Clean and Elegant

Clean and Elegant

Sunday 29 April 2018

Dear Vincent, It used to be that the last time I felt home was in a tiny blue penthouse apartment in Mysore, India on the 10th Avenue of the 3rd stage of a neighbourhood called Gokulam in November of 2014.


Dear Vincent,

It used to be that the last time I felt home was in a tiny blue penthouse apartment in Mysore, India on the 10th avenue of the 3rd stage of a neighbourhood called Gokulam in November of 2014.  Inside the blue walls, the apartment had brown plastic lawn chair furniture and a stained squishy mattress that I once was afraid had bed bugs when I woke up one morning with scattered bites across my forearms after I’d left the windows open all night long.  


Outside my tiny blue Mysore penthouse apartment, I used to go out on the roof top and sit under the sky and my clothesline whenever the moon was fully full or fully new, even it was only two o’clock in the morning.

And I felt home at 3998 Boulevard Lasalle from August of 2007 until July of 2010 and I wrote all the yamas and niyamas on the wall with tempera paint which I have since given away as I do with many items nearly pathologically.

If anyone is wondering what the yamas and niyamas are, they are in the yoga sutras, and their meanings are infinitely debatable but, some people say yamas are things you are not supposed to do. For example don’t steal or have too much wreckless sex. And some people say niyamas are things you are supposed to do. For example, clean your own fucking house.

The Yama and Niyama wall included a painting of a mushroom and a turtle and an umbrella and each of these items were lumps of a similar stature and shape, with different arrangements of dots or limbs or handles, or a stem. And there was a black and white baby picture of me and my father when my father had long black hair and a beard like a hippie.


On another of wall on Boulevard Lasalle, in tempera pain, I traced my body and filled in an impossibly colourful silhouette of myself. Beside it I wrote, I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt and now the impossibly colourful silhouette and the words I Let Go by Erica J. Schmidt are both part of my life’s humble mythology which is in fact not free from illusions or delusions or cravings for grandeur. Or clinging. Or wishing that somehow I will end up sitting on one of Oprah’s comfy green chairs in the middle of the forest.

I want to let go again.

Love, Erica.


Dear Vincent,

An ugly floral couch is getting drenched outside my window. I wanted to let you know that my visit with my mother was a low to medium-grade success. She brought two packages of expensive artisanal granola. And when she saw my wall of smelly marker sentences and drawings, the first thing she did was laugh at your quote, which is scrawled beneath my symbolic and disappointing pelvis.

“I’ve heard worse,” by Vincent  #*#*#*#. You were referring to a couple’s post-partum and deteriorating sex life, and it makes people think of all kinds of things.

“I’ve heard worse,” read my mother, and she laughed so hard.


In my life’s mythology, I get lost at the Toronto zoo when I am two or three years old. I get lost at the zoo, and Mommy breaks down. I am wearing a little blue dress, and probably the dress has flowers on it.

“Let’s go this way,” I tell my family, and I walk down a sunny boardwalk, not knowing that no one is following me. Behind a fence stand tigers, and people are patting them like horses. I am not afraid, not at all. A frumpy, olive-skinned woman with voluptuous hair says, “You come with me.” So I take her hand. Suddenly, I am in my mother’s arms, my face next to her painful protruding collar bone. Her face is broken and she weeps, as though she might melt and disappear. Mommy is breaking down. I have no idea how to deal with this and conclude that I must be far too large for a mother who is so tiny.


This morning I walked my mother from my house all the way to the train station. On the McGill campus, we passed a tour of beautiful teenagers who might have big dreams about going to university and changing the world, or who might just be going along with the whole thing. There was a frail-looking kid who was using a motorized wheelchair and it looked like he had to breathe through a tube of oxygen. The sight of him made my mother weep. Her face broke and it looked like she might melt and disappear. I never know how to deal with this and felt that I must be far too large for a mother who is so tiny.

