus, a heartfelt email every afternoon, beginning the day with your pen and notebook and three to five sentences. Come up with something that’s small enough to pull off, but large enough to not feel like a cop out. During the times in my life when I am writing, no matter what I’m writing, and no matter what else is going on, I hate myself less, and am also less lonely.

 

That’s all I will say about loneliness this time. I will leave Simon, Vincent and our readers with the poem Simon wrote at the end of his letter:

 

I’m just half a person

part of me withered

(like Janus looking

at Death & Life

at the same time)

but still

I must take on

the Whole of my Life

 

no wonder

I’m so tired

-by Simon.

 

Yes, Simon, I can see why you’re tired. I’d be tired too. I wish you the deepest and most unshakeable peace available.

 

With love to Vincent and to this and every Simon,

Erica.


The End.


Vincent was my therapist from October of 2016, and May 2017. After we ran out of subsidized sessions, I began to write him daily imaginary emails. I called the project, "Mondays without Vincent," and it turned out to be quite healing. You too can write imaginary emails to Vincent. In fact, if you'd like, you can send them to me, on any day of the week.

My secret address is: ericaschmidt85(at)gmail.com.

Let me know if you’d like a response. The correspondence can remain between us, or else we can share it here with others and maybe it could be healing for everyone. Love, Erica.

"What truly happy person needs to stand in front of the mirror every morning to convince themselves they're happy?"
-Mark Manson, The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck.
Not me, Mark. No. Not me.




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Dear Vincent, This letter is about saving a begonia. Love, Erica.
Mourning, Wailing, Yearning, Wake Up.
Five Days of Creative Recovery

The Lying Down Club

As I compose compelling skin care copy, the blog is supposed to be on hiatus. Despite this, I am inspired to write a response to Angela Jamison’s lovely and recent post called “Rest.” Among writers and bloggers, Angela is one of my favourites. Her masterfully selected words stick with you for a long time.

“Rest.” by Angela Jamison is the perfect complement to "How to Wake Up to Yoga,"and "How to Get Up for Yoga Again."

 (Forgive me if I sound like a bottle of re-hydrating anti-age serum. The syntax has permeated my cells.)

Angela Jamison
Ashtanga Yoga, Ann Arbor

 Says Angela,

“Waking up, check. Around here, we like intensity, sharp focus, and fire. Life on the razor’s edge is sweet and clear. But if you only practice getting up strong, and do not practice going to bed soft, then imbalances can form in the nervous system over the long term. Some of the first indicators of lack of deep rest may be: fuzzy mind, emotional unavailability or reactivity, and susceptibility to illness. In this light, deep rest enables creativity, meaningful relationships, and vibrancy.

Conscious relaxation shows in a person’s bodily tissues, in the personality, and in how she relates with time and with the earth. It is the foundation of Jedi mind training.”

I’ve never had too much trouble waking up early. From the age of seven, the hands of my Mickey Mouse watch directed an extensive routine that involved walking the dog, practicing the violin and writing eloquent letters to my grandparents in Manitoba. These letters came out every single day. With my smelly Mr. Sketch markers, I lovingly decorated the envelopes. Over the years, the morning routine evolved and devolved to encompass grueling swim team workouts, and icy runs with ankle and wrist weights.  

As for sleeping, typically I am not terrible. Early into my Ashtanga days, I stopped consuming caffeine around noon, if not much earlier. Like clockwork, a chai at 12:30 results in mild reverberations extending past midnight. If someone needed a sleep coach, stopping caffeine at lunchtime would be my first piece of advice. Alcohol at any time, and Netflix past 8 p.m., these are also risky gambles. Maybe it is worth it sometimes, especially during family visits. You’ll have to figure this out for yourself.

Many Ashtangis go through a stage of being obsessed with food. Little to no dinner seems to be a trend, the ostensible key to a light and energized practice. I’ve tried this a few times, in Mysore and at Vipassana. Most often it ends with me sitting in the dark, quite hungry.  My body has pretty clear needs, and pretty clear signals. This, I have come to appreciate. Keeps the Divorce Diet in check. The Vipassana People eventually took pity on me. By Day 3, they permitted evening peanut butter sandwiches. By Day 7, they granted me a dinner tray with my name on it, plus after hours fridge access. Everyone is different.

