They smile at the sidewalks even though it's cold as balls and they must remain on leashes.

Places where you had the true joy.
Or saw it.

Beautiful Neurotic.

There is something to be cherished
in those who are so serious.

On February 11, I will ask the Boatman to send me the bottles of castor oil I brought back from India in 2014.
Unless he already threw them out.

Included in my update, I will mention that I ordered my first full basket of French Fries.
I ate the whole thing.
With ketchup, and even some mayonnaise.
Survived the ordeal
free from both obesity,
and heartburn.

Vincent would be proud of the risk.

Groundhog Day, 2017

Today I might write a letter
To my old Expensive Friend David.
Vincent is subsidized,
but David cost
one hundred and seventy bucks per hour.
He was worth it.
Halifax is
a torturous place
to find friends.

I never got to learn very much about David,
except that he had more than one kid,
and however many children he had,
they all preferred texting
over talking on the phone.

David was generous with his time.
David also seemed to love purple.

Dear David,

I really like purple too.
Really, really, really like it.
Even more than I did in Halifax.

 I really really really love purple.

Tips for Surviving Life:
Prozaac, and Underemployment.

The Big Blue Sky is still not up.
My room smells like a stuffy sleepy person.
The duvet failed to get me off this morning.
Where are the buzz kills,
and who.

Dear Married Man,
It has occurred to me
that I might consider
crawling out from under the table
and re-emerging with some of my dignity.

Next time I'm gonna try
Not to knock all the dignity over
in the first place.

This would be such a fabulous Country Music Song.
Another missed calling!
Alas.

You know all about these.
I love you and don't worry about it.

Unrestrained enthusiasm or joy.
Thinking about this again
And all the people at vipassana
who have been observing the breath below their nostrils
and scanning all their body's cells
as the state of the world unravels.

My computer fan
is evoking the sound
of a low-powered chain saw.

All we've got left
for the pure sanctioned joy
is the babies being born.

Even with the blood
And violence
And fecal matter,
we are allowed to be ecstatic.

I used to be too jaded for this.
But now,
the sight
or the softness
of a onesie
fills me with such hope.

I also see a massive revolution
in the small people
trudging passed Café Olimpico
In vibrant snowsuits twice the size of them.

They do not feel burdened like oversized marshmallows.

They smile at the sidewalks
Even though it's cold as balls
And they must remain on leashes.

The End.

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

My Ego Throws Up When I Won't Believe It
Hour of God on a Friday
The Vipassana Diaries: Why I Like To Pee Outside

Exalted

 

Prozac Made Me A Better Person

Prozac made me a better person.
I think it awakened my crown chakra.
I feel more beautiful on the inside and the outside, and the rest of the world is not so irritating.
Also, the orgasms came back.
A joy and a Fucking Relief.

The above lines do not form a Haiku,
That said:

It seems I missed my
calling. Writing haikus to
tortured Married Men.

Haikus provide an excellent format for performative text messages.

Did I scare you off?
Oh well. Go deal with your shit.
I’ll be waiting here.

On the stove, I’m steaming broccoli right in the middle of the heat wave. Sometimes the dress does not match the day, and vice versa.

In other news, I am translating two different documents for money.

A novel excerpt about terrorists on a cruise ship, and a riveting manual about project management. Sometimes I have a tendency to make my sentences choppy. Like the waves on the ocean in questionable literary device. The novel is top secret. As for the manual, all I will say is that sometimes project management involves hierarchical decomposition.

In other other news, I have acquired a Facebook Rehab Coach to help me quit my habit of perpetually checking Facebook when the hierarchical decomposition bores me.

Today is Day Two. I am allowed to check Facebook three times. So far, I have only checked it once. For those of you who are also attempting a Facebook cleanse or any kind of cleanse, beware of the Secondary Vice.  Twitter is not adequate. Espresso has its limits, as does humping the duvet. And haikus to the Married Man run the risk of canning the whole thing.

Haiku Interlude:

I think the problem is.
I need too much attention.
Not sustainable.

I need too much attention. Hence, the Bananas.

Sentences I wrote to my Facebook Rehab Coach Interlude:

I agree about it making me feel terrible pretty much every single time. Jealous, inadequate, underachieving, FOMO, guilt, there are so many negative sensations I can associate with Facebook, and yet I plunge into the black hole over and over again. I have somewhat of an addictive personality. Also, when I'm stressed out, my brain likes to do a whole bunch of things all at once, even though this rarely resolves the source of stress and often makes it much worse.