“Just seeing him in that chair with all those kids standing up.”

Some people might have replied, “Yes, I know. It makes my heart hurt too.” When your heart hurts, it means that your heart is an excruciatingly compassionate and empathetic and loving and giving place. I’m not sure my heart is exactly that kind of place all that often.

I have no idea how much that kid didn’t want to breathe through a tube, or if he’d rather be standing up, but it didn’t quite hurt my heart because he might actually really love his life. So I told my mother about all the people I’d met who breathed through tubes or worse, or who stopped being able to walk when they were twelve, and who didn’t want people to feel sorry for them, and who went to summer camp and university and made tons of friends and kayaked and played hockey and when they broke their legs, they thought it was funny cause they couldn’t walk anyways.

“Lots of those kids do great,” I said.

“How do you know all this,” said my mother.

By the time we’d crossed Sherbrooke street and were in front of that weird yellowy statue of a crowd in front of the Laurentian bank, my mother wasn’t crying anymore.

Your head might say, I can’t wait to be dead, when really a dissociated snack will do just fine.

At the train station, I drank some of my feelings with a coconut latte. Walking home, it started to rain, and on Durocher Street, I found a course pack on Abnormal Psychology getting wet in a plastic bag in front of a dumpster. And I ripped out the Walt Whitman the Henry James sections of some other course pack on a specific topic about American literature that I have already forgotten. And there is a story called, Rappaccini’s Daughter in which a young scholar who is named Giovanni has a tendency for heartbreak and sighs heavily by the end of the first paragraph.

The first article in the abnormal psychology book is about a kid with autoimmune encephalitis, and this caused psychosis and despondency and a bunch of neurological dysfunctions.

Perhaps in another lifetime, I will be one of those people who stores granola in Mason jars purchased specifically for this purpose, sprinkling the granola over yogurt every now and then, instead of using it to replace all meals for approximately two days.

In Song of Myself, someone has circled in pencil the line,

And that a kelson of the creation is love.

I would have switched the lines
after kelson
and after creation
and maybe after is.

It occurred to me to Google, “Walt Whitman racist” and in fact, Walt Whitman did write a number of terribly racist things.
From a footnote I learned that a kelson is a basic structural unit,
semi-colon,
a reinforcing timber bolted to the keel of a ship. And the keel of a ship is a backbone. Whoever circled the line also drew an arrow and wrote, love keeps the world steady.
Soon after that, there’s the section where the child asks, What is the grass, and Walt Whitman doesn’t know what to say. He’s not sure.
The person with the pencil says, Green is the colour of hope.
Green is the colour of hope, and we’ve all heard worse.

You might sometimes wish you were dead
when,
really a dissociated snack will do just fine.
Love, Erica.

Send your letters to me or Vincent to ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. I will be out of granola very soon.

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Not Separate From All That Is
Dear Vincent, I went on my adventure. Everything is green. I love you.
Dear Vincent, Some other Vincent coerced me into a blowjob.


Saturday 7 April 2018

Dear Vincent, I went on my adventure. Everything is green. I love you.


Dear Vincent,

I went on my adventure.
Everything is green.
I love you.

I found this perfect poem on somebody’s fridge. The poet was eight years old, or maybe less.

It’s very boring, but many people don’t have anything on their fridges. I recommend animal postcards, ironic magnets, artwork from children whose insides match their outsides and fortune cookie fortunes. Everything is green. You are broad minded and socially active. Land is always in the minds of flying birds. I do not recommend Happy Couple wedding invitations, or Happy Family Christmas newsletters.

Recently I discovered that the best thing to clean the front of your fridge with is dish soap. No need for bottles of poison labelled with skulls and cross bones and the words, “keep out of reach of children.”

