The Earth Will Shake Us Off Like Fleas

From my Bible classes at McGill, I remember that the disciples were not considered to be very smart.

“The disciples were dumb, dumb,” said Professor David Williams. But Simon Peter, he was the dumbest. Plus he didn’t run very fast. Poor dumb disciples. And it made it worse that Jesus was always uttering so many confusing things. On the way to the cross, a bunch of women followed Jesus, mourning and wailing for him. Jesus turned and said to the women, “Daughters of Jerusalem, do not weep for me; weep for yourselves and for your children. For the time will come when you will say, ‘Blessed are the childless women, the wombs that never bore and the breasts that never nursed!”(NIV, Luke 23:29)

Mourning and wailing. That is exactly what the women in my family do when they read Hallmark cards, or watch sad movies where people die. The worst movies are Beaches and Steel Magnolias. I remember Steel Magnolias. Julia Roberts had  something wrong with her kidneys. My mother and my sister mourned and wailed when she died.  In Beaches, Bette Midler’s best friend dies of some weird heart virus. More mourning. More wailing. Perhaps Beaches was even worse because Bette Midler sang "Wind Beneath My Wings" and this is such a devastating song.

Beaches. Too sad.

I am a childless woman. My womb has never born and my breasts have never nursed. Jesus said that one day I will be blessed. Jesus said so many odd things. Maybe he meant that being a mother is too difficult, too excruciating. No matter what you do, you will end up mourning and wailing for one reason or another. 

Steel Magnolias. Also way too sad.

***


Before he was crucified, Jesus kept asking Simon Peter if he really loved him. He asked three whole times. After the third time, Simon Peter became a bit frustrated. I can understand. Probably Simon Peter felt like no matter what, he would always get the wrong answer. I hate that. Each time that Simon Peter said, “Yes Lord, I love you,” Jesus would reply, “Feed my lambs.” Finally, after the third time Simon Peter replied, “Yes Lord, I love you,” Jesus said something different.

Peter, do you love me?

Jesus said, “Feed my sheep. Very truly I tell you, when you were younger you dressed yourself and went where you wanted; but when you are old you will stretch out your hands, and someone else will dress you and lead you where you do not want to go.” (John: 21:17-18)

That is a pretty good quote. Probably this is what being old is like. Someone dresses you in an outfit you don’t particularly like and then someone else decides where you will go today. Where WE will go today. Because all of the sudden, because you are old, you become part of an imposed collective. Just like in preschool, everyone is your friend. You participate in life’s activities as part of some high-pitched, squeaky-voiced WE.  WE are going outside now. WE need to finish our breakfast. WE are going bowling, to the market, to exercise class. Now WE are having a nap.

For a couple of weeks, I took care my friend’s grandmother who had Alzeimers. She was a doll, but sometimes it was very boring. And so I made relentless and mundane suggestions on how WE could break the monotony. Why don’t WE go to the park now, or to the library? WE should get a drink, or get some ice cream.”

“I’ve already done all that,” she said. “I’m tired. I’ve already done it.”

She was all done, and still, she had to get her hands dragged to somewhere she did not want to go.

***
One of Simon’s favourite things that I ever wrote was, “Everything stops bleeding. Even the dead people.” As usual, I was talking about the moon and my large thighs and menstrual blood. I do not know why Simon loved my sentences so much. On January 4, 2015, Simon jumped off a building and landed in a parking lot. I think about this all the time. There must have been a lot of blood.  

At the beginning of Acts of the Apostles, Judas got money for betraying Jesus. With the money, he bought a field. This is how it goes in the Bible:

"With the payment he received for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong, his body burst open and all his intestines spilled out. Everyone in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language Akeldama, that is, Field of Blood" (Acts: 1: 18-19).

Judas exploded in a field. Simon exploded in a snowy icy parking lot.

Nobody is supposed to walk in Judas’s field anymore. When people don’t inhabit or walk on places, very interesting flora and fauna emerge. Apparently there is an extremely bio-diverse area in North Korea where humans aren’t allowed. I am not sure whether or not the no-human zone started as a field of blood. In any case, it is hard for people to believe that the world will become more unique when they’re not there.

The End.
(Post-scripts One and Two and Two Point Five below)

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POST-SCRIPT ONE

The reason I am thinking so much about Jesus is that on May 3, 2015 (evening of the full moon), I met Daniel on the corner of Brunswick and Bloor. Daniel sells used books in front of a building with the sign “Champion of the Waging” on one side and “Ales and Spirits” on the other.  The books are only three dollars each, or two for five dollars. Some books are on tables, while others just lie on the sidewalk. Daniel told me what happens when somebody’s liver explodes and he had a sort of scientific reason for how and why Jesus survived the crucifixion. “He was crucified, not murdered,” Daniel kept repeating. Daniel’s father recently survived and hemorrhagic stroke and Daniel told me about the difference between hemorrhagic and ischemic strokes. It has to do with what happens to the blood. And more people get ischemic strokes, the kind Daniel’s father didn’t get. Daniel talked about the moon, and serendipity, and how each day of the week is named after a different planet and/or the sun and/or the moon. He also quoted George Carlin who once said, “The Earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas.”

George Carlin, “The Earth will shake us off like a bad case of fleas.”

 

I bought two books from Daniel.

The first one was, Long Quiet Highway: waking up in America, by Nathalie Goldberg. I am reading it right now. Highly recommended.

Long Quiet Highway: waking up in America, by Nathalie Goldberg.

The second one was, This Body, by Tessa McWatt.

This Body, by Tessa McWatt.

