Pen Pal

Hop scotch is making a comeback, and I have a new pen pal.
 
Writing to pen pals is better than writing in my journal. I am not so self-centred or whiney.
 
My new pen pal just started practicing Ashtanga Yoga. Before that, she was practicing a style of yoga that didn’t make her body sexy enough. Although she has only been doing Ashtanga for two weeks, she says that her butt has already began to disappear. She worries that soon her rear end will be completely flat. And her arms are so “stupidly weak” that chaturanga is impossible. Well, she is quite a hoot. 

Me in Chaturanga, some time ago...

I miss Ashtanga. On Monday night, I skyped with Nobel, the Ashtanga blogger at Yoga in the Dragon’s Den. He wanted to hear about going to Mysore. We gabbed and gabbed about all the latest Ashtanga gossip, and I told him all about my trip. The exciting anticipation at the gate, Sharath’s gaze, the focus, the breathing, the sweat, the friends. It was such a wonderful and delightful time. And the Ashtanga sequence is so organized and beautiful. Nobel talked a bit about his practice and it made me miss jumpbacks and backbends. What a joy. I wished I could wake up the next day and just bust out the primary series. If only I could figure out my spine, my pelvis.

The next morning, instead of my usual geriatric routine, I did an incredibly slow version of serene and receptive Sun Salutations. Just the first kind, Surya Namaskar A. No pain. Perhaps that is my limit because yesterday, I tried Surya Namaskar B. Even with modifications, my hip got all clicky, as though it was jammed in the wrong place. As I have done so many times over the last few years, I pressed my hand against the outer edge of my left knee. The horrendous and upsetting noise erupted. Gross.

  

  Kino in Surya Namaskar A

I just don’t think this will go so well when I’m eighty. Or thirty-two. Oh well. Surely the path doesn’t stop here. People go on and on about the importance of committing to one system, one form. Keep dabbling and you’ll dig a lot of holes, but you’ll never hit water. Maybe we just need to make our holes a little wider.

My pen pal wanted to hear all about my spiritual achievements from last week’s three-day stint at vipassana. Something relatively sincere came out of me:

“Well, I don't know about spiritual achievements. It sounds trite and cheesy, but I think that the best thing we can hope for is radical self-love and acceptance, flat ass, stupid chaturanga and all. These practices are hard. The perfect form is deep inside you. If this perfection remains forever deep, so be it. Lift the corners of your mouth, and try to have a nice time.”

My ex-ex boyfriend Simon who jumped off a building used to say: “Deep down we’re all good people. But very very deep. On the surface, Assholes.”

These days, I am not so filled with jokes. My heart feels heavy. But love is somewhere. One of my dearest friends has a very new baby. Earlier this week I figured out how to bounce and squat him to sleep. Then I lay on my friend’s bed and he slept on my chest for twenty minutes. When I got up, my face glowed and my heart felt warm. My friend said the baby can do this because his heart has never been broken.

There are a lot of broken hearts out there. Broken hearts, missing limbs, and airplanes.

There are also a lot of babies.

The End. 

Baby Naptime Dream Adventures

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Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, by Erica J. Schmidt

The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two
You Cling To Things Until They Die
Lying Down Club
Yours Til Ekam Inhales



 

How I am violent, by Erica J. Schmidt

Since May, I have been taking an online course called, Embodying Ethics and Vows. It is with Michael Stone and Elaine Pierce. This week, our assignment was to write about how we are working with the precept of not causing harm (ahimsa) in our lives. Here's what I got:

How I am Violent, by Erica J. Schmidt

Instead of non-violence, I am thinking about violence. This makes me think of my relationships, especially with Simon and with my body, but with the Boatman too. Everyone saves their violence up for someone, for something. Actually, I have no idea what everyone else does.

It is hard not to tell the same old story over and over again. The story of Simon, my ex-boyfriend who I fucked at the Granola Party, on the biodegradable yoga mat. I was really drunk, and he wasn’t. Perhaps this should have been the last time. Instead, there was a big saga of alcohol, vomit, both passionate and ambivalent sex, and name calling. We wrote all this down in letters that were supposed to be published in brilliant books that were supposed to allow me to quit my three and a half low-paying jobs.

