Dear Vincent,
You are not the only person I
write letters to. Everything I buy comes wrapped in plastic, and sometimes at
night, I hide spoons and forks and knives inside my freezer so I do not have to
wash them.
Love, Erica.
Dear My Cool Friend Fern,
Dear My Cool Friend Fern,
I am sitting in a bathtub without
water and brushing my teeth without water and now without hands, and I am
remembering when you used to have your office on top of the washing machine in
the upstairs bathroom in Saint Henri. A couple months ago, I started to make
homemade clay toothpaste because a right bottom molar hurt and I can only
afford the dentist in India. The toothpaste is in a jar and looks like a pile
of dark brown shit, and an excess of baking soda causes my tongue to burn. This
morning I cannot cope with the burning and the brown specks that end up
everywhere, and so I am using the last of my Arm and Hammer, and the bristles
in my toothbrush go every which way and the pink plastic on the back of the
head is coming off since I often stick my toothbrush in my mouth and bite down
on it, hard. This morning the crisis centre counsellor said to try and relax
and think more positively and maybe try some activities to make me feel good
and that she had to hang up, but she wished me a good day. My right knee is
kind of swollen which makes it uncomfortable to kneel, and my bathtub is not
embarrassing but it could be more immaculate considering that I am becoming an
almost famous cleaning lady.
Love, Erica.
Fern wrote back with the
suggestion that I set an alarm on my phone five times a day to remind me that
nobody is coming to save me. On Thursday, July 26, 2018, five times per day, my
phone emphatically reminded me that,
There is no prize.
You don’t need saving.
Fuck most of it.
 |
| There is no prize. |
The next day was Friday, July 27,
2018, some kind of full moon and lunar eclipse, and I walked five km with a
swollen knee all the way to the second floor of the Greyhound Bus Station to
see my doctor. On my i-phone, I’d prepared a less emphatic list about my
swollen knee, my borderline personality disorder, my lifelong toenail
fungus, the occasional hemorrhoid, and the inflamed mole just above my
sacrum which could have cancer but is more likely just inflamed due to rolling
around on my floor and rubbing coconut oil into it too aggressively.
Dear Vincent,
Dear Vincent,
“Dr. Hamel n’est pas ici
aujourd’hui,” said the receptionist.
Turns out I was an entire month
too early. Dr. Hamel was on vacation,
like pretty much everyone else in the city, and once again my life proved
itself to be one futile endeavour to another. I melted down hard as I hid
behind the curtain in the photo booth in the bus station lobby downstairs. Sobbing, I wacked my face over and over again, where last week’s black eye
was only just starting to fade. I did
not pay five dollars to take four tiny photos of my tragic and swollen and
vaguely bruised face. The photos are digital and in colour, and thus not as
charming as they used to be.
Fuck all of it, I thought. Someone
can fucking come and save me. I don’t need the Instagram points, or any of the
points.
And I wandered south of the bus
station where people and police frolicked in les Jardins Gamelins, and I
scanned the scene for some dead beat who might have opioids.
“Où est le fentanyl?” I
imagined calling out deliriously. Where the fuck are all the drugs?
Back at the bus station, I stood in front of the Enterprise rent-a-car booth
where all the employees also seemed to be on vacation. In fact, I am not an
excellent driver. In fact, I am terrible.
"What happened?" asked some middle-aged man, broad and balding and perplexed. "Why a woman
so beautiful so sad?"
As though when I am slightly older, and slightly uglier, I will have every
reason to be miserable.
My phone rang, and my friend with
a regal name and a relatively sane balance between beautiful dreams and wise
pragmatism called and invited me over to her semi-fancy loft in the Old Port. Travelling
farmers from Airbnb were coming to rent for the weekend. With noticeable
vigour, I scrubbed my friend’s dishes and stove top, plus the ledge where all
the spice bottles vomit paprika and curry dust. Then my friend with a regal name and
a relatively sane balance between beautiful dreams and wise pragmatism took me
out for sushi, and she drove me all the way home, and she fucking saved my life.
Dear Sorrowful Simon, (not to be confused with Simon
the Hermit who jumped off Le Tadoussac to his death on January 4, 2015)
Last Saturday, after some plans
fell through, I walked all the way to Verdun without my phone. My goal was to
swim, though I had zero opposition to dying at any point along the journey. But
the more people I passed, couples in particular, the more I didn’t need my
lives to be theirs, or my life to be over. I was not suddenly fueled with the
will to live, but I had the vague sense that my life was just as dull and just
as pleasant as everyone else’s. When I got to Verdun, I swam up the weak rapids
and coasted back down three times. Some old couple stood in the middle of the
river and yelled back and forth to each other, even though their faces were
less than a foot apart.
“Il y a une autre nageuse,” the
man exclaimed excitedly.
