Do Not Kill Your Baby

During my twenty months working with small children at the Montessori school, I complained extensively and comprehensively. It was the perfect form of birth control. Once a month, I sent emails to myself. “Never ever have children,” they read. “Whatever you do, no kids for you.”

I finally escaped in August so that I could deal with all my shit at Vipassana, and then fly away to Mysore, India. There I would bond with my favourite cult and hopefully discover my life’s higher purpose. By the time I got to India, I missed kids. On the airplane, I felt envious of the mothers and fathers comforting their babies. In chanting, when all the kids are running around screaming, I wish I had a baby to hold, something else to do besides chant about sun gods, peace and elephants.

“Awe, look at this one,” I say to my Cool Friend From Belgium as we pass another toddler on the streets of Gokulam.

“Oh God, Erica,” says my Cool Friend From Belgium (CFFB). “Soon your boobs are going to start leaking milk.”

I’m happy my Cool Friend From Belgium mentioned this, because now I have the opportunity to tell everyone about me and the Boatman’s potential business project called Recreational Lactation (RL). Recreational Lactation means sucking on someone’s boobs for so long that they start making milk. Somewhere the Boatman heard that maybe this is possible. Since breast milk is apparently this magical and nourishing liquid, we thought that we could use my recreationally generated breast milk to make powerful and nutritious smoothies, ice cream and yogurt.  During my early days in Halifax, I had all the time in the world to make this plan materialize. Unfortunately, the Boatman had a pretty time consuming job and so he couldn’t fulfill his sucking responsibilities. My tits remained tiny and dry. Likely they will remain this way for some time as I endure this extended self-imposed dry spell. Regardless, I figured that somewhere in India, there were kids I could hang out with.

A couple weeks ago while wandering around my neighbourhood, I came upon a stone wall with this sign on it.

“Do not kill your baby,” it read. “Leave it here.”

Do Not Kill Your Baby

 

On one side of the sign was a picture of Krishna. The other side had a picture of Jesus. I walked in, passing a couple of young girls hanging laundry. At the front door, a woman was combing through the hair of a young girl with Down Syndrome. It looked like she was checking her scalp for lice. Inside, a very tiny child with what was probably cerebral palsy lay on a mat on the floor. Her eyes squinting and face disturbed, she bent her legs and straightened them repeatedly while clutching her fists in front of her chest. Two children, maybe ten or eleven were strapped into wooden high chairs. Their faces reminded of Isabelle, the woman I lived and worked with at L’Arche, and Glendon, the young boy my parents and I looked after when I was a teenager. So often kids with cerebral palsy have similar expressions and mannerisms, the same great big joy in their faces. I wondered how much money it would take to put wheels on these kids’ chairs. Or to get them a proper wheelchair.

After a few minutes, mobs of tiny children started wandering through the lobby and into a dark play room. None of them seemed to be wearing diapers, though they looked like they between one and three years old. A sturdier little boy in a red shirt stopped to say hello to me. He gave me a big grin and then started to smack me, laughing at each wack. I had a kid hit me repeatedly at the Montessori School.  At the time, it felt humiliating and insulting to be rejected by a three year old. In this case, however, I felt like I was getting special treatment. Even so, I waved my hands in front of me and shook my head.

“Ah,” I said, since I couldn’t speak one word of Kannada.

The kids kept pouring into the dark dingy playroom. I didn’t see very many adults around, but the house mother finally noticed me. She told me to email the manager and come back later. It took about five days to get a meeting with the manager. She arrived twenty minutes late which is pretty good for India.

“So the police have cleared you to take care of children.”

“Yes. In Canada.”

“That’s good. Some horrible things went down in Canada.”

She was talking about the segregation schools for First Nations people. I guess she herself was First Nations, but in Maine, where she came from, land rights and cultural respect were way better. Although I imagine she realized that I was too young to be directly implicated in the segregation schools, I never asked.

“Well, I think it would be great if you did some exciting Montessori things with our pre-schoolers.” Most of the other kids went to school, including the kids with disabilities. A couple of elders came from the sister nursing home to watch the toddlers, and sometimes some older girls helped out. Otherwise, there wasn’t much programming.

“You’ll be able to model for the older girls how to deal with toddlers without hitting them,” said the manager. 

What a wonderful idea, I thought. I told her I could come Tuesdays and Thursdays from ten until noon.

