Why You Are A Hermaphrodite (Asking People About Their Lives, Episode One with Matt Wiviott)

Like Dan Savage, Margaret Atwood and Jane Fonda, Matt Wiviott has a Cuttle Fish personality type. (In fact, he was one point off, but I took the liberty of deeming him an honorary Cuttle Fish.) This week, he invited me to be his chief of staff for his 2017 mission to make Jerusalem an International City of Peace and Healing. And on Friday, he composed a Facebook status about pornography, vibrator poetry and Shamanic politics in my honour. For all of these reasons, I chose Matt Wiviott as my first “Ask People About Their Lives” post. We sat face to face on a yoga mat, my iPhone recording between us. Scientists are saying that talking to people face to face constitutes an essential biological imperative. Another essential biological imperative might be to stop obsessing about your own life so extensively. And so, I asked Matt Wiviott about his.

Matt Wiviott

Born and raised in Montreal, Matt is a yogi, architect and musician. He regularly plays the harp at yoga classes. I attended one of these classes. All you had to do was lie down and listen. It made me feel absolutely lovely. Growing up, Matt was sent to Jewish elementary school which he described as “very materialist.” He was one of only two kids who didn’t go to a Jewish high school, and he was grateful for this since he feels that everyone who came out of Jewish high school came out “a brainwashed Zionist.” Well, I wasn’t there so I don’t know. As it turns out, Matt is the partner of one of my very dearest friends. They’ll be having a baby boy in July.

Soon after helping to conceive his first child, Matt had what he felt was a profound spiritual experience. It is probably better not to describe the profound spiritual experience (P.S.E.) in too much detail, so that readers won’t get jealous if their own spiritual experiences have seemed less profound. (Not everyone gets to be a cuttle fish, or Margaret Atwood.) But basically, Matt saw part of the Kabbalah Tree of Life in a vision, his consciousness expanded, and he got a clear sense of what he was supposed to do with his life. This happens to involve a stunning number of hashtags.

Matt was kind enough to tell me what gets his Jewish Kundalini going: “It’s fucking the Jews in Israel that are calling it as they see it, and they see what’s happening and they see it’s corruption and they see it for how it is… It’s a disaster. Everybody’s who’s really paying attention can see that it isn’t getting better. And this is why I'm putting forward my ridiculous political campaign of International Jerusalem 2017.”

So Matt and the UN are going to lead this campaign and transform Jerusalem into an International City of Peace and Healing. The details remain a bit vague; however, the hashtags related to the cause are abundant. I have already been informally appointed as Matt’s chief of staff, whatever that will entail. Yet another gig to add to my recent endeavours as a potty training consultant.

Matt is the first to call his methods “bizarre… the conventional way of dealing with such a large project is to write a book, a blog, or hammer letters onto church doors with nails.” Martin Luther King did some hammering in his day. “Obviously, I am not comparing myself to Martin Luther,” says Matt. “But I do feel like this idea of International Jerusalem is my idea to bring into the world.” Instead of hammering letters onto church doors, Matt is bringing his idea to the world by infusing his Facebook page with hashtags and political slogans. “I just need to get the idea out there. I just need to get people talking about it.” To facilitate the process he has created a Facebook personality which he describes as “the most conceivably narcissistic character I can imagine.”

If you are lucky enough to be friends with Matt Wiviott on Facebook, you will see that beyond the narcissism and relentless posts lies a deep commitment to pointing out the copious patterns and parallels that exist between ancient belief systems. Matt walked me through elaborate diagrams of how the branches on the tree of life line up with kundalini rising through the chakras, and how the Hebrew name of God lines up with vulvas, big and small penises and vaginas, elements of the Tarot deck, and THE elements, earth, air, fire and water. I took pictures of the diagrams for your viewing pleasure. I cannot promise that they won’t be confusing. But I do love chakras, and I love it when life lines up in any sort of way.

  

How Life Lines Up. Do your best.

How the Hebrew Name of God lines up with penises and vaginas, and other things: 



The Hebrew name of God in hashtags = #YUD #HEY #VAV #HEY

These days, one of Matt’s primary schticks is how “everyone is a hermaphrodite.” He is talking about a 6-part Kabbalah Gender theory. Matt believes that one of the main problems of society is that it lacks a gender theory that allows people to exist within a gender construct other than that which they were “born” into. Fortunately, Matt is saving the world by pinning gender nodes onto the Kabbalist Tree of Life. If you are wondering what the six genders are, here you go: man who likes being man; woman who likes being woman; man who likes being woman; man who likes being woman; person who likes being both man and woman (hermaphrodite); and person who likes being neither man nor woman (ascetic, which is different from the Hasidic Jews in Mile End, which I just found out a few weeks ago. Oops). According to Matt, “everyone fucking has them all,” whether or not you scored Brooding Anemone on the Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz. By the way, Matt loves Brooding Anemones. Who doesn’t?