A couple of weekends ago I went to a cottage and didn't check my phone for two days. It was so easy. I thought I'd evolve to a brand new Erica and yet as soon as I got home, I was masturbating all over my phone all the time all over again. Self-forgiveness is so important.

I like narrating my life, and having virtual audiences. I want my life to be affirmed. Maybe that is why I like Facebook. There is maybe the possibility of having people affirm my life.  Also, I am translating this jargonny manual about project management and it so boring.

Recently I read somewhere that everyone needs a base level of food, money, power and sex. Due to social media, there is also a base requirement for attention which is actually quite high.

 

The Project Management document is talking about subtracting actual competencies from expected competencies. Guess I should get back to it.



Wink, Grin, Pear = Tell me I'm cute

End of Sentences I wrote to my Facebook Rehab Coach Interlude.
I really like my new dress. It matches the day.

The End.

The Dress that Matches the Day
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Crackbook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor

I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

Performative Text Messages
Performative Crying in Alleys
The O's in the Tôtô have Hats

Why I am Like  Oprah
Deep Unyielding Depression, Part Two

 

Selfies on Happy Stairs

At the Halifax Seaport Farmers' Market, the Happy Stairs are where people sit and consume their strawberries or burritos or breakfast pizzas and bask in their own and everyone else's Happy Market Delight. Today there were fiddle and bass players who entertained the Happy Stairs People in our consumption.  Children bopped around to the music and everyone sighed and marvelled at how adorable they were. We even got a surprise man in plaid pants who indulged us in an impromptu tap dancing performance. 
 


The Happy Stairs, at the Halifax Seaport Farmers' Market
The tap dancer in plaid shorts danced away before I could take another unskilled photograph

 It is fun to look around and absorb the Magical Market Faces. I saw a man with bright blue eyes and a very Magical Market Face. I wanted to take a picture, but the Boatman said that I could hold him in my heart, instead of on my phone; in my emotional data, and not my cellular data. The Boatman was very proud of this clever line of his. He was also very happy with his sausage.
 


Boatman with Sausage
 

I judged the parents who imprisoned their large children in strollers, but I did not judge the Boatman for eating a sausage. For my Happy Stairs consumption, I ate some strawberries, an apple and an oversized espresso gluten-free cookie.

I can't remember when I started eating apple cores. So far I have not died of arsenic poisoning.

Now we are becoming like the despicable people on Facebook who are always posting themselves consuming or about to consume some immaculate and delicious food. How smug of us.

Our visits to the market always fill us with deep joy. To add to our joy, on our way out we ran into the marvellous musicians Rich & Kate. This lively duo combines clarinet, accordion, kazoo and vocals clarinet and accordion into a performance that is delightful for both ears and eyes. The Boatman met Rich & Kate at the White Rabbit Art Camp where he built things out of mud, made a bunch of drawings and also got an infection in his foot.

Here is the Boatman's Drawing of Rich & Kate:

 



More Boatman drawings of Rich &Kate on Tumblr at http://verysatisfied.tumblr.com
Follow Rich & Kate on Facebook
 



We watched them with love in our hearts as the Boatman finished his cappucinno, the kind he always buys at the Steve-o-Reno's booth.

The Selfie Series may or may not be over.

To conclude this segment, here are the beautiful doughnuts that my friend Shayna posted on Facebook in response to the first narcissistic selfie post, in which the Boatman and I prepare to eat market brownies on a Sunday morning. Shayna travelled a long distance to obtain these doughnuts and once she brought them home, she took a bite out of each one to see which one she liked the best. Like the Boatman and I, Shayna is not planning a wedding and she has no babies.

The End. 

Shayna's doughnuts.
Much love and thanks to the market vendors and musicians, and to Shayna for buying the doughnuts.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvic floor
I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

Selfies with Brownies
Jujubes
Why I am like Jane Fonda
 



 

 

 

 

No One Could Have Given More: In Loving Memory of John T. Smith

I just attended the funeral of a lovely man named John Smith.  Despite his extremely common name, John was an extraordinary person who I met while I was teaching and practicing at the local yoga shala. He died quite unexpectedly at age 59, of a brief and sudden illness.   

The church where the funeral was held was absolutely packed.  John clearly touched many many people.  

When they played the hymns, you could hardly hear anyone singing because everyone was crying. 

