Dear Vincent, Everyone is one with the birds except for me.

Dear Vincent,

Everyone is one with the birds except for me.

Inside

my

recycling box

remnants of coconut cream

rot along the ridges

of the can.

I have a saying that goes, “When I ask for mercy, mercy comes.”

And

if mercy isn’t here yet,

then,

you just have to keep waiting.

Mercy can be a poem,

a sandwich plus a nap,

or,

a translation contract about a sexologist

or annual furnace maintenance,

both reasonably effective at

alleviating the guilt of

not being much of a human, and

not writing something magnificent about

dying in a wishing well,

or squirrels,

or attachment trauma,

or some other redeeming topic.

Or

mercy can be a row of toddlers flailing across the sidewalk in their multi-coloured marshmallow snowsuits as they all barely grasp the same leash.

Or the flat vibrant faces of real estate agents on cardboard, their teeth impossibly long and impossibly white,

and their hair impossibly large.

Or when one of those weird blow up snowman or Santa lawn ornaments deflates and lies dead across the snow.

Or,

if mercy isn’t here yet,

then,

you just have to keep waiting.

Love, Erica.

Send your letters to Vincent and/or Erica to ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.

What is the missing piece that stops you from real life?


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I Let Go

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Deep Unyielding Depression, Part One
Dear Vincent, This is what the Dead Inside Man says about killing yourself
Professional, Depressed

Hi, my name is Erica. I'm having thoughts of death.

Hi, my name is Erica.
I'm having thoughts of death.


The good news is
my eternal tits
feel quite alive.


They might even
be growing
after all
these years.


As I cup one in each hand
I envision the base
of my tongue
dissolving.


This
is a fucking relief.


No need to accept
any one moment
or person
as more
important than the other.


Hi, my name is Erica.


Yesterday I won
the bikini wax lottery.


Nancy had
a cancellation.


Nancy is pleased
with the state
of my pubes.


Hi.
My name is Erica.


No need to accept
any one moment
or person
as more
important than the other.


The End.


In case someone read the words
"thoughts of death"
and worried that
oh shit,
she might be suicidal,
I have filmed myself
performing the poem
while wearing a bright-pink
life affirming
tie-dyed blouse.




For some reason the video does not seem to work on mobile devices! I am not sure why. Will explore. If you have any tips, that would be great. Thanks! XO.



Scattered Wardrobe Vacillations


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Instagram: montrealhippiethreads


My Eternal TIts
My name is Erica. I love coffee.
Guillaume, Part Two

Ecstatic Dance

With unrestrained enthusiasm and joy, a three year girl greeted me at the Montessori school. Her curly hair flew in every direction as she bounced up and down, arms flailing all over the place.

“Erica,” she asked me through her breathless exuberance. “How’d you get here?”

And so the “How’d You Get Here?” dance was born. From then on, I broke out the “how’d you get here dance,” approximately two and half times per week. The flailing and bobbing is quite becoming when you’re a tall five eight with very large, very curly hair and extremely long limbs.

“Hey babe,” I said to the Boatman, bopping around in the hall beside the bathroom. “How’d you get here?” Then I went to the yoga room to meditate for 35 minutes. I think my heart remained in overdrive for the first thirteen.

Now the Founder of the “How’d You Get Here?” dance is almost five. Despite all the time she spends exuberantly dancing, hopping around like a frog and crawling on the floor like a cat, her Montessori work folder is always bulging with imaginative creations. She paints and draws constantly, often without even looking at the page. I can’t wait to attend her shows when she’s in art school.

As for me, my Montessori career is somewhat over. I have left Halifax, and before settling in Montreal for the summer, I have spent the last couple of weeks in Toronto. Here I am enjoying this odd, in-between place where I don’t exactly exist and nothing feels like it counts.

One of the great highlights of the Toronto visit has been attending Ecstatic Dance. Having lived a somewhat sheltered life, I have never attended a rave; however, many people have told me that Ecstatic Dance is a bit like a sober rave. At Ecstatic Dance, a deejay plays a vast variety of music, and everyone is invited to express whatever is deep inside their bodies. You are welcome to wear a tutu, and the tutu can be green. Halfway through, if you change your mind, you can always take the tutu off. Anything goes.  Some people crawl across the floor like crocodiles, or lions, or hop around like frogs. You can dance with long phallic crystals or magical green rocks. No one is allowed to make fun of you and this is very liberating. It is also very liberating that nobody knows that the only time you could ever dance in high school was after chugging 2 bottles of Mike’s Hard Lemonade concealed inside juice bottles in the Student’s council room. By the way, my sister was the student council president.