Technically born female, the Brooding Anemone
acquires hermaphroditic qualities later in life.

All of Matt’s posts are accompanied by the hashtag #liveyogamusic, which serves in part to market his career playing music at yoga classes. Matt aspires to one day design his own methodology for teaching music. He believes that “the whole reason to study music is not so that you can play music, it’s so that you have music. And it’s different. And that’s not something that we’re teaching people.” I agree, and I feel like this philosophy could extend into other fields. Children don’t often learn anything without the expectation that they will one day be good at it. Once we grow up, there are so many things we won’t do, because we feel that we won’t be good them. Surely this causes long-term damage. And it deprives of fun activities such as bowling. Matt would also like to expand his music and political activism to include the elderly, since society’s current treatment of the elderly is horrendous.

Matt and his Harp

I told Matt that I might also like to extend my life to include the elderly. Besides being a potty training consultant, my other dream job is to be a People Walker. I could start with the old people in the long-term care facility across the street from me. So many old people don’t get to go for walks because everyone is afraid they will die. And yet, they already feel half-dead since they’re not allowed to do anything. I can take them for walks and when they get back, Matt can play the harp for them and/or guide them through a psychedelic yoga class.  

The day I met up with Matt, I was a terrible People Walker. It was raining and I decided that we wouldn’t walk. Everyone is a hermaphrodite, and we’re all afraid of melting in the rain. Matt says that when we close our eyes, we confront our fears.

Matt: “I overcame a lot of fear. I am not easily startled. And I’m pretty fucking optimistic about the future.”

Erica: “Even with climate change, messy politics.”

Matt: “Yah, I see this as things that have to happen at this weird cosmic time.”

Erica: “Weird cosmic time. Yes, I would tend to agree.  So you’re not afraid, you’re just there. You just walk into it. With some marijuana, though. That seems essential for you.”

Matt: “Yah.”

Before we started recording, Matt told me about how one time, the leaves of a marijuana plant seemed to speak to him. This wasn’t part of his PSE; however, it is one of the reasons why Matt feels so drawn to Shamanism and to ancient wisdom cultures. And to psychedelics.

Towards the end of our interview, I asked Matt about having a baby. Matt considers making a baby to be totally related to his PSE slash revelatory experience:

“Part of my sense of love was missing before.  Another way of putting this is that my cup wasn’t filled… For me it was the last part that had to be filled. It happened by conceiving of this child and imagining a life with my partner… It also coincided with me becoming a huge asshole on Facebook.”

The End.

I look forward to the baby shower next Saturday. And to the baby’s birth, though I haven’t been invited.

Thank you, Matt for letting me Ask You About Your Life!

Me and Matt, hanging out.

Follow Matt Wiviott on Twitter: @liveyogamusic
Matt's Website: liveyogamusic.com

Follow me on Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook  

Are you are a Brooding Anemone? Take the Ocean Invertebrate Personality Quiz and Find Out.

You might also be a Cuttle Fish. Like Matt and Margaret Atwood and Jane Fonda
And my sister.

Erica’s Hashtag: #AskingPeopleAboutTheirLives

Some of Matt’s Hashtags:

The name of God in Hebrew and Hastags: #YUD #HEY #VAV #HEY

      #tetragrammation    #shamanicpolitics     #sephirah     #IsraelitesDoItThemselves    #kabbalah

                #liveyogamusic     #sword     #coin     #wand     #cup     #UNadministration    #VibratorPoetry

        #NoOneEverLikesaSaviour    #Jerusalem2017     #InternationalCityofPeaceandHealing

Some of Matt Wiviott Facebook Statuses:

The "sentence" is a fascinating construct: BOTH a simultaneous whole thought AND a sequential unfolding of symbols.
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎liveyogamusic
‪#‎EITHER ‪#‎OR ‪#‎BOTH ‪#‎AND
‪#‎sword ‪#‎coin ‪#‎wand ‪#‎cup
‪#‎yud ‪#‎hey ‪#‎vav #hey...
‪#‎tetragrammaton

So, what does Fate hold in store for Jew tasked with teaching Hermaphrodite Kabbalah and advocating the Global Reclamation of Jerusalem?
‪#‎Jerusalem2017 ‪#‎InternationalCityofPeaceandHealing
‪#‎UNadministration
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎kabbalah ‪#‎liveyogamusic

The good thing about pinning Gender Nodes on the Kabbalist Tree of Life, is that the ‪#‎sephiroth , like the ‪#‎chakras , have rich polysemic possibilities. And everyone fucking has them all.
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎kabbalah ‪#‎liveyogamusic

I think the real problems with lululemon began when Chip Wilson achieved a Visionary Awakening by reading the shit out of Ayn Rand.
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎liveyogamusic

Really Great Classical Music is ALWAYS ‪#‎buddhistic , Really Great Jazz is ALWAYS ‪#‎shamanic .
‪#‎shamanicpolitics ‪#‎liveyogamusic #shamanic #buddhistic

 

Once I made a whole bunch of chakra cards. Perhaps not enough. 