 

Post-Script Two

In fact, when Simon died on the parking lot, there might not have been that much blood. Everyone and the Internet says that when you jump off a building, your corpse becomes a mangled mess. But apparently Simon wasn't a mangled mess. He looked the same, except dead. There are so many things people say all the time that aren't true. Like when authors kill themselves, all their books become super famous.  People say this all the time. Well, it isn't always true. None of Simon's books are famous. My blog is more famous than his books.  Poor Simon. He hated my blog.  

I added Post-Script Two on Sunday, June 28, 2015. If Simon was still alive, he would have turned 36.

Simon Girard (1979-2015)
How I am Violent, by Erica J. Schmidt
Cardboard Box


Post-Script Two Point Five

Here is how the days of the week are named after planets and/or the moon and/or the sun:

Monday (English), lundi (French, lune means moon) = Moon Day

Tuesday (English), mardi (French) = Mars Day (not an auspicious time to start a new venture or yoga posture, according to some)

Wednesday (English), mercredi (French) = Mercury Day (Some say that mercury is a sad planet. Others call Wednesday Hump Day. Everyone loves humping.)

Thursday (English), jeudi (French) = Jupiter Day

Friday (English), vendredi (French) = Venus Day (Perhaps a good day for Love. The Rainman says, Fishsticks on Friday.)

Saturday (English), samedi (French) = Saturn Day

Sunday (English), dimanche (French) = Sun Day.

And so it seems that there are no days for Pluto, Neptune, Earth, and most tragically, Uranus.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
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I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt

Locks and Keys (about Mourning and Wailing)
Exalted (about Lent)
Why You Are A Hermaphrodite

 

The Boatman and the Maxi Pad

I haven’t worn a Maxi Pad in over a decade.  Almost a decade and a half.  I hate Maxi Pads.  They make you feel like you’re wearing a diaper.  You walk around positive that the whole world can see the little bulge between your crotch, and the sweat that seeps out on either side of your underwear, and that they can smell the smell that comes from… 

When I was 12 years old, I competed in a provincial swim meet in Brantford, Ontario.  The morning before we left, I looked at the brown streaky patterns on my underwear and figured I had more extensive skid marks than usual.  I used to get so nervous before swim meets.  I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep at night and when I finally did, I’d dream that I was late for my race, and I’d lost my goggles and when I finally dove in after everyone else I’d forget what stroke I was supposed to be doing and I’d put my feet on the bottom and get disqualified.  Once, not in a dream, right before my race, I was standing behind the blocks and I puked gobs of orange juice into my hand.  I walked to the garbage, flung the orange gobs off of my hands, and then squatted down at the side of the pool to rinse them off in the water. The whistle blew and I stood on the blocks. I can't remember if I came in first or second, but I did win some sort of medal.

The morning before provincials, I figured that my nerves were just coming out the other end.   I threw out my underwear, got dressed, walked to the swimming pool that was down the street from me, and hopped on the bus to Brantford.  We stopped at the Tim Horton's/Wendy's rest station along the 401, Then I went to the bathroom and I discovered that the streaks had multiplied, and transformed into a brighter shade of red and they were coming from a different hole than I’d originally thought. 

For a loonie, I bought my first Maxi Pad in the restroom pad dispenser.  It was two inches thick and eight inches long.  All the way to Brantford, I looked out the window and thought of all the women in the world who had to wear Maxi Pads.  I did not feel happy to join the club.

At the hotel room before the swim meet started, the chaperone did her best to explain the logistics of a tampon, using her thumb and index finger as a hole and getting her daughter to insert through in two easy steps. 

I did not understand how there could be so much room up there.  For the tampon, and for other things.  In the bathroom, I made about a dozen attempts.  I limped out into the hotel room with my feet far apart. It felt like there was a knife up my crotch.  There was no way I could do breaststroke kick.  All my races seemed like a long shot.

Everyone knows that you can’t wear a Maxi Pad underneath a bathing suit.  And certainly, you can’t go into the water with one.  Of course I didn’t do that.  Instead I paced around the pool deck with a towel around my waist, praying that a massacre wouldn’t start dripping past my groins.  I jumped into the warm-up pool frequently, since my chaperone had said that for some reason periods didn’t flow while you were in the water.  While waiting behind the blocks for races, I would hope that the official wouldn’t take too long to blow the whistle, and that once we were on the blocks, he wouldn’t take too long to fire the gun.

It took me about eight months to figure out how to use a tampon without feel like I was stabbing my own uterus.  Although you’re not supposed to let tampons clog yourself overnight, once I figured them out, I renounced Maxi Pads right away.

A decade later, I began to bask in the wonders of the diva cup. It’s a silicon cup that you stick up there and it will catch your blood almost all day.  Minimal pollution for the world, less cost for you. And it’s interesting because you get a glimpse of your fertility all at once, before you dump and flush it down the toilet. The set-up is pretty good, but the other night towards the end of my monthly happy bleeding time, I complained to the Boatman that I was tired of sticking my fingers up myself to insert a blood capturing contraption.  He innocently suggested that I use one of the Maxi Pads that a house guest from the summer had left under the bathroom sink.

“No, no, no, no, no!” I proclaimed.

“How bad can it be?” asked the Boatman.  And he procured a Maxi Pad from the package.  After unwrapping it and removing the paper strip on the back, he stuck the pad into his boxers.

"It's not so bad," he said.  "I kind of like it." And then he went to bed. 

A couple of days later, I heard the Boatman laughing in our basement laundry room. 

“What is it?” I asked.  He came upstairs, bringing with him the Maxi Pad that he’d absentmindedly thrown in the washer, and then into the dryer with his boxers. 

 Here are the exquisite photos.

Boatman and Maxi Pad.

Forearm and Maxi Pad.

I wonder if we could use the Maxi Pad again.

The End.

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