Let’s talk about imbalances in the nervous system. During my seven and a half years of unfailingly waking up for yoga, utter exhaustion definitely came up. In January of 2013, I started a job speaking French to (mostly) three, four and five year olds at a Montessori School. It entailed that I rush out of the house to catch the bus at 7:30 a.m. One hour commute, followed by 8 to 9 hours uttering futile sentences to erratic tiny humans. Before embarking on this high-intensity process, I considered it essential that I crank myself through second series, which meant waking up at 4 or 4:30 a.m. It never occurred to me that maybe I could take it down a notch, in the service of early childhood education. Oh no. Didn’t want to “lose” my practice. Within three months, my coping skills had deteriorated to verge on clinical insanity. My body developed an awkward series of involuntary twitches, replicating a bus driver in anticipation of a head-on collision. My mind became flooded with traumatic memories from the eighth grade. Each night I would wail to the Boatman about some traumatic 12-year-old injustice. Particularly raw was the time everyone on the swim team was invited to Kayla Clark’s fourteenth birthday party. Everyone except for me. After five months at the Montessori School, the left bottom half of my body went out of commission. I cut my practice down to fifteen minutes. The twitches and traumatic memories dwindled almost immediately.

Rest is important. I often wonder to what extent hauling dogged ass at non-negotiable hours in the morning has impeded my long-term healing. So many of my Ashtanga years were spent in a state of mild to severe emotional catastrophe, not to mention unambiguous joint pain. To the emotional catastrophe, my fellow practitioners and various teachers would reply, “Oh, the practice is bringing stuff up. You’re getting into the good stuff. It’s working.” They made it sound as though clarity and peace were just around the corner. Although it was pleasant to believe that my suffering stemmed from an important and profound spiritual cause, I now believe that a component of my spiritually “good stuff” was nothing but simple, inconsolable fatigue.

An essential, and often neglected ingredient: Take Rest Posture. Lying Down Club. Sharath insists that it isn’t savasana. Call it what you like, it has never been my specialty. Too hungry, too horny, too caffeinated, whatever the reason, my lying down efforts joined the miserably pathetic four years ago when I moved to Halifax. Ten seconds, ten breaths. I became terrified of lying down. Sometimes a song would help, as long as pressing play didn’t coincide with examining the interwebs and all that Wifi and cellular data had to offer.

Mr. Iyengar recommended that for every 30 minutes of asana, the yoga practitioner should take five minutes of rest. In Mysore, after approximately thirty seconds, Sharath would send us on our way. “Thank you very much. Take rest at home.”  The committed amongst us wouldn’t stop for a coconut. The rest of us would, and maybe that was that.  

Lie down, take rest. Practice dying. Such a difficult posture. Most of the other asanas, I’ve traded in for this. Give the earth your cells. I got this phrase from a contact improv teacher in Halifax. I went to her class the day I decided to leave. In the end, you can’t keep anything.

I lie down to practice dying, and give my cells to the earth. It feels like everything’s unravelling.

Here are some things I think about when I’m trying to relax:

-Metta: "May all be safe, may all be happy, may all be healthy, may all live with ease."

Funnily enough, I learned this from an elephant journal article. While you’re thinking it, you can pay attention to how your heart feels. I used to do this in front of the yoga shala in Mysore, as I waited for the gates to open.

-Another phrase:

"I’m sorry, I forgive you, I love you, I thank you."

I learned this from Simon, my ex-ex-boyfriend who jumped off a building in January. Simon said that you’re supposed to repeat this phrase, both to your ego, and to the world.  The practice cured Simon in three and a half days. It will take me longer than this.

-The Buddha’s last words to Ananda, who served by the Buddha’s side for fifty years or more. As the Buddha lay dying, he said this to Ananda. It makes me wish my name was Ananda:

“Ananda,” said the Buddha,

“Everything breaks down.
Tread the path with care.
Nothing is certain.
Trust yourself.”

Big love to Angela Jamison. Deep rest for all.

The End.

By Angela at AY:A2

Rest.

How to Wake Up for Yoga

How to Get Up for Yoga Again

Baby Jedi

 
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The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two
Simon
Brand New Mysore Clubs
I read "Choose Yourself" by James Altucher and my oxytocin levels increased immediately.
Yours Til Ekam Inhales

 

What a Beautiful Face

Three scars on my body are from dead people. The first one is on my left cheek, the cheek on my face, just outside my first dimple. The scar beside the dimple is a small thin line. It’s from D’Arcy. We were three and four years old, and my mother had let us play with adult sewing scissors. I had the yellow ones, and his were orange. I really wanted the orange scissors. When D’Arcy said no, I snipped the air in front of my face. D’Arcy took his orange scissors and snipped the skin on my face. The doctors taped it together. My mother once said that D’Arcy was a strange child, perhaps because he was a test tube baby. But I started the fight. In his early twenties, D’Arcy died suddenly and mysteriously in his sleep, lying in his girlfriend’s arms. They think he choked.