Chakra Cards 
What the fuck should I do with my life? Part One
What the fuck should I do with my life? Part Two
 

Once I wrote a self-help book: I Let Go

Day Trip

A couple Thursdays ago, I woke up and my vagina was bleeding. Since I am very advanced, I don’t practice yoga when I first start menstruating, not even in Mysore. The day before I had maxed out on lying around, masturbating on the internet and eating very strange ice cream. So I decided it was time to take a little Day Trip.

According to Google, there was an interesting little town called Srirangapathna that I could visit in less than a day. I wandered down to the shala to see if anyone wanted to come. People seemed busy looking for tiger balm to rub into their hamstrings and buying curd for their morning granola. On practice days in Mysore, the quest for tiger balm can be more than enough excitement for one day. People applauded my ambitious plan to catch a bus in Mysore city, but no one was feeling my sense of adventure.

Oh well, I figured it could be sort of fun to hit it up on my own. I went to the main road to see if I could find a rickshaw driver who could drive me to the bus station. One seemed particularly delighted to see me.

“Where you going?” he asked. His name was Sri Brahmanam or something spiritual like this.

“I’m a guide. We go to Big Century, Temple, Museum. 500 rupees. Good deal. Good guide.” I didn’t know what Big Century was, but, what the hell. It sounded like a pretty good deal. In Halifax, 500 rupees can’t even get you from one end of the city to the other.


Mysore rickshaw. I thought rickshaws in India were guys pulling and I swore I would never take one. They have rickshaws like this in Halifax. In Mysore, rickshaws are kind of like sturdy black and yellow golf carts.

From the horror stories I’ve heard about driving in India, I’d imagined that getting on the road would mean chronic fear for my life and spinal cord as I scarcely survived one head on collision after another. The reality is much less terrifying. I like riding rickshaws. The wind cools me off and I can look at things without worrying about my horrible sense of direction and driving skills. On the way to Sri Rangapathna, we passed many fields where people work all day in the hot sun. I asked my rickshaw driver what they were growing in the fields.

“Good guide,” he answered. “First we go to Big Century.” And he pulled into the Rangantitthu Bird Sanctuary. Although most of the birds were far away on an island in the middle of the river, it was refreshing to be out of the city. We walked along the path by the river. After about 300 metres, my rickshaw driver seemed tired.

View from Lookout at Big Century

 “Tired,” he said. “No breakfast.” I told him to rest on the bench while I explored. I climbed up and down a couple of lookouts and could sort of see birds. All I could tell is that they were white. Further along the path, a young man was painting an iron fence yellow.

“You need guide, Miss?” he asked.

“My guide’s resting,” I said.

“Come with me,” he said. He motioned for me to go under the fence. Probably this was a terrible idea. But I figured he worked there, so that was somewhat legit. Also, I felt like I hadn’t seen 300 rupees worth of birds. Maybe this guy would show me something interesting. I went under a part of a fence that wasn’t covered with fresh yellow paint. Yellow Paint Man grabbed my hand and led me down a wooded path. I let go, however, my hand still got covered in bright yellow paint. Yellow Paint Man continued to reach for me on the steeper parts of the path.

Yellow Paint Man's Hands, with red flower

“I’m okay,” I said. We came to a clearing.

“Marriage?” he asked me. The Boatman and I have never been married or engaged, except for Indian purposes.

“Yes, I’m married,” I said emphatically.

 

“Beautiful,” he said. “Photo?” He took out his phone

 

“No no.” He showed me a red flower, and a bush with fuzzy red sumac like plants on them. Yellow Paint Man mushed the fuzzy part until a red paste formed between his fingers. He pointed his red and yellow index finger towards my forehead.

Sumac Type tree. I am not excellent with plants. Anybody know the tree?

“Bindi?” he said. Bindi are red dots you see Indian women wear on their forehead in line with their ajna third eye chakra. Marriage is one of the reasons women wear bindis and to protect you and your husband.  It is also good for cultivating your third eye chakra wisdom. I love chakras, and suddenly the Boatman and I were married. Even so, I did not want a bindi, especially not one mixed with yellow paint.