Out of the water, I walked along
the shoreline in my red polyester two-pieced speedo. The bathing suit
chafed my inner thighs since despite extensive exercise and frequently flakey
lunches, I do not have a thigh gap. Oh well, what the hell. And I climbed up the
riverbank, and came upon some strangers’ wedding party where everyone looked
hot and overdressed, anxious to get the pictures over with, and possibly also envious of my shoelessness and red bathing suit. And as I felt the grass beneath my feet, it
seemed perfectly valid to take the metro home, and eat a cheeseburger while
reading a novel about rich families in New England.
Love, Erica.
 |
| And the same red bathing suit crashes a wedding in India. Arombol Beach, Goa |
Dear Vincent,
On my way to see you on Monday,
July 30, 2018, a man rushed by me on Beaubien Street, and the man was carrying
a sandwich in a plastic triangular box, and it’s possible the sandwich was made
with a croissant, but it didn’t not look particularly delicious. To drink,
the man had some Gingerale, and as he charged around me on the sidewalk he
said,
“Ready to buy a lake house and
get out of here.
Work, work, work, work, work,
work, work.
I have everything except
sanctity.”
Everything except sanctity and a
lake house.
Wishing you and all of us,
sanctity and a lake house.
Love, Erica.
Dear Tim Ferris,
When I imagine going on your
podcast due to some brilliant Oprah Project I finally pulled off, and you ask
me, “If you could put anything on a billboard and have millions or even
billions of people see it, what would it say?” in fact, I have two answers. In fact, I
cannot decide.
The first billboard says,
“Your life is of supreme
importance. May you be free of your pain.”
And another one says,
“This is your strange and
beautiful life. You can do all sorts of interesting shit. But you don’t have
to. Your life does not need to be a spectacular TED talk.”
Sometimes your podcasts make me
very tired, but I’d love to see you optimize menstruation.
Love, Erica.
 |
| This is your strange and beautiful life. |
Dear Vincent,
Last November, soon after my 32nd
birthday, I was considering my life goals and potential Oprah Projects, and I
wrote this sentence:
Two things I really believe in
are
Deep Cleans and Mondays without
Vincent.
I always remember this sentence.
Love, Erica.
Interlude from the Self-Mutilating Parrot Family:
The Self-Mutilating Parrot family has guests. Grandmother, Aunt, and the Aunt's daughter, the Blonde Cousin from Australia. Soon it will be the Blonde Cousin’s fifth birthday. Over a breakfast of toast and butter and jam, her mother remarked, wow, that went so fast, and the two of them played a game in the hammock where the Blonde Cousin wrapped herself in the fabric and then emerged out of the crack, as though the hammock were a vagina, or a caesarean incision, and as though the Blonde Cousin were a baby being born. “Mama,” the Blonde Cousin said as she emerged, and her mother said, “You wouldn’t just come out and say that. It took you two years to say Mama. Before that it was always, Dada, Dada, Dada, and I felt so inadequate.”
In case you missed the very old news, the Self-Mutilating Parrot is spending its last days at Oka, and I wish the bird deep sanctity.
Dear Vincent,
The Self-Mutilating Parrot family has guests. Grandmother, Aunt, and the Aunt's daughter, the Blonde Cousin from Australia. Soon it will be the Blonde Cousin’s fifth birthday. Over a breakfast of toast and butter and jam, her mother remarked, wow, that went so fast, and the two of them played a game in the hammock where the Blonde Cousin wrapped herself in the fabric and then emerged out of the crack, as though the hammock were a vagina, or a caesarean incision, and as though the Blonde Cousin were a baby being born. “Mama,” the Blonde Cousin said as she emerged, and her mother said, “You wouldn’t just come out and say that. It took you two years to say Mama. Before that it was always, Dada, Dada, Dada, and I felt so inadequate.”
In case you missed the very old news, the Self-Mutilating Parrot is spending its last days at Oka, and I wish the bird deep sanctity.
Dear Vincent,
What a thrill to run into you on
Rue Beaubien, somewhere between St André and St Hubert. You were carrying a
paper bag from Jean Coutu, and what a coincidence, I was headed there to, all set to buy
deodorant and cinnamon gum so I could carcinogenically freshen up for Butt Club.
(For those who wonder, Butt Club equals a Democratic and sometimes Diplomatic Butt
Exercise class in the park, and as fate would have it, it is the most famous
poorly attended event I have ever invented, and truly the joy of my life.)
Also, I needed to buy rubber gloves for the newest cleaner of my Deep Cleans
empire. “Oh,” I said, when I saw you. “I am going there too.” Afterwards, I was
rather proud of my very reasonable composure. Kindly, you smiled kindly. I hope you liked my shirt.
Love, Erica.
It is approximately the one-year anniversary of Mondays without Vincent on the Internet. This is one of my most favourite un-famous things I have ever come up with. Send your emails to Vincent or Erica at the secret address ericaschmidt85(at)gmail(dot)com. Your life is of supreme importance. May you be free of your pain. Love, Erica.
 |
Two things I really believe in are, Deep Cleans and Mondays without Vincent.
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) Instagram: @deepcleanswitherica |