My second scar blends in almost perfectly with my forehead wrinkles. It’s above my left eyebrow. The dent runs seamlessly into my lines of premature ageing. This scar is from Yarrow Viets’s s goggles. A swimming collision. My fault. I was always so focussed and obsessive that I did a terrible job looking in front of me. We were doing a bunch of 300’s when we crashed. I remember Yarrow covering her eye and weeping so delicately. I have never been a delicate weeper. Yarrow Viets was very beautiful. For the rest of practice, she rested. I plowed through, logging in 5000 or 6000 meters. When I got home, my mother pointed out that my forehead was cracked open. This time, the doctors closed up the wreckage with glue. On June 18, Yarrow Viets died of stage 4 colon cancer.  She had young twin boys and hundreds of friends. It was unbelievably sad.

My last scar is from Simon. A vague, faded red blob on my left thigh. All of my dead people scars are on the left.  This one happened on a Saturday morning. My friends Bobbi and Fern were going to pick me up and drive me to an A.A. meeting. Fern says that all the addictions are kind of the same, and so you can go to A.A. even if you just only have an eating disorder. Well, I love A.A. meetings. And I have put in sincere time trying to be an alcoholic, with minimal success. So I was getting ready. I had just poured boiling water into the French press when someone unlocked my door. It was Simon. Without thinking, I pushed down the plunger. The spout was open and coffee spilled all over my left thigh. Simon gave me ice. He asked if he could come to the A.A. meeting. I said yes, but I was terrified he would say something obnoxious and embarrassing. He did say something, though it wasn’t obnoxious. It made me kind of proud.

“Hi, my name is Simon.”

“Hi Simon.”

Simon was nine hours sober. He told us a story about him and his pop. They’d been going through rough times, not really communicating. Then a couple of days earlier, they’d had a moment.

“We were together, and my pop said something touching. And I knew that I loved him. And I felt at peace. Or close to peace.  And… I’m just glad I was sober.” With that, Simon started sobbing. He went up to the front of the room and took a beginner’s A.A. chip. At the end of the meeting, there was coffee and doughnuts. Everyone went to shake Simon’s hand. His was the share of the meeting. Simon basked in the doughnuts and the handshakes, until Bobbi cut in. “Good share. Let’s go,” said Bobbi, always down to business. For months, Simon said this over and over again. “Good share. Let’s go.”

The burn on my leg looked horrible and purple. I was afraid it would lead to blood poisoning, and that this would lead to amputation. Bobbi and Fern dropped us off at my shitty downtown apartment on Overdale Street. Simon and I fucked on my disgusting futon, on my disgusting floor. It felt like the start of something redeeming.

That afternoon, Simon brought aloe vera to the swimming pool where I was a lifeguard. That evening, he got drunk again. Everyone knows that Simon jumped off his apartment building on January 4^th. Since he was a child, he always wanted to know what it was like to throw himself in the air from way up high. For three to seventeen seconds, I guess he got to know. His building is so high.  I brought daisies to the rooftop last Sunday. It was Simon’s 36^th birthday, so wet and dreary and cold. I couldn’t look over the edge.

Good share. Let’s go.

I once helped get Simon a job, working with a man with cerebral palsy at a day centre. The man’s name is Antoine. (I changed it for the blog) It is nice when men with disabilities get to have male caregivers. So many caregivers are female and they’re lovely, but when you’ve been surrounded by women for much of your life, maybe you appreciate a change. Simon didn’t view Antoine as someone he had to take care of. He wanted to be his friend.

“I feel so ready to give my inconditional love to someone like Antoine,” he wrote.

I just looked up these words in our old emails. In my head, I remember him saying: “I am ready to go crazy and open my heart and give Antoine all of my love.” He was so excited. Right before he got the job, he’d been kicked off welfare. Now he wouldn’t have to do so many drug studies for cash.