 

“Oh, no thank you,” I said. We continued into the woods. Here Yellow Paint Man reached for my butt and tiny boobs once or twice. 

 

“No touching!” I said once I was positive his caresses were not accidental.

 

“Oh, okay mam. Sorry mam.” Well, I guess I had been confusing about my marital status since I had refused the Bindi.  Now we were at a river bank. He motioned towards a bed of dried grass reeds in front of a bunch of bamboo trees. “Lovers, mam,” he said.

 

“My lover is in Canada,” I reminded him. On the way back, we made one more stop at a grove of bamboo shoots.


Lovers

“Lovers,” Yellow Paint Man said again, showing me where couples had carved their initials. I did not ask for Yellow Paint Man’s initials, nor did I write Exuberant Bodhisattva + The Boatman inside a heart. Finally we were back at the yellow fence. I climbed under and said good-bye.

Probably the whole ordeal took about twenty minutes.

“You losted! You losted!” my rickshaw cried out when I found him.

“I’m fine.”

“Where were you? You’re my response. 500 rupees there and back to Gokulam. You’re my response.*”

 

I suggested we sit down the steps leading up to a gazebo.

“No breakfast. Not resting. Worried. You’re my response.” He let out a big sigh. Then he put two fingers in front of his lips and turned to face me.

“Kiss, kiss?” he asked.

“No!”

“Oh, oh oh. Sorry, miss. So sorry, so sorry. Testing. Testing only. You’re my response.” Anti-harassment activists reading this are most likely horrified that I landed myself in two potential molestation situations within half an hour. Perhaps I should have fired my rickshaw driver, taken the first bus back to Gokulam, and made the non-negotiable vow to never do anything else by myself ever again. Honestly though, neither incident left me very traumatized. Of course crawling under a fence was not consent for Yellow Paint Man to grab my ass, but at least he more or less  understood the concept of no-means-no. And to give him the benefit of the doubt, there might have been some misunderstanding  about the marriage situation. Maybe he thought I said yes, I’d marry him, or maybe he thought my marriage with the Boatman wasn’t serious because I’d refused the Bindi. In any case, as far as horny, sketchy dudes go, I have met much worse in North America. To me Yellow Paint Man seemed like a 14 year old and the rickshaw driver was like a small child. 

Even so, before continuing on with my rickshaw driver, I made sure he got the message.

“Don’t do this again! Never do that again.”

“Oh, okay miss. So sorry.”

“Guides should not do that.”

“Oh okay. Testing, miss, just testing. Good guide, good guide.”

“No, no. Never do that again.”

“Okay miss, so sorry miss. Good guide. Excellent guide”

At the Sree Ranganatha Swamy Temple, he repented by giving his gods several bunches of coriander. Everywhere I went, people stared. I guess they were captivated by my extreme height and whiteness, and possibly my curly hair and biceps.  Several people asked if they could be in a photo with me. If it was women and children, I said yes. When I shook their hands, they got all giddy. It was a little bit sweet. Even hunching, I towered over them in the photos. I hope I didn’t make too many funny faces.

 

Besides the temple, we went to a jail, the grave of Super Warrior Tippu Sultan, a mosque and a couple of art museums. My favourite place was these steps by the river where people swam and did their laundry. Got the biggest stares here. 

By the river

 At one o’clock, my rickshaw driver finally had some weird deep-fried chip like concoction for breakfast. Then he drove me back to the Gokulam coconut stand.

“Needing good guide. Calling any time.”

I’ll be sure to keep this in mind.

The End.

 

*my response=my responsibility

Now my most recent post is no longer about pubic hair.

That's a relief.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
$2 self-help book: I Let Go

Other Cool Things to do in Mysore (Butt Club, etc.)
Laundry Day
Ham Wraps, Pool Noodles, Iphones 

 

Other Things That Happened in December

Christmas Chakra Cards

I envision a beautiful Christmas card project. I will make dozens of beautiful Christmas cards with a different chakra symbol on each one. I will analyze each recipient and figure out which chakra they have excesses or deficiencies in.  Based on that, I’ll make their card.
“So it seems like you’re giving them compliments, but you’re actually analyzing people and covertly judging them,” said the Boatman.

“No. I’m picking the chakra that’s best for them. People who are moving get the root chakra.  People with terrible sex lives get the sex chakra. That’s not mean. It’s helpful.” “Sounds kind of like a smug Mean Girl criticism,” he says.

I work on the cards at a “Drink and Draw” evening at the Foggy Goggle.