Once I cleaned a house called Happy Times. Every corner of Happy Times was some kind of museum. Mannequin and Strange Doll Museum, Bad Harlequin Museum, Endless Stacks of Records on a Ping Pong Table Museum. I cleaned Happy Times for three days, ten hours per day. Outside the fridge, it was covered with middle-aged masters swimming ribbons, 35 years of photo booth photos, grocery store receipts, baby pictures, and every ex-girlfriend’s every pet and child at every stage of life. Inside the freezer was a Ziploc bag that housed a budgie named Budgimagar. Budgimagar had been dead for at least five years. To taxidermy his body would have cost at least three hundred dollars.


I decided not to post a photo of Budgimagar in a ziplock bag.
Before I left, I wrote on the on the back of a mountain goat animal postcard.

Dear Fraser,
How come you don’t have any pictures of me on your fridge?
I wanted to remind you that you do not need to buy any more edamame beans. Or salsa.

Also, your dead budgie’s corpse is in the freezer in the basement.

Love, Erica.



I hung the postcard on the fridge under a picture of a dog in the snow and above a bicycle magnet and a photograph of an ex-girlfriend’s four-year old child who is now a grown man. Fraser did not see the postcard for at least six days.

 
Once I met a child whose insides matched her outsides, and her shirt also matched the sky.

“Guess what, Ercica?” she used to say. She'd point to her shirt and say, “Blue.” Then point to the sky and say, “Blue!”

“Er-ci-ca,” said the girl whose insides matched her outsides. “Are you proud of me?” She pronounced proud like an elementary school student whose music teacher had just explained the importance of accentuating your vowels while singing in the spring concert. Proud with wow inside of it. PrOWd.

The girl whose insides matched her outsides had just silkscreened a t. shirt. The blue and green and yellow puddles of paint made a sail boat on squiggles of water, and a tree on an island and a cloud that rhymed with proud with a wow inside of it. And the best kind of little kid sun, that’s just a circle with huge rectangular rays coming out of it.

“Yes, I’m SO proud of you,” I said. And I was. Proud with a wow inside of it.

 



On my fridge, I have three circular magnets of flamingos doing yoga. For a period of time, one of the magnets held up a list about of the three things I knew about my therapist, Vincent, you, at that time. There was something to do with how Vincent likes citrus and apples, and how Vincent does not recommend cooking with a crock pot as the excess moisture might interfere with flavour. And  you were learning to stand on your head, and this warmed my heart.

Now I know that when you first became a psychologist, you ate too much trail mix and this wreaked havoc on your liver. And I know that you are 38 years old, and that you are not amazing at doing your lunch dishes promptly after you eat, and sometimes you even leave them on your dusty filing cabinet until the next day which is somewhat questionable, as is objecting to cooking with a crock pot.

I eat an extensive amount of trail mix, and last October, I took down the list of the three Things I Know About Vincent, and this made me vaguely Proud of myself, kind of like I feel after I take out the recycling and most of the cans of coconut cream are more or less rinsed out.

Now the front of my fridge is three drawings from children whose insides match their outsides, a birthday card from my friend who loves me just the way I am, the Swadisthana sex chakra, the magnets of  bendy flamingos doing yoga, magnets my mother sent me in a care package, and a fortune cookie fortune that says, “Happy events will soon take place in your home.”

They say the stock market is starting to swoon. Inside my freezer there is compost, homemade vegetable broth, and one third of a bag of edamame beans.  Tonight I am going to a BBQ, but until then the kind of Saturday I am having is a Blob Saturday. Everything is green. I love you.



Erica. 


Send your imaginary and un-imaginary emails to Vincent, or to me. The secret email address is ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com.  


Everything is Green.


Follow Erica J. Schmidt on Facebook

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Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go

Bodhisattva Business Ventures:

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Yours Til I'm a Post-Modern Literary Genius


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, This is a Hungry Ghost.






Friday 6 April 2018

Dear Vincent, In my heart, I feel quite strange and lonely.