Together, Simon and Antoine had a wonderful blast. The teacher gave lessons on pictograms and phonograms. Simon made jokes the whole time, and Antoine burst into one fou rire after another. Fou Rire, crazy laugh. For an entire year, they worked on a text about hot dogs. I never got a chance to read it. Even after Simon left the job at the centre, he and Antoine used to go out for movies and hamburgers. Last fall they went to a safari park. There’s an amazing photo of them in the car. Simon’s feeding a camel a carrot. Antoine has this radiant and exquisite smile all over his face. One day after the movies, they went to McDonald’s. Together, they bought extra hamburgers. Simon led Antoine into the street where some kids were squeegeeing cars. Antoine gave the kids the bag of hamburgers. In this little moment, there must have been something for everyone.

*

On Sunday, June 28, I climbed the stairs of Simon’s apartment building. There were 23 floors, except the 12^th floor skips to the 14^th. Our world doesn’t believe in anything, and still, nobody wants to live on the 13^th floor. Simon’s stairwell was grey and stark, with no windows. Like a prison cell made out of stairs. Layered in heavy clothes, Simon used to climb up and down. He wanted to get sweaty and skinny, without having to see or talk to anyone. Fair enough, I suppose.

My arms full of daisies, I climbed up. I peaked at the eighth floor, where Simon used to live.  As though gazing down the carpeted hallway would bring some sort of closure or revelation. Not really. At the top of the 23^rd flight of stairs, the door was locked. It led to the pool. From there you could climb up onto the roof.  Some guy who was doing his laundry let me in.

“My ex-boyfriend jumped off this building in January.” Right away, the guy dropped his laundry hamper.

“Sorry about that,” he said. I stood on the lookout for a while, staring at Mont-Royal, the financial buildings, the wet streets. During my first year creative writing class, some girl wrote story about a woman with a dead boyfriend. It opened with the girlfriend standing in the rain carrying flowers.

"It is raining. I am wearing my shiny red dress. I am standing at your grave and watching the puddle form in front of it. My shoes are getting muddy."

Simon adored this beginning. Excellent, he called it. But my writing teacher said that its potential for narrative development was limited. “Her shoes can only get so muddy, and her dress can only get so wet.”

On top of Simon's building, there were stairs that led down from the lookout to the rest of the roof. It was covered in medium sized stones. I ducked under the yellow danger tape, and climbed down the stairs. Walking around the periphery, I remembered the rooftops in India. Under the moon or in the hot sun, I would sit there and think about the orphans. I could only stay for so long.

I had meant to throw the daisies off the building, but it was too high. Using a random cement block, I wedged them into the Northeast corner. That might have been where Simon jumped. I’m not sure. I picked one of the daisies off the bouquet, and let it go. I couldn’t see where it went. I was wearing my bright red raincoat. It was totally wet. So were my shoes and pants. I could only stay for so long. Before I left, I took another daisy. This one was for Simon’s front door. As I placed the daisy in the door frame, I listened for noises from inside his apartment. I heard nothing.

That day, I was out in the rain for so long that my teeth started to chatter and my hands went numb.

The End.



Simon Girard (1979-2015)

Title Inspired by all the beautiful faces, and by the Song, "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea." Neutral Milk Hotel. It is the new song of my life.

 "What a beautiful dream that could flash on a screen in a blink of an eye and be gone"

Simon Girard (1979-2015) 

How I am violent, by Erica J. Schmidt

Since May, I have been taking an online course called, Embodying Ethics and Vows. It is with Michael Stone and Elaine Pierce. This week, our assignment was to write about how we are working with the precept of not causing harm (ahimsa) in our lives. Here's what I got:

How I am Violent, by Erica J. Schmidt

Instead of non-violence, I am thinking about violence. This makes me think of my relationships, especially with Simon and with my body, but with the Boatman too. Everyone saves their violence up for someone, for something. Actually, I have no idea what everyone else does.

It is hard not to tell the same old story over and over again. The story of Simon, my ex-boyfriend who I fucked at the Granola Party, on the biodegradable yoga mat. I was really drunk, and he wasn’t. Perhaps this should have been the last time. Instead, there was a big saga of alcohol, vomit, both passionate and ambivalent sex, and name calling. We wrote all this down in letters that were supposed to be published in brilliant books that were supposed to allow me to quit my three and a half low-paying jobs.

Simon used to say that I was like an eight-year-old sore loser tennis player. And I was always losing the match and so being with me was unbearable. He didn’t understand how the Boatman was able to stand me. Simon was probably more right about this than I was when I wrote,

“Sometimes I think that it would kind of be ideal for you to die.