All the Chakra Shapes

I trace the chakra symbols that I have already traced in pencil, in black marker and pen. The Boatman, a real artist, works on his brilliant comic series called “In the Future.” In the future, scientists are going to make a cute pink creature that eats our garbage and pees and poops some delicious edible matter.  So the pink creature is going to save the world, and also be a loving companion for humans. The other real artists at the drink and draw are working on fancy graphics and/or superheroes. They are talking about superheroes and Dr. Stranger, or maybe it’s Dr. Strange, or Dr. Strangelove. I only like comic books that aren’t about superheroes.

I smudge the ink across one of my moula bandha root chakra cards. It looks amateur and I feel deeply disappointed in myself. Now the real artists are talking about airports.

“I just hate the Chicago airport.”

“O’Hare? Me too. Can’t stand it.”

“There’s nowhere to sit.”

“I know. I just hang out at the bar right inside security. They see me so often, they can’t believe I don’t live in Chicago. I keep telling them I’m just always here for business.”

“I love Chicago. You know, I prefer it to New York. I really do.”

“Oh totally. Absolutely. Except for the airport.”

"Oh my God, you won't believe this. I was googling 'Superheroes' and my own drawings came up."

"No way."

"Yah, I never would have thought."

I check my Blackberry. My aunt who is dying of cancer has sent me an email. A couple of weeks earlier, I had sent her an email about my recent and greatest accomplishments. One of them was my blogpost about the three things to make the world a better place. My dying aunt congratulates me on finding the Boatman, but scolds me for putting up too much information on my blog. She says some things are not meant to go online and that my indecency has probably prevented me from being employed in the past and will continue to do so in the future. I feel deeply wounded. My chakra cards suck and my blog, which I once took moderate pride in, has sabotaged my entire life. Also, I have never been to the Chicago airport, I have never visited Chicago, and at this point I probably never will.   I tell the Boatman that I have to leave right away.

It is his fault that the blog is indecent because one of his ways to make the world a better place is to have better sex ed. To illustrate this, I posted a picture of myself with my vibrator that he bought me. In the future, I will not send this link to my relatives.



TMI, said my aunt who was dying of cancer. Her death has since passed. Sweet rest to Aunt D.W.



Over the next couple of weeks, I colour in the chakra cards with Crayola markers. Then I complain that they looked juvenile and amateur. The Boatman suggests that I try watercolours. This turns out a little better; however, I still berate myself for not producing something worthy of Martha Stewart's praise. Although I’d intended to mass produce these cards and send happy chakra wishes to a whole bunch of people I haven’t kept in touch with, I end up giving out around twenty, to close family, co-workers, and friends I know I’ll run into.

I send a purple crown chakra to my aunt. It says Merry Christmas, Love, Erica. And that’s it.

To everyone I missed, maybe it’s not too late, or maybe next year, I’ll try and start earlier. Or maybe and hopefully, your chakras are already all set.



The Leftover Chakra Cards. Now I realize that they are actually kind of pretty.  



Christmas Concert

For three weeks, the children practice four songs for the Christmas Concert. Jingle Bells, A Winter Wonderland, Frère Jacques, and Il neige (It's snowing, in French). The entire program takes about four and a half minutes. We rehearse twice a day. During rehearsals, the children sing exuberantly, waving their arms in enthusiastic gestures and making big crocodile claps.  The day of the concert, the gym is filled with parents, grandparents, small babies and other siblings. Parents point their i-phones and cameras at their children. The children stare back and sing nothing.

Christmas Parties

A couple Fridays ago, at the Boatman’s work party, I stand in a group of three people and yabber away in my typical machine gun style. The Boatman’s father comes up behind me, puts his hand on my shoulder and says, “Erica always says exactly the right thing, doesn’t she?”

Last Saturday, we went to the annual fancy family dinner at the Bicycle Thief. I sit on the corner of our table next to the Boatman’s father and ask him if he would mind if I watched his hip replacement surgery that is happening on January 3^rd. The Boatman’s father says to ask the boss, his wife and the Boatman's mother. The Boatman says that this means no.

The End.

Happy Holidays from the Exuberant Bodhisattva!
My Pelvis, unreplaced for the moment: @mypelvicfloor
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
I LET GO 

 
Hip Replacements and No-Knead Bread versus Chapped Nipples and Low Sex Drive
 
Festive Posts from Christmas Past:
Sacred Fire
Poopy Mango Babywipes and the First Day of Christmas (contains some nudity)

 

Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva

The Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva.

by Erica J. Schmidt

Exuberant:

1. Full of unrestrained enthusiasm or joy.
2. Lavish; extravagant.
3. Extreme in degree, size, or extent.
4. Growing, producing, or produced abundantly; plentiful

Bodhisattva: An enlightened being who, out of compassion, forgoes nirvana in order to save others.