Simon used to say that I was like an eight-year-old sore loser tennis player. And I was always losing the match and so being with me was unbearable. He didn’t understand how the Boatman was able to stand me. Simon was probably more right about this than I was when I wrote,

“Sometimes I think that it would kind of be ideal for you to die.

Then our book would be a huge success.  I could feel somewhat sorry for myself, because a guy I fucked died and that is always traumatizing.  Everyone would look at me with odd sympathy. Especially if you committed suicide.  The sympathy would be immense.  Oh poor poor, Erica.  You slept with a sick and twisted soul.  Scarred forever.  How terrible.”

Highly mediocre writing, and unkind. This was from the second volume of the Little Savage and the Hermit. I wasn’t really into writing this book. Simon wanted the plot to be about how I finally got an orgasm. I felt like this was a dumb plot.

I am not the reason Simon jumped off his apartment building. I can just hear him say, “I would never jump off a building for you, you stupid fucking cunt!” His voice carries a tinge of love.

Simon’s most recent girlfriend gave me pictures and memorabilia from the funeral. When I first put the pictures on my meditation alter, I told myself that after a week, I was allowed to take them down. It has been awhile. They are still there. One of his photos is in a disposable coffee cup that is covered with the stream-of-consciousness poem I wrote during my French Literature Class in 2009. Simon kept this cup all the way until he died.  Those cups don’t biodegrade.

The alter, with spectacular lighting.

Simon once said that based on a study they did on rats in the 1970’s, I will never ever get cancer. The rats who expressed their stress by freaking out didn’t die or get any diseases. At this rate, I will live until I’m 98.

Not every day can be fulfilling and lucrative and productive. Some days are for melting down. Yesterday was a meltdown day. It was the first time I had woken up at 5 a.m. for a while. That could have caused the meltdown. I also don’t think I ate properly the day before. All the trivial and banal things tend to matter. Alas. I was stressed because I had this assignment to write, and Thursday is also blogging day. I thought that maybe I could combine the two activities, although I wasn’t sure whether or not the world should know that I told Simon it might be better if he died. As a creative practice, I have vaguely committed to myself and my four and a half fans that I will blog every Monday and Thursday. It started off being fun. Now I am starting to crap out.

Writing, with all its potential for redemption can also be violent.  Same thing goes for meltdowns.

My favourite person to have a meltdown with is the Boatman. No one can console and contain my eight-year-old sore-loser-tennis-player-self better than him. Plus I don’t really want to really want to impose this self onto anyone else. Some friends say that I should limit my contact with the Boatman. Otherwise, how will I possible get over him, move on. The idea of getting over anyone is so silly.  How can we possibly get over anyone?

Well, I suppose I am over the Vegan Life Coach. God bless the Vegan Life Coach, and his spirulina powder.

The Boatman and I talk once or twice a week. I try to make sure each time is not a meltdown. I try to ask him about his life. That was one of my goals when I began the ethics course. To ask people about their lives.

Yesterday, I called the Boatman in tears. “I can’t keep calling you like this. I will keep doing this forever.” For the rest of my life, for the rest of the world, I will compartmentalize myself to resemble a manageable and acceptable human being. Then when the eight-year-old tennis player appears, I will excuse myself to call the Boatman. I’ll be eighty years old, forty-nine years into a marriage, with seventeen grandchildren. Some blogging drama will emerge. “Excuse me, honey,” I will say to my geriatric husband. “I need to melt down to the Boatman.” The Boatman will be eighty-eight.

“It’s okay,” the Boatman told me yesterday as I fretted and wept about my lack of meltdown autonomy. “You can just call me.” Maybe they can make a special Boatman Meltdown App.

As for my body, well, I cannot believe the violence I have imposed upon it. Sri W. Ham Wrap was right. My yoga practice was super violent, and  I cling to things until they die.

People always say, “My poor body,” and/or “My body is not happy with me,” and/or my body is angry with me. I know what they mean, but I wonder who they are talking about.

