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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| 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) IG: @deepcleanswitherica 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. |