Dear Vincent,

In my heart, I feel quite strange and lonely. A strange and lonely thing to do is to attend a Silent Book Club where everyone sits silently and reads whatever book they are reading and we all bask in vague intellectual smugness and the beautiful potential we each possess before we open our mouths. In my youth, I used to impose an extensive reading list upon myself. Everywhere I went, I’d insist on devouring books that were meant to enhance my mind. The Second Sex, or Margaret Atwood, or failed attempts at the Odyssey.  On the metro, walking down the street, through every empty moment, in any empty chair or living room.
 
How joyful was that?
I’m not sure.
These days I do not read as extensively, or, as voraciously. But sometimes I try.

Last night on my way to the Silent Book Club, I dropped off a bag of extraneous clothing in front of a Donation Depot on Bernard Street. I tend to give away all my extraneous possessions nearly pathologically. Further down Bernard Street, I passed an older man and woman who were coming out of Lester’s where apparently they serve the best French fries in Montreal and once I saw my friends consuming enormous slices of yellowish cheese cake.

The older man said, “Well that would take away from the treat for when we get back.” I did not know what the treat was, or where the old couple was going, or if they’d already returned and had just consumed the treat together. But somehow, his words unravelled my strange and lonely heart and I wept reasonably delicately for about seven lonely steps on Bernard Street.
This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes
In the book I read at the Silent Book Club, the main character’s name is Richard. An enormous hole is taking over Richard’s back yard and is causing a structural catastrophe to his vast and fancy house. And Richard has begun to go to a doughnut shop every morning. The book is called, This Book Will Save Your Life by A.M. Homes. One evening at the grocery store, Richard comes upon a woman who is weeping between the lettuce and the tomatoes. The woman weeps because she is thinking about the salad she prepares her family every night and the salad has two kinds of greens and lovingly selected tomatoes and chick peas and a meticulous salad dressing, and her family does not seem to give a shit. There are so many salads like this out there, and so many strange and lonely tears in cereal aisles, or somewhere between the lettuce and the tomatoes, or in seven lonely steps somewhere on Bernard Street.

Now I am on page 126 of This Book Will Save Your Life.

Doughnuts, from my friend Shayna


I have an aversion to French Fries because in Grade Six French class we learned that 10 frites ont 110 calories and this seemed excessive. And I have an aversion to doughnuts because someone told me they take three days to digest, and they seem far too sugary and hollow.

Love, Erica.  

Send your imaginary and un-imaginary emails to Vincent, or to me. The secret email address is ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. You can tell us about your favourite doughnuts, or the books that saved your life, or else your strange and lonely heart.

Strange and lonely solace from the Drying Rack
(April 4, 2018)


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Rideshare, Sterilization and Doughnuts
Taes floats your boat
Dear Vincent, Are you lonely? Do you have a pain body?


Exalted


Thursday 5 April 2018

Dear Vincent, I will not be a robot.

Dear Vincent,

What I retain from yesterday's session is how my whole life is a sad fantasy and if you were a cleaner, you would feel like a robot. Yesterday, as I cleaned, I felt deeply tragic. Then I translated a rush press release about making 3333 pairs of yoga pants out of 20,000 plastic water bottles. I took a mushrooms dose and called the Dead Inside Man. I woke up at 4:13 a.m. and the tragic feeling had not lifted. The crisis center said it was okay to cancel my faraway, polyamorous client.  On Facebook I found a French podcast about depression and being self-employed. 

Death is certain.
Its time is uncertain. 
will
not 
be
a robot.
I will not be a robot.

The Dead Inside Man says it's all just dumb fun anyways.
Best wishes for a dumb-fun-filled day,
Erica. 


Send your imaginary and un-imaginary emails to Vincent, or to me. The secret email address is ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. Yay dumb fun.
Yay, dumb fun.


Follow Erica J. Schmidt on Facebook

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, Everyone is one with the birds except for me.
Five Days of Creative Recovery 
Dear Vincent, This is a Hungry Ghost