Then our book would be a huge success.  I could feel somewhat sorry for myself, because a guy I fucked died and that is always traumatizing.  Everyone would look at me with odd sympathy. Especially if you committed suicide.  The sympathy would be immense.  Oh poor poor, Erica.  You slept with a sick and twisted soul.  Scarred forever.  How terrible.”

Highly mediocre writing, and unkind. This was from the second volume of the Little Savage and the Hermit. I wasn’t really into writing this book. Simon wanted the plot to be about how I finally got an orgasm. I felt like this was a dumb plot.

I am not the reason Simon jumped off his apartment building. I can just hear him say, “I would never jump off a building for you, you stupid fucking cunt!” His voice carries a tinge of love.

Simon’s most recent girlfriend gave me pictures and memorabilia from the funeral. When I first put the pictures on my meditation alter, I told myself that after a week, I was allowed to take them down. It has been awhile. They are still there. One of his photos is in a disposable coffee cup that is covered with the stream-of-consciousness poem I wrote during my French Literature Class in 2009. Simon kept this cup all the way until he died.  Those cups don’t biodegrade.

The alter, with spectacular lighting.

Simon once said that based on a study they did on rats in the 1970’s, I will never ever get cancer. The rats who expressed their stress by freaking out didn’t die or get any diseases. At this rate, I will live until I’m 98.

Not every day can be fulfilling and lucrative and productive. Some days are for melting down. Yesterday was a meltdown day. It was the first time I had woken up at 5 a.m. for a while. That could have caused the meltdown. I also don’t think I ate properly the day before. All the trivial and banal things tend to matter. Alas. I was stressed because I had this assignment to write, and Thursday is also blogging day. I thought that maybe I could combine the two activities, although I wasn’t sure whether or not the world should know that I told Simon it might be better if he died. As a creative practice, I have vaguely committed to myself and my four and a half fans that I will blog every Monday and Thursday. It started off being fun. Now I am starting to crap out.

Writing, with all its potential for redemption can also be violent.  Same thing goes for meltdowns.

My favourite person to have a meltdown with is the Boatman. No one can console and contain my eight-year-old sore-loser-tennis-player-self better than him. Plus I don’t really want to really want to impose this self onto anyone else. Some friends say that I should limit my contact with the Boatman. Otherwise, how will I possible get over him, move on. The idea of getting over anyone is so silly.  How can we possibly get over anyone?

Well, I suppose I am over the Vegan Life Coach. God bless the Vegan Life Coach, and his spirulina powder.

The Boatman and I talk once or twice a week. I try to make sure each time is not a meltdown. I try to ask him about his life. That was one of my goals when I began the ethics course. To ask people about their lives.

Yesterday, I called the Boatman in tears. “I can’t keep calling you like this. I will keep doing this forever.” For the rest of my life, for the rest of the world, I will compartmentalize myself to resemble a manageable and acceptable human being. Then when the eight-year-old tennis player appears, I will excuse myself to call the Boatman. I’ll be eighty years old, forty-nine years into a marriage, with seventeen grandchildren. Some blogging drama will emerge. “Excuse me, honey,” I will say to my geriatric husband. “I need to melt down to the Boatman.” The Boatman will be eighty-eight.

“It’s okay,” the Boatman told me yesterday as I fretted and wept about my lack of meltdown autonomy. “You can just call me.” Maybe they can make a special Boatman Meltdown App.

As for my body, well, I cannot believe the violence I have imposed upon it. Sri W. Ham Wrap was right. My yoga practice was super violent, and  I cling to things until they die.

People always say, “My poor body,” and/or “My body is not happy with me,” and/or my body is angry with me. I know what they mean, but I wonder who they are talking about.

Or what about, “my back was killing me?” My back was killing me the day I went to meet Simon’s girlfriend. Earlier I had spent two hours on my bike, to visit a friend. Now I was walking. I felt that if anything in my clicky, crooked eighty-year-old spine were to shift .035 mm the wrong way, the whole thing would surely collapse. Someone would have to wheel me and my body away.