Or what about, “my back was killing me?” My back was killing me the day I went to meet Simon’s girlfriend. Earlier I had spent two hours on my bike, to visit a friend. Now I was walking. I felt that if anything in my clicky, crooked eighty-year-old spine were to shift .035 mm the wrong way, the whole thing would surely collapse. Someone would have to wheel me and my body away.

"Jesus," I thought. People think about Jesus when their backs hurt. I remembered listening to Ashtanga teacher Tim Feldman talking about his herniated discs. He could barely move, but he thought about his guru, Pattabhi Jois, who said, “You taking your yanus.” So Tim started squeezing his anus like nobody’s business. Somehow this helped. Seemed a bit simplistic to me, or rather, perhaps too complicated. But what else could I do? As I walked, I brought my awareness to my anus and pelvic floor. I didn’t squeeze, I just thought about it. I considered how it was all connected to my feet that were touching the ground. And how my sitbones were also somewhat connected to my nostrils. And how the crown of my head sort of balanced on top of everything. There was still pain, but by the time I arrived at Simon’s girlfriend’s house, it felt like maybe things had shifted 0.035 mm away from me being in a wheelchair.

It is a good idea to try and keep your body happy.

This afternoon I’ll be taking a stab at my dream job. I am going to help a three-year-old learn how to use the potty. Very little is more grounding than helping someone else to take a shit.

The End.

The cup with the biodegradable poem on it
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My name is Erica, and I love coffee
Simon Girard, 1979-2015
The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two
Not Separate From All that Is 
The Real Me 

Michael Stone Teaching




Simon

This is the New Story of My Life

Last January, I made a new Word document called, “This is the new story of my life.” For inspiration, I opened a journal from when I lived and worked at L’Arche, a community for adults with intellectual disabilities. During my two years at L’Arche, every morning I would try and scribble down three “stream-of-consciousness” pages at 6 a.m. I would write as I drank coffee and waited for Isabelle’s 150 mL of Peptamen to descend from the bag hanging from a pole beside her bed through the squiggly tube that led to her stomach. Isabelle’s school bus arrived and left at 7:15 a.m. Cynthia the bus driver would not wait. At 6:27, once all the Peptamen had descended, I would unhook the feeding tube and it would be time to change Isabelle out of her pyjamas, wash her armpits and change her into her clothes. Then I would lift her into her wheelchair so that I could wash her face, and brush her teeth and hair. So many days, Isabelle would remain half asleep the whole time, smiling and laughing here and there. Despite this, rarely have I felt as connected to the rest of the world than during this hour of preparation that ended with me rolling Isabelle down the ramp to meet the school bus.

On April 27, 2007, I started a brand new journal. I had about three months to go at L’Arche. At the end of each day, I would make a big X on my calendar. On the beginning of each day, I would do a countdown. 91 days left. Then I would try to figure out what date was 91 days ago and whether it felt like a long time had passed or not. Usually it felt like a very long time had passed. I was twenty-one years old, and I’d already lived at L’Arche for twenty months.

Frog and Toad Are Friends. This what it says on the cover of the journal that I began on April 27, 2007. Underneath the words there’s a picture of a fat toad dressed in pants and a jacket, reading to a longer leaner frog, who is also wearing clothes. The frog has a finger on his lips and he’s listening intently.

Frog and Toad Are Friends

Who remembers the Frog and Toad stories? My father read me all of them. All I can remember is the story called The List. Toad decided that he would make a list of all the things he had to do throughout the day. Wake up, brush teeth, wash face. He didn’t have any hair to brush. Then there was breakfast, the newspaper, and other typical obligations of toads who wear clothes. After breakfast, Frog came over and asked Toad if he wanted to go for a walk. Frog wanted to search for mushrooms or something like that. Toad said no, because it wasn’t on his list. He went about his Toad errands. Sweeping, gardening, going to the store. Then his list blew away and he had no idea what to do with himself.

That’s the trouble with lists.

Toad was the uglier one and also the smarter one. Neither of them was particularly smart, or good-looking.