Sister and Me, Restrained Ecstatic Dancing, Halifax Harbour

So far I have been to Ecstatic Dance three times. I find I frequently pull out the “How’d You Get Here?” dance. The bobbing and bouncing and particularly the limb flailing seem to truthfully match what’s deep inside of me.  I also do a great deal of bending my crooked spine over to the right and twisting it in circles over and over again. When I get tired, I roll around on the floor in incoherent ways. If I consider the unrelenting misery that was February, I never would have imagined myself participating in anything so joyful and uninhibited. Then again, why the hell not?

Despite the fact that I wrote a book called “I Let Go,” I always hesitate to tell people to get over shit. After all, as Margaret Atwood says, Old Neurological Pathways Die Hard. Even so, if you claim to be one of those people who can’t or just doesn’t dance, I say to you, Get the Fuck Over it. Ecstatic Dance is perfect for you. Be a tiger. Be an octopus. Jump around like you’re three and a half.

At the end of Ecstatic Dance, the music slows down and you might get the chance to roll around on the floor with another person’s body in a relatively unsexual way. Not everyone has a temporary or long-term source of cuddling slash sexual gratification and I feel like this end-of-dance floor union provides a viable option. Last Thursday night, I rolled around on the floor with a man who was wearing an extremely tight and short black spandex mini skirt. Although I’d assumed that he’d chosen the skirt to reflect his deepest creative self, I guess he’d actually forgotten his shorts and had resorted to raiding the lost and found. All he could find was the tiniest spandex mini skirt in the world. I didn’t find this out until afterwards and thus, I felt quite safe and dancing with a man in a spandex mini-skirt. In some ways, it was very safe and in other ways, not so safe. Still, we managed to avoid catastrophe.

When it was all over, the Man in the Skirt and I chatted about who we were, where we were from and what our creative lives were all about. Within approximately six and a half sentences, I pulled out the “Oh yah,my ex-boyfriend jumped off a building in January” speech. All the people of Toronto have been amazingly receptive of this speech and for this I have been immensely grateful.  
The Man in the Skirt asked for my contact info and on Friday, he sent me a poem. I think it was about someone else ejaculating. Or it could also have been about conception. It seems like both of these things are popular poetry topics. It is always a bit fun when someone sends you a poem.

“You have such a wonderful sister,” the Man with the Skirt told my sister before we left. Ecstatic Dance makes you feel so wonderful about yourself. Life is very exciting. How’d we get here?

The End.

I forgot to mention that at Ecstatic Dance, quite a few people wear Spiritual Pants. It was quite a delight to see Spiritual Pants again. That said, I left my spiritual pants in Montreal and kind of feel as though the low crotch would impede my How’d You Get Here? dance.

Spiritual Pants and the Darling Canadians in Mysore, Green Hotel

So I’ve started a new creative practice routine where I post every MONDAY around 4 or 5 PM and THURSDAY around lunch time. One of my relatives who also happens to be a Social Media Expert claims that this is not the most auspicious social media time, but I have a Kale Phone and don’t tend to take this sort of thing into consideration. We’ll see how it goes. Stay tuned and free to follow me in whatever capacity seems to best match what’s deep inside your body:

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I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

Or I'm pretty sure you can also click on Subscribe at the bottom of this post.

HAPPY MONDAY!!!
Creative Practice, Simon's Genies, and the Exuberant Bodhisattva's Big Exciting Blog
Jujubes
Ecstatic Adventures of the Exuberant Bodhisattva
Darcy, which features a blue tutu

Ecstatic Dance takes place on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays from 7:30-9:30 at Dovercourt House, 805 Dovercourt Rd.
Ecstatic Dance Thursdays in Toronto 
The Move (Fridays)

 

Happy

“2-9 it is today. Somebody’s birthday. I don’t know them.”

Jadwiga used to announce this every morning at breakfast as she stirred milk into her coffee in the mug with the cat on it.

“B-b-b bir-day, shanana nana. Cococococa.” Cococococa was Marc's name for me. Whether or not it was my birthday, Marc liked to chant B-b-b bir-day, shanana nana. Cococococa this all day long. On the toilet, while he was shaving, and while he was slicing his breakfast banana. Birthdays were a big deal at my L’Arche house where I lived with five adults with intellectual disabilities. Weeks ahead of time, Nathalie, our head of house, would make sure the L’Arche workshop was preparing a beautiful homemade card for you, along with a Happy Birthday banner. You got to invite your favourite people, request your favourite meal and pick the kind of cake you wanted. My favourite food is Indian, and from her years living with Muslim families in Madagascar, Nathalie knew how to make it from scratch. Homemade samosas, papads, chana masala. Eight, nine years later, I can still remember how delicious it was.