"Jesus," I thought. People think about Jesus when their backs hurt. I remembered listening to Ashtanga teacher Tim Feldman talking about his herniated discs. He could barely move, but he thought about his guru, Pattabhi Jois, who said, “You taking your yanus.” So Tim started squeezing his anus like nobody’s business. Somehow this helped. Seemed a bit simplistic to me, or rather, perhaps too complicated. But what else could I do? As I walked, I brought my awareness to my anus and pelvic floor. I didn’t squeeze, I just thought about it. I considered how it was all connected to my feet that were touching the ground. And how my sitbones were also somewhat connected to my nostrils. And how the crown of my head sort of balanced on top of everything. There was still pain, but by the time I arrived at Simon’s girlfriend’s house, it felt like maybe things had shifted 0.035 mm away from me being in a wheelchair.

It is a good idea to try and keep your body happy.

This afternoon I’ll be taking a stab at my dream job. I am going to help a three-year-old learn how to use the potty. Very little is more grounding than helping someone else to take a shit.

The End.

The cup with the biodegradable poem on it
Follow me on Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
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My name is Erica, and I love coffee
Simon Girard, 1979-2015
The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two
Not Separate From All that Is 
The Real Me 

Michael Stone Teaching




Simon

Simon Girard (1979-2015)

When I found out Simon killed himself, my face and hands and legs started to shake. I sat down, laughed for a second or two, and then wondered if what I felt was relief. And I thought, “Fuck, Simon. Alcoholic writer kills himself. Could you not have thought of anything more original?”

Simon Girard (1979-2015)
35 years old

This is the first time anyone I’ve fucked has died. It makes for quite the head trip, and I feel very odd.

In the beginning, I was supposed to help Simon translate his book about squirrels and homeless people into English. The first time I visited his apartment, I spent two hours teaching myself how to hula hoop. I invited Simon to the Granola Party I was having that Saturday. At Granola parties, you eat granola, take a quiz about what sort of cereal personality you are and then maybe share some performance art related to this discovery. Simon was concerned that he didn’t have anything to bring to the party because he was really broke. I said to come anyways. He arrived at my door with the hula hoop as his contribution.
As it turns out, granola is not the best buffer for vodka and I didn’t have an excellent alcohol tolerance to begin with. Since my boundaries were not that excellent either, Simon and I ended up naked on the blue biodegradable yoga mat in the spare bedroom. While I was drunk at the granola party, I told Simon that we should write a book of letters together. It could be bilingual. He could write in French, and I’d write back in English.

Within three days, Simon had started the book with a letter about how I’d ejaculated on his face on the blue biodegradable yoga mat. The letter ended with a relatively terrible poem that compared my vagina to a tornado, my phosphorescent ass cheeks to crescent moons and concluded with my tornado vagina making him “wet like the morning.”

I couldn’t remember ejaculating and in the following letter I claimed it didn’t count because I was so drunk. Simon said that it had to count or else he would have to erase all his writing from the last fifteen years.

When I met Simon, he had already published two books. “Dawson Kid,” his first published book was the ninth novel he’d ever finished. It was about a nude dancer named Rose Bourassa who takes up boxing. The day I went to visit him and learned how to houla hoop, Simon gave me a copy of his second novel “Tuer Lamarre.” He signed it and wrote a little note about how we never know what will happen next. Tuer Lamarre was the story of a young child who got molested by her neighbour. It was way too depressing and I didn’t get very far on it. Simon said he didn’t blame me and not to bother persevering. I think maybe Dawson Kid is a better read. He has other books now too.

Me and Simon’s book was called “The Little Savage and the Hermit.” I was the little savage because I threw reckless granola parties and Simon was the hermit because he spent most of his days drinking, writing and running up and down the stairs of his apartment building on Sherbrooke Street.

The process of writing “The Little Savage and the Hermit” involved a great deal of fighting, drunk sex, name calling and vomit. But it was the first time in my life that I felt like a real writer. I got to write whatever I wanted, however I wanted. Although Simon called me a stupid fucking cunt several times, he was a sincere and unapologetic fan of my writing. This made up for something.

The last time I saw Simon we were “working on our book.” “Working on our book” was usually a euphemism for drinking rather early in the day, fighting about commas or other mundane issues, getting drunk, and then having reckless, oblivious sex. We did this for months after we’d broken up. “Never again,” I’d say to myself each time I’d wake up in the morning, a couple of times with vomit on my pillow.

I think I finally cut myself off around May 2011.  A couple of weeks into June, I went to a wedding where I met the Boatman. Now there was definitely no more black-out sex allowed. But Simon and I still had to finish the book.