On the first page of the journal, I write about a conversation I had with the assistant Paul, one of L’Arche’s many virgin saints. Paul lived at L’Arche over ten years. After that, he volunteered at our house every Thursday, to help with baths and make us supper. Paul was an exquisite cook. He used to slice the carrots in such perfect long thin lines. And he always marinated tofu for me to ensure that I didn’t starve to death.

On April 26, 2007, we talked about a new planet the NASA people had found. It was light years away. The planet can apparently sustain life. Paul thought that humans should be able to find a way to get there efficiently before the sun dies. But in the meantime, we can build bubble like structures to shelter us when we leave the earth. Kind of like the moon hotel in Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Charlie flew to the moon with Mr. Wonka and his parents and four grandparents. I think all of Charlie’s grandparents became obnoxious in outer space. They were nicer when all four of them shared a bed in a tiny shack. I never finished that book.

Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator

A few pages later, I wrote about a picnic on Mont-Royal. I remember getting ready in the morning. It wasn’t my turn to give Isabelle her Peptamen and get her dressed. But that would mean that I would have to make sandwiches which I wasn’t very good at. Talia, my boss switched with me. “Il faut aller où sont nos forces,” she said. We must go where our strengths are. For me, this meant not making sandwiches. Talia made better sandwiches than I did, and there was something so earnest and beautiful about her. She remains one of the great people of my life. A guru of sorts. L’Arche was full of earnest and loveable Catholics. Virgin Saints, and Nun Friends.

About halfway through the Frog and Toad journal, I learn about someone else’s spinal cord injury. One Saturday, Isabelle’s teacher Elizabeth went for a bike ride. Then she hit a bump and went flying over the handlebars. She landed on her back and now she can’t feel or move her legs. I have been terrified of spinal cord injuries ever since I knew they existed. I felt so traumatized that someone who had spent her whole life working with kids in wheelchairs would end up in a wheelchair herself. Surely, it was just a matter of time before my spine endured the same fate. For weeks, all I could think about was Elizabeth and her spine. And my spine.

During a weekend off, I went to have beers with Tom, one of the volunteers. We both drank four delightful Keith’s in his bachelor pad near Guy Concordia metro. I had such a huge crush on him, not knowing that he had a girlfriend. As I left his apartment ready to bike home, I made a nervous joke about paralysis. He said that I would probably live until I was ninety-three years old, and none of the horrible things that I’d imagined will have happened to me. I’ll be jogging with all of my legs. On my death bed, I will count and feel all of my limbs, and it will be an immense relief. I wonder where Tom is now.

There were a bunch of cards inside the journal, and a photo.

The photo is of Simon, my ex-boyfriend who jumped off a building. When I started, “This is the new story of my life,” Simon was still alive. I used to think of Simon every time I started a new creative project, and it was going terribly. I still do. In the picture, Simon is smiling, posing for the back of his book cover, or for his application to be in some movie. His teeth look very large and his eyes seem kind of manic.

Simon thought I was really fucked up and hopeless, but that I had some talent for writing.

I’m pretty sure the Boatman doesn’t think I’m fucked up and hopeless.  He thinks I’m an okay writer.

Maybe one day all this will be an excellent novel. For now, it stays between the covers of my Frog and Toad journal, and here. One of the cards in my journal has a baby gorilla on it. I’ve always had a thing for primates, and this card is from my mother. She wrote it for me when I was in the psych ward in Kingston, having overdone it on the Ex-lax.

Let’s transcribe the whole card. My mom can have the last word.

“Dear Erica

                 You are a very special and

                Beautiful person.

                                I love you as do many many people.

 Remember to love yourself for all the wonderful little things that are you.

When you were a baby I could never get over the way you would lie on the bed with your feet and hands waving and how you would giggle and gurgle and laugh from deep in your little belly. You would have us all giggling.

Don’t forget that your smile can be no one else. You don’t have to do anything else but be our Erica.

Love Mom.”

The End.

Mother, Sister, Me.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor 
I Let Go 

New posts come out every Monday and Thursday. Even if all I can come up with is embarrassing.

Not Separate From All That Is

21st Century Yoga and an End to Self-Care
A Broken Body is Not a Broken Spirit
My Life's Purpose