Before cake, it was L’Arche tradition to have a birthday prayer. If you weren’t into Christianity, then they wouldn’t read anything from the Bible. But at the time, I was trying to get a thing going on with Jesus and I didn’t mind. For my twentieth birthday, Nathalie picked a verse from the Beatitudes, in the Gospel of Matthew. The line went, “Blessed be the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  Since my twentieth birthday, I have definitely drowned myself in cynicism, negativity and self-deprecation for days, weeks or months on end. During such periods, it is nice to remember that somebody once looked at me and decided I had a pure heart, and that I would see God.

After the bible verse which was short and sweet, Madeleine read a poem that Judith, one of our assistants had helped her write. Madeleine came to L’Arche when she was in her early fifties. Coming to L’Arche, she had all these big dreams. She wanted to learn to read and write, and maybe get a boyfriend and learn to take the bus by herself. Whenever we went to church, she would hold the hymn book open and concentrate so intently on the words, dying to be able to understand. It took her a long time to accept that not all her dreams would come true. Still, she wrote really wonderful poems.

Madeleine’s poem began with, “A twentieth birthday is a special day, and you are a very special person.” I will keep it forever. Another L’Arche tradition during birthday prayers was to pass a candle around the table. When it was your turn with the candle, you gave thanks for the things you loved about the person. Some people gave thanks to God, and some people just gave thanks. It all sounds so cheesy and yet, it ended up being pretty perfect.

Madeleine always gave a big speech that was similar to her poems. And thank you, Erica for taking us to the library. And thank you, Erica for that time we walked all the way from… Usually we had to tap her on the shoulder to get her to wrap it up.

Jimmy, a new L’Arche member liked to make speeches too. He was obsessed with Power Rangers, and with me as well. At every birthday, he made fun of me about the time I was having dinner at another L’Arche home and I stuck my hair in my mouth. “Remember, I asked you if you wanted ketchup? I have to tell your mother about that.”

“B-b-birday, cocococoCA, shanana-na-na,” Marc would say a few times. Then he would take my hand and whisper, “Cococococa,” one more time.

Isabelle loved Jesus and prayers. She was the same age as me. Born with cerebral palsy, Isabelle doesn’t move or talk that much, though she laughs and smiles a great deal and says yes and no with her eyes. At my birthday, Nathalie held the candle in front of her face and she broke into hysterics. Over and over again, her eyes looked up.

No matter whose birthday it was, Jadwiga said just about  the same thing. "Awe, what should I say? Same as Madeleine. Happy birthday. Keep up the good health. Keep up the good work in L'Arche."

 

These days, it seems like some of the cool people don’t like birthdays. People are too cool for such frivolous celebration. Oh well. Too bad for them. I’m still alive and I’m happy.

 

When it was a child’s birthday at Montessori school, we put a brass sun in the middle of the Circle time floor. Polishing brass is one of the Montessori activities. The children polished the sun with diluted all natural licorice -flavoured toothpaste.  Sometimes this made the sun shiny and other times the sun became encaked with greenish chunks. In any case, the child with the birthday took the painted globe and carried it around the sun.

“Isaac is one year old,” we’d say when he completed the circle.

“Isaac is two years old.” The child would walk around the circle as many times as the earth had rotated around the sun with him on it.

“Isaac is five years old." Then we would sing happy birthday in as many languages as we knew. English French, and Spanish.

More than once, I teared up as I watched a child walk around the sun. What a surprise.

In Halifax, I picked up on a tradition of doing the same number of sun salutations as the age you are turning. Some people also do this many backbends. I tried this tradition for a couple of years and it was fun. Here in Mysore, you can hardly expect the crowds to wait for you as you whip off your age in sun salutations and backbends. But although there is no official birthday tradition, Mysore is just one big birthday party anyways.  In most cases, I would advise you that not everyone is as happy as they appear on the Internet. And yet, here I am, and my face and the insides match.



Fake Rebellious Yoga Selfie I

The joy is real.



Fake Rebellious Yoga Selfie II
Some of the joy must be attributed to the Fanny Pack.
Also to the Spiritual Pants.
 

And to my dear friends
Got this from the Boatman this morning. It's our friend the moon.
The Boatman is going to be the moon for Halloween.





Wish you were here, Babe.
Otherwise I am the luckiest girl on Earth.

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