One morning in July, I went to his apartment at 11:30 a.m. I was sort of wearing a hot dress because I had just had an interview for some contract. At 11:38, Simon started making a White Russian.

“I want one too,” I said.

“Only if you take off your bra.”

“Not fair,” I said. He shook his head and brought his drink to the computer. I took it and stole a sip. Then he slid his hand under the neck of my dress and started pulling at my bra straps.

“I’m leaving,” I said.

I marched out. When I got to my bike, I realized I’d forgotten my seat. Simon took forever to buzz me back in. When I finally got back up to his apartment he was lying naked on his mattress on the floor. The bike seat was draped over his erection. On the top of his right thigh next to his groin, he had a really weird red, blue and green face sort of tattoo that looked a little bit like a clown. His dick was hard as wood. I grabbed the bike seat and left.

Simon’s funeral is next Saturday just outside of Montreal. I don’t think I will go.

Probably Simon would prefer that the last time I saw him, he was lying naked on his bed with a hard-as-wood erection, instead of dead in a coffin.

I moved to Halifax and over email, Simon and I wrote Part Two and Three of the Little Savage and the Hermit. We never revised either part and they are both a bit embarrassing. Part One is a bit embarrassing too, though it was almost going to be published at one point. Oh well. I might be able to find something to salvage.

My days with Simon make me think of that Machiavelli quote, “man should either be caressed or else crushed.” Anything in between and the person you injure will be driven to seek revenge. Over and over again, Simon and I went back and forth between caressing and crushing each other. Our reasons to retaliate ran out a long time ago.

“I forgive you, I’m sorry, I love you, I thank you.” Simon heard about this somewhere, and in our third book, he wrote to me to say he’d been repeating it over and over again, addressing his own ego and the people around him. “For the last week, I’ve been feeling a state of peace I’ve never known,” he said. “And I also feel dead. It’s fantastic.” Unfortunately, most of Simon’s fantastic remedies were short lived. The one thing Simon did remain entirely committed to was writing. Writing was his ultimate redemption. He always said that if you could write something good, it would make up for all the shittiest, dead-inside moments of existence. But for him, even  the writing process was laced with copious amounts of alcohol and self-destruction. I've been re-reading his letters, and his subjects mainly range from wild and compulsive sexual adventures to futility, death and way too much alcohol. Behind his exuberant, over-the-top persona, and his compulsion to find something to laugh about everything, Simon was profoundly depressed. He made tons of jokes about the two times he almost jumped off Jacques-Cartier Bridge in his twenties. Over the past decade, I imagine that he walked through many days, bewildered at the fact that he wasn’t yet dead.

 

Simon used to say that on his tombstone, he wanted the words, "HEYYYYYYYY! I'M NOT REALLY DEAD!" or else, "Monday morning...  the hell with it, I'm not getting up."

“I forgive you, I’m sorry, I love you, I thank you.” Last week I googled, “My ex killed himself. What should I do?” On one of the forums, some woman wrote, “He came into your life for a reason.” Then there was something about finding meaning in the whole ordeal. Although there’s a reason everything happens, I’m not a big fan of “everything happens for a reason” discourse. I don’t think Simon was either. He attributed not killing himself  those other two times to a couple of chance fluctuations of his mind.

 

That said, whether or not you write books with them, and whether or not they kill themselves, all of your exes leave you something you’ll keep forever. Simon and I were dicks to each other. Probably we were the worst combination in the world. But that was me and Simon. The Little Savage and the Hermit. “Classic shitty relationship, carried out by geniuses.”

The book is done.

The hermit’s dead.

Dear Simon,

I forgive you, I’m sorry, I love you, I thank you.
And I wish you were still around.
Love, Erica.

The End.

My deepest sympathies to his friends, loved ones, family and parents.

Simon's Obituary and funeral details

In Simon's memory, the family would appreciate donations made to Centre de prevention de suicide de Haut-Richelieu (Haut-Richelieu Suicide Prevention Centre)

Simon's Books:

Dawson Kid (Boréal, 2007)
Tuer Lamarre (Leméac, 2009)
Michel Bourget, sauver les vies (400 coups, 2011)
Les Écureuils sont des sans-abris (Coups de tête, 2011)

Article from La Presse: Écrire à tout prix (La Presse, 2012)

"Je vole vers l'astre qui est encore tout éteint et m'attend pour s'enflammer." (Simon)

Simon Says
The Granola Party Cereal Personality Quiz
What a Beautiful Face