Nirvana:  the blowing out or the extinguishing of the delusional flame of passions and cravings.

Sometime between the ages of one year and nine months and two years and three days, Annabelle Gordon forewent nirvana, or a comparable type of extinguishing. On Friday, March 21^st, 1987 at 5:37 P.M, she fell down her mother’s basement stairs, hit her head and lost consciousness for ninety-seven days.   On the ninety-seventh day, her eyes began to flutter open and shut, open and shut.  Open.  That day, ­­­­­­­­­Annabelle Gordon was two years and three days old. “Mommy,” she said to Manuela, her mother, who had spent most of the previous ninety-seven days watching Annabelle consume intravenous nourishment and have her sheets changed. “I’m awake now.  Can I have a sandwich?”  These were the Exuberant Bodhisattva’s first words.

Her request was granted, immediately and many times over.   Throughout the Exuberant Bodhisattva’s childhood, Manuela’s sandwich platters provided a reliable interval for sticker trading, hide and seek, violin lessons, dog walking and playdough.  At the age of eight, in an effort to reduce the suffering of edible sentient beings, the Exuberant Bodhisattva became a strict vegetarian.  Manuela promptly transformed the piles of salmon, tuna and cold cut creations into wraps, rolls and whole wheat combinations of grated carrot, tofu, hummus, eggplant, nut butters, vegetables and legumes.  It was all she could do to thank her daughter for coming back to life.  Then, at the age of eighteen, the Exuberant Bodhisattva announced that the gluten in her sandwich bread was responsible for the red blemishes around her mouth.  Manuela prepared herself to seek out alternative bakeries but the Exuberant Bodhisattva told her not to bother.  She was moving to Montreal, where she would obtain her own nourishment, become a busker and strive to get in touch with her Inner Luminosity.  Manuela prepared her a package of organic granola, extra violin strings and warm socks.  She kissed her goodbye, made her promise to call every Sunday and let her go on her way. 

One year and two months later, the Exuberant Bodhisattva walked down Saint Catherine street singing.  She left her bike and a trail of unwashed grapes and organic baby carrots behind her.  How tantalizing life seemed today.  She was headed to her beloved yoga studio where for ninety minutes she would breathe and stretch and dance and sweat upon her purple mat.  Afterwards, in her tattered clothes, she would bike to Parc Lafontaine, where her once estranged gentleman friend had proposed to la voir. On her way, half naked billboard girls would stare at her with blackened eyes.  She would ride right past them. 

That evening, the Exuberant Bodhisattva wholeheartedly apologized to the short, handsome, curly-haired, dark-skinned man on the park bench.  “I’m sorry that I made you feel like a blow up toy.”  She hadn’t meant to.  After all, he was a person.  His name was Alphonso.  Quite cute. 

                  ***

Oh Fabulous Life! The Exuberant Bodhisattva thought the following morning as she sped down the Atwater hill towards the Super C.  Gliding, whooshing, whizzing, she began to rewrite her favourite Irving Layton poem.  “Whatever Else Youth Without Pregnancy Is Freedom.”  All over the city, all sorts of questionable sexual combinations were taking place.  Surely, then, she could sleep with Alphonso, despite their incongruous proportions.  Last night the two fell out of bed after he said, “Quelle belle grande paire de fesses.”  What a beautiful large pair of ass cheeks.  The Exuberant Bodhisattva manoeuvred herself indescribably.  The lovers landed on the floor; the large beautiful pair of ass cheeks landed on Alphonso.  Had the bed been larger, the act might have seemed less assertive.  Tiny Alphonso, who had little flesh to support the fall, would not have procured so many bruises.

The Exuberant Bodhisattva always felt like a mammoth when she slept with Alphonso.  But perhaps she was more fortunate to have been the mammoth than to have slept with one.

                                                         ***

Once again at the beloved yoga studio, Shankara, the son of some great guru, stood on his lime green mat, his hands in front of his heart.  The Exuberant Bodhisattva and her fellow practitioners listened intently.

“Once the body becomes fit and supple, the sense spectrum becomes increasingly sensitive to external stimulation.  Odour, taste, sound, touch, each have a profound effect on all of the body’s systems.  By properly nourishing the Sense Spectrum, the seeker creates internal balance.”

