Clean and Elegant

Clean and Elegant

Friday 19 January 2018

Dear Vincent, Now you know I have that thing where you love your therapist.


Dear Vincent,

Now you know I have that thing where you love your therapist. Your Bumble profile is pretty decent. I’d say switch your main profile pic from the furrowed selfie amongst famous paintings (though this makes you seem cultured, intelligent and potentially rich) to your windblown face in front of the mountain. Not with the kangaroo. That’s cute, but some women find animals to be too obvious a ploy. Always lead with your Windblown, I’m About To Orgasm Sex Face. I rehearsed a last minute live performance in front of your Windblown, I’m About To Orgasm Sex Face and the performance went reasonably well.

So you swiped right by accident? Does this at least mean you think I’m a little bit cute? Please can you say, I have excellent legs? Just once.

In our session, I reverberated and told you all about all the Dear Vincent letters and how I post them on the Internet, and how one day I hope they will make an excellent book called, Mondays without Vincent. And yes, for months and months, I did thoroughly long for the book to end with a scandalous and life-changing wind blown orgasm in your windowless office on a Tuesday or Wednesday afternoon.

Oh well. Turns out you are two to four years too young for me anyways. Mostly I like to date outside of my decade. That way my boyfriend is more able to double as some sort of dad.

In your windowless office in your chair where you sit so still with your knees just slightly apart, you used words like “Unreciprocated,” “Impossible,” and “Once a patient, always a patient.” I am glad you have such excellent professional boundaries. These have never been my gift. My gift is, “Professional Impossible Crushes.” P.I.C.

P.I.C’s, these infuse my cells with love and they permeate my heart. You have been the perfect P.I.C. because your eyes are so kind and so beautiful and you make me feel so safe and you leave just about everything up to the imagination. I would have loved to be exceptional and unique and original but I guess this thing where you love your therapist is in fact quite common. It is an immense relief to know that it does not necessarily disqualify me as your patient. Probably I will continue to pretend that secretly, I am your favourite. But I will try to convince my cells to fully comprehend the sentence, “A good therapist will never take you out for a sandwich.” This means that when I masturbate, I’ll more or less refrain from picturing your face somewhere near my crotch or behind me or on top of me having a windblown orgasm. So far it’s been a hell of a time getting off. And I can’t help but wonder if maybe you jerked off to me, maybe just once or else twice. And if all of us are actually just wandering around the world, playing imaginary roles in imaginary costumes. And if the truth is, we all end up taking off our costumes and picking up a sandwich and masturbating to one another when we get home.

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

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Dear Vincent, Today I might tell you that I love you, or else I might ask if you too are a Scorpio, and if so, is it your birthday?
Dear Vincent, It seems no matter who I'm having sex with, I ugly cry every other time.
Dear Vincent, Thank you for responding to my hysterical phone call.  


Mythological Unconditional Love (M.U.L.)


Sunday 7 January 2018

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


Dear Vincent,

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We are all love.

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

The fridge belongs to a lovely family. Attractive, though without an Owl Lamp, they once owned a self-mutilating parrot whose angst had caused him to pluck out all the feathers around his neck. Apparently this is quite common. Now the self-mutilating parrot is flapping his wings in a bird refuge in Oka, north-east of Montreal. There he can fly freely amongst birds with feathered and un-feathered necks and wings that are nothing but splendid. After he went away to Okay, it took about six weeks before I got rid of all the self-mutilating bird shit on the walls and on the floors. The fridge stayed as shiny as ever, at least every Friday.
Selfie, with Vinegar
Outlines of victim wings also look a bit like floppy ears. Floppy ears, a bow tie, and I can’t think of anything else, except perhaps an elephant head, or the shape of certain elbows when someone places their hands squarely on their hips. Or fingerless gloves, their mouths placed side by side.

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

Love you always,

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

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


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


Professional, Depressed




Monday 1 January 2018

Dear Vincent, Some things we might just have to deal with for the rest of our lives.


Dear Vincent,

Some things we just might have to deal with for the rest of our lives.

It’s possible I will always be

A relatively terrible cook

Someone who struggles with lunch choices, livelihood, self-confidence,

And the phrase, “This is supposed to be fun.”

And maybe I will forever long for how safe I felt when I was with my first true love, the Boatman.

When I was four years old, I remember crying so hard that I gave myself a headache. The reason for the meltdown had something to do with tobogganing. Only one of my parents was coming and it wasn’t the one I wanted.

“Why does your head hurt?” my sister had asked that evening.

“I was screaming,” I replied, and in that statement, I had the distinct realization that such displays of emotion were not going to be permitted for my entire life. Crying until your head hurt was moderately acceptable when you were four, but eventually you had to grow out of it. And yet, despite my young wisdom, the big tears followed me to grade one, grade eight, first-year university, the first day of many jobs, walking home from therapy, and remembering the wrong memory some moment between two and four o’clock in the morning.  

Maybe you have chronic pain, maybe you struggle with depression, or disordered eating. Some of these things you may have to deal with for the rest of your life.

When I heard this, I was cleaning my friend’s shower. The speaker was Michael Stone and he is now dead. Last summer, he took fentanyl by accident. Once a week for almost six years, I listened to Michael Stone’s podcast about yoga and meditation and how to wake up to your life. All the questions were so enormous and yet the answers were so simple. Intimacy, relationship, taking care of things. Laundry, your body, the cashier at the grocery store. You could become intimate with anything. Even a terrible mood.
Michael Stone
I was in a terrible mood as I cleaned my friend’s shower and considered all the things I’d need to deal with for the rest of my life. My friend and I had met at my roommate’s party. He’d brought his girlfriend who sat on the couch across from us as I blabbered on and on about transcending the side effects of Prozac, and victoriously humping my pink and purple polka dot duvet two times a day all before 9 a.m. When it got close to my bed time, I invited my friend to join me as I flossed. As fate would have it, his relationship was sexless and open, and because I’d so elaborately described my masturbation practice, my friend thought that flossing meant precursors to humping his thigh and/or other body parts.

Months later, although we’d transcended the flossing misunderstanding, I was pissed off because I’d explicitly told my friend that I no longer cleaned with toxic products that dried out my face and inhaled poison. But instead of buying vinegar, my friend had gone to the Dollar Store and spent fifty dollars on Clorox, Vim, and similar items whose odours evoked hospitals and cancer.

One more time, Mood Sports. Some things in life, we will not and do not transcend.

And yet, knowing this is not necessarily bad news.

In fact, no more fighting could be a fucking relief.

This is just me

And I suck at lunch,

Professional boundaries,

Closing cupboard doors,

Lighting matches,

Staying up past 9:30 P.M.

And punctuating bulleted lists.

But I’m really good at

Morning Routines,

Folding laundry,

Walking obscenely long distances,

Mopping, and cleaning up other people’s messes

Taking out the recycling,

Buying toilet paper before it runs out

And

I’m the best pen pal you’ve ever had.
January 1, 2018
(written on the wall in smelly markers)
My goals in life are Creativity
Service
deep love for all of my cells
Buy a new roll of masking tape
A cleared and clear and generous heart
What is a cervical orgasm
Using Clorox only once will not give you cancer.

Some things, we might just have to deal with for the rest of our lives. On Wednesday, the temperature goes up to minus 9, and I get to see you and I can’t wait. Happy New Year, Vincent.

Love, Erica.
Send your letters to me and/or Vincent to ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.
Happy New Year
Love, Erica


Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go

Bodhisattva Business Ventures:

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



Dear Vincent, This letter is about saving a begonia. Love, Erica.
What does it mean to be home.
Mourning, Wailing, Yearning, Wake up