At the yoga studio, John practiced in the far left-hand corner, next to the window.  In warm, or at least reasonably uncatastrophic weather, he took his bike, which he also took on treks across a number of countries, along with his dear wife.  Whenever I subbed Mysore, I would arrive on my own bike at the very last minute.

“You don’t know what quarter to six means, do you?” he’d joke.  Then he would watch in feigned annoyance as I struggled to unlock the door.  John greeted everyone with a bright face and sincere interest.  

No one was spared from the teasing, but I don’t think anyone wanted to be. One day as I unrolled my mat in the Mysore room, John turned to me and pointed to the name that was printed on my yoga mat.

“Good thing your name’s there!” he said with a big smile. “Otherwise we wouldn’t know who you were!”
 
I started to say something back, but then Seth the instructor said, “Sssshh!” from across the room.  Over the years, it seemed that John caused many of us to be “Ssshhed” many times.  Probably none of us minded. 
 
Besides being a yogi and avid cyclist, John was a dedicated practitioner of karate and tai chi.  In the evenings, he would often do more than one karate class.  Some mornings, he would hobble in, favouring one side of his body or the other.
 
“You alright, John?” I’d ask.

“Oh yah,” he’d say.  “Just a little sore.”  Some years back, John had had hip replacements in both hips.  This never seemed to hold him back.  It was refreshing to see John practice.  He was delighted at what he was able to do, while maintaining true equanimity when faced with his limitations.  Due to his enthusiastic cycling and karate endeavours, his teacher Seth used to recommend that he do an intense psoas stretch before beginning his practice. 

Once, Seth had been away for a while and I noticed that John hadn’t done the psoas stretch for a couple of days. 

“So how about the psoas stretch?” I asked.

“Oh yah, better do that,” he said.  He grabbed a chair, bent one knee and slid his foot and shin against the wall.  For thirty seconds on each side he clutched the chair, grimacing in pure agony.  Then he stood up and continued his practice.  When others spoke of their struggles with various postures, John would shake his head, smile and say, “I don’t care.  I can do Baddha Konasana.”  No matter what he was talking about, there was always that twinkle in his eye, as though he was witnessing some sort of miracle. 
 

Baddha Konasana: John took great pride and delight in being able to do the pose, despite two hip replacements!

Every once in awhile, his replacement hips would pop out of place, usually in Trikonasana (triangle pose).

“Oh well,” he’d say.  “They’re not mine.  Can’t feel a thing.”

Listening to the tributes at the funeral, it seemed as though John was not someone who held back or did things moderately.  He gave everything had to every endeavour he took on:  family, friendships, yoga, work, karate, travel, cooking, chutney and jam...  For lack of a less cheesy sentence, it was very sad, but also very inspirational.

As a friend put it at the reception, “It makes you want to try harder.” 

Once John brought me a little jar of strawberry jam and it was absolutely delicious.   He was always trading chutneys and curry with other yoga practitioners.  I think that John was able to thoroughly demonstrate that where love and generosity are involved, there’s no need to hold back.  I hope to be able to truly remember this. 

Although I don’t know John’s family, I wanted to give them a card to express my gratitude for John’s presence in my life, and to offer my condolences.  It took me a long time to choose the card.  In the end I picked out  one with a picture of a silhouetted person on a sunsetted beach and her golden retriever.  Below the picture were the words, “No one could have possibly given...”

Inside the card was the word, “More.”

I thought that this message really captured John.  This morning before the funeral, as I was filling out the card, I turned it over and looked at the back.  There were the words, “Pet condolence greetings.”  The card company had created a line of Pet Sympathy Greeting Cards, to console people who had lost their dogs, and cats, and goldfish and guinea pigs.  I had purchased a pet sympathy card in memory of my friend John, a vibrant and remarkable human being.  Shoot. 

At first I thought that I wouldn’t use the card, and that I would just write something in the funeral home’s online guest book.  Then I realized that the words were actually right.  And John always took immense pleasure in catching and making fun of me in one of my typical socially awkward mishaps. 

So I thought I’d give John that satisfaction and I filled out the condolences card meant for the death of a pet.

Dear John, I do believe that nobody could have given more than you. I wish that I could see you one more time.  Though this is not to be, I will do my best to try harder and to give more.  I will think of you during my practice, and during my days.

Love, Erica.

 

Dog Friend in Gokarna, February 2016