The next day the Exuberant Bodhisattva woke up in Alphonso`s bedroom and peed in a plastic green garbage can with a used condom in it.  Alphonso had left her the can in case she had envie to pisser while he was upstairs having breakfast with his mother.  Seeking relief that she hoped would help her to fall back asleep, she peed.  The odour entered her sense spectrum.  She remembered Shankara’s discourse of wisdom.  She felt internally imbalanced.  Making remedial efforts, she ran her hands across her back, creating sensations in her hand, and on her back.  And in her arms, she supposed, from the movement. Such a soft smooth back, she thought.  And all without moisturizer.  She glanced at her Alphonso`s leopard print polar fleece blanket.  What sort of balance or imbalance did this create?  Taking a shit would almost certainly balance the level of toxins and wastes inside of her and thereby create internal balance.

But it would happen that in Alphonso’s room, there was no easy path to freedom anywhere.

                                                          ***

When the Exuberant Bodhisattva was in a coma, her mother used to read her a story about a family of gorillas.  Patty Cake, the baby gorilla, was born at the New York zoo.  Her parents’ names were Tandy and Lulu.  They ate vast quantities of bananas and peanut butter and ice cream.  One day there was an accident.  Lulu, the mom, was on one side of the cage and Patty cake was on the other.  Lulu pulled Patty Cake’s arm and it broke.  Patty cake had to go to the hospital and get a cast all the way from her shoulder to her wrist.  Then they took the cast off and she went back to the zoo where there was a big party for her first birthday.

Last night was Alphonso’s twenty-sixth birthday.  They had spent the evening disregarding the Exuberant Bodhisattva’s gluten allergy and consuming white pasta, tomato sauce and Coronas.  Now it was up to the Exuberant Bodhisattva to bring her darling Alphonso to nirvana on his creaky sheetless bed with the leopard polar fleece blanket.  Opening her mouth widely, she embraced his Great Vehicle. 

The Exuberant Bodhisattva found herself thinking about the Gorilla story.  She could remember the ice cream and the peanut butter and the bananas, but she couldn’t remember the gorillas’ names.  She wished that she was eating ice cream and bananas right then.  Patty Cake.  That was the baby’s name.  Patty Cake.

Patty Cake, Patty Cake, baker’s man.  Maybe it would help if she did it to a rhythm.  Bake me a cake as fast as you can.

“Plus vite, plus vite.”  Faster, Alphonso was pleading.  The Exuberant Bodhisattva remembered the first book she ever learned to read.  “Bears,” it was called.  Bears, bears, everywhere.  Bears on chairs.  Bears climb stairs.  What else did they do?  Draw squares?  She remembered the crackers and honey that her grade one teacher had given her for writing bears twenty times in her printing book.  B-e-a-r-s.

“FUCK!”  screamed Alphonso.  She hadn’t brought him to ecstasy. She had accidentally bitten his Great Vehicle. 

Red blemishes emerged around the Exuberant Bodhisattva’s small, fat lips, as a direct result of her gluten consumption.  “Je ne veux plus te voir,” said Alphonso. Because of the red blemishes, or for some other reason. He did not say. Only, I want no more to see you.  All the Exuberant Bodhisattva knew was that she’d wounded him on his twenty-sixth birthday, barely a week after treating him like a blow-up toy.  She felt deflated.  Like a deflated mammoth. 

Alone, the Exuberant Bodhisatta dreamt that she was waiting for the metro with Alphonso who had somehow exceeded the Exuberant Bodhisattva’s mammoth proportions. They exchanged unenthusiastic kisses until the metro arrived.  Frazzled and disorganized, the Exuberant Bodhisattva got on the second car instead of the third. As she entered, the door closed at her shoulder.  The Exuberant Bodhisattva waited for the doors to reopen but the train ignored her suffering rotator cuff and zoomed into the tunnel.  Somewhere between Lionel Groulx and Atwater station, the train came to a halt and the third car, containing Alphonso, was sucked into the tracks.  Rotator cuff liberated, the Exuberant Bodhisattva ran to find her friend whose legs and arms now ended at his elbows and knees. Barely two feet tall, he was happy and excited about the triple flips and trampoline routines he could now learn at the circus.  The Exuberant Bodhisattva wondered why he wasn’t bleeding to death. 

She woke up extremely hungry with the urge to urinate.  After relieving herself, she stirred her non-hydrogenated peanut butter with a pencil.  Once she had eliminated the natural oil separation, she raised the jar to her lips and drank.

                                                    * * *

“I felt like a mammoth when I slept with Alphonso,” the Exuberant Bodhisattva confessed to her nearly sexually liberated friend Maria over lunch.

“Well there’s lots more fun to be had, with or without Alphonso,” Maria replied as she bit off a head of baby corn from her tofu stirfry.  “You should get a vibrator.  Find out what booming rockets are really like.”

The Exuberant Bodhisattva took a sip of water.  “Maybe I’m just not the kind of girl who appreciates a booming rocket.” 

“Don’t be silly,” Maria scoffed, this time combining bok choy and broccoli.  “Everyone appreciates a booming rocket. You need to release your second chakra.  My new boyfriend, Cavan, is only seventeen and he knows the kama sutra.   He promises to release all seven of my chakras before my twenty-first birthday.”

“My mother used to be into chakras.  Then her boyfriend got dementia and she sort of lost interest.”    

“Yah, I don’t know how that works,” Maria mused.  “I’ll have to ask Cavan.  But you should definitely get a vibrator.  And a haircut.  I have a fantastic hairdresser.  His name is Paul.  He touches my hair as though he loves each strand.” 

The Exuberant bodhisattva poured soy sauce over her remaining broccoli and rice.  She touched her own hair, pulling it out of her unmeticulously placed pony tail.  It felt coarse, dry, limp and unloved.   After the stirfry, the two women French bisouxed each other goodbye.  “Cheer up,” said Maria, who was off to see Cavan.  “You’ll feel better soon.  Just remember.  Vibrator, haircut and you can’t expect to get over anyone until you get under someone else.”

Walking home, the Exuberant Bodhisattva wondered if her life was destined to become a perpetual saga of getting over and under a series of people?  Before coming to Montreal, the Exuberant Bodhisattva had hardly ever thought of sex.  And masturbation, like squatting over public toilets, had simply never occurred to her.  Yet it certainly occurred to Maria and most other people in this city. 

Before Alphonso’s booming rocket, the last penis the Exuberant Bodhisattva had seen had belonged to Charlie, the tall, skinny albino kid who she fell in love with in junior kindergarten. The other kids forced them to kiss in the playground.  She and Charlie traded stickers at each other’s houses.  Once, at Charlie’s house they took off all their clothes, ran around in the garden and hosed their naked bodies with freezing cold water.  Charlie’s father Dave had scolded him, because he wasn’t supposed to expose his white skin to direct sunlight and because some of the water had gotten through the screen door and soaked the living room furniture.  In senior kindergarten, Charlie and his family had moved to Australia.  This began the Exuberant Bodhisattva’s decade and a half long boyfriend drought which didn’t subside until early into the twenty-first century, when Alphonso dropped a quarter into her violin case at Metro Lionel Groulx.

But now the drought had resumed.  Her second chakra, though not released, had been inconveniently awakened.  She felt horny, or, to be more eloquent, lustful.  She didn’t have a vibrator.  But she had a violin and an empty apartment that she had decorated in order to balance her sense spectrum.  And avocadoes and corn chips and pineapples.  Yes.  She would get over Alphonso without getting under anyone else.  This very evening would be entirely reserved for releasing her Inner Luminosity.

                                                          ***

Her coarse, limp, dull, unloved hair fell beside her violin’s chinrest.  On an up bow, she rose beneath the ceiling she had painted yellow.  Five coats for the ceiling.  Six for the eggplant purple walls.  As she pressed the mounds of her cracked toes into the bare mahogany floors, she thought about how ninety-eight percent of her long and lustful body was water.  She transcribed Bach’s Partita 2.1 onto the violin’s neck.  Inside of her, the efforts of her fingers and bow coalesced.  She imagined the melody enter her ears and flow down into her stomach, through to her small intestine, where the vibrations swirled around her navel.  From the navel, the vibrations traveled outwards, saturating the blood of her extremities.  Up the torso, branching off into her two shoulders, elbows, wrists and fingers.  Down the pelvic floor, rushing by the hips, the thighs, knees, ankles, toes, feet.  Her sound was rich and smooth, like the four ripe avocadoes she had used for her guacamole.  Yesterday’s avocadoes resonated in their transformed cellular states.  Today’s awaited their transformation as she permeated their smooth, rich fragments.  She danced with her processing and processed avocado fragments.  The corn chips and the pineapples joined in.  Radiantly, she circled round and round the eggplant purple room, carrying the dance in her body.  Her sense spectrum stimulated her internal systems into balance.  The acne around her mouth dissipated.  She danced to the room’s perimeter.  At the corner she paused.  The last note.  Silence.  The Exuberant Bodhisattva was infused with her own luminosity.  It was almost enough.  Then the doorbell rang.  It was her neighbour, Cameron, who was in charge of the building’s recycling program.  Full of unrestrained enthusiasm, the Exuberant Bodhisattva lavishly and extravagantly invited him in for smoothies and leftover guacamole.  The door frame flattened Cameron’s abundant spiraled cherry hair as he entered the apartment.  The Exuberant Bodhisattva thought about how ninety-eight percent of his lean but extensive body was water.

It was time for another ecstatic adventure.

The End. 

Oh Fabulous Life.
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I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

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