The first Tuesday, I arrived, the playroom was full. The only adult in sight was a very old lady who paced in and out of the playroom carrying a wooden stick. Probably there were 12 to 15 toddlers, interspersed with a handful of slightly older girls who could have been nine, but looked 5 or 6. Whenever a younger child cried, the bigger girls picked them up and swung them around. They continued to do this after the little ones stopped crying, yanking them on and off the floor and pulling them by their arms. Often this resulted in more tears. When I walked in the room, everyone swarmed me. They wanted to be picked up and sit on my lap. At Montessori, I was not the most cuddly or nurturing of teachers, certainly not at the beginning. I feel like French teachers are some of the more miserable people on earth. I have a saying that goes, All French Teachers Cry in the Bathroom. At the Montessori school I cried in the bathroom. When the kids cried, I wanted to cry too. I would have preferred to do anything else than deal with their tears. Eventually I learned that not dealing with tears would causes long term damage and thus I made a point of somewhat skillfully comforting children when they cried, even when I was grumpy.

At the orphanage, it was a no-brainer since now I have baby cravings and I’ve gone all soft. Plus these poor kids didn’t have parents. So I picked up any kid who wanted to be picked up. Everyone was allowed to sit on my lap. Nobody was wearing very substantial diapers and it didn’t seem likely that very many of them were potty trained. I decided that it was okay if I got peed on, but if someone shit on me, I could go home. Beforehand, I had rubbed tea tree and neem oil onto my hair to prevent lice. Within seven minutes, I realized that this was a lost cause. If anyone had lice, I was getting it.

“Aunty! Aunty!” some of the older kids exclaimed, waving at the ceiling. “Aunty! Camera! Aunty! Camera!” Apparently the house mother or someone was watching over the children from the office. How nice. One of the five or six year old girls in a frilly purple dress grabbed my hands. She had fierce fiery eyes. I could tell that expecting her to have any impulse control was unrealistic. She started crawling up my legs. Then she wrapped her hands around my neck. She was a little old to get picked up, but again, no parents. I decided it was okay.

“Yes, yes,” I said before putting her down.  By now someone had brought out an old rice bag full of broken toys and dumped everything on the floor. There were a couple dozen mega blocks, fewer pieces of lego, three or four dolls shedding their cotton insides, some broken trucks and airplanes, and two notebooks to go between all twenty kids. All this was being mixed with the inevitable pee that was only cleaned up after several requests.

It was an evolutionary race to see who got which toys. Just like in Canada, the most popular activities were building with blocks and chewing on everything else. Fiery purple dress girl was more interested in me. She wrapped her arms around my waist again. Aunty appeared in the doorway.

“Do not pamper her,” she said. “She always kicks other children.” I didn’t think there was much chance of anyone being pampered in that room, but I nodded my head.

My favourite toy was a notebook. Inside someone had written the abc’s. On the front inside cover, there was a blue and green advertisement.

“Not all chemicals are bad,” it read. “Without hydrogen and oxygen, there would be no water.” One of the older girls pointed to these words and over and over again, I read them to her.

At the Montessori school, I felt like the children spent way too much time washing their hands because they’d stuck their fingers in their noses. Some of the kids could never leave the sink. And the staff spent way too much time spraying tables and blocks with Lysol. What do you prefer, folks, the flu or cancer?

That said, as soon as I returned home from the Lysol-free soap-free orphanage, I saturated every inch of my body with thick layers of soap, and I scrubbed.

 

On Thursday, the room seemed a bit calmer. Seven or eight school aged girls were scattered around amidst the toddlers, and an older woman was sitting in a chair in a corner rubbing oil onto each child’s hair.

“Songs?” the older house mother asked me. During my Montessori days, I used to dread circle time. Whenever I whined about it, the Boatman would make fun of me.

“Sounds so stressful,” he would say. Well, it was. If the kids didn’t like the song, which usually they didn’t, they would start rolling around on the floor and being obnoxious. Then I would have to try and reel them in speaking only French, which they didn’t understand. Hopeless and humiliating. All French teachers cry in the bathroom. But at the orphanage, the kids were really into it. Although it took half a century to get everyone into a circle, once we figured it out, everyone belted out the ABC’s like their lives depended on it. I also taught them the chicken dance. It was pretty adorable. The older girls went through their repertoire of Indian songs with tons of actions while the smaller ones watched in awe.

 One girl called out, “Exercise,” and I made up a bunch of exercises on the spot. Then the bigger girls left and it was just me and the little ones and the old lady with the oil. A young mother came in with her new baby. I don’t know if she worked there or not. All the kids sat around her and looked at the little baby sitting in her mother’s lap. Seemed like a brutal tease to me. There was such a noticeable difference between the baby with the mother and the orphans. Their eyes were so different. Suddenly, the mother got a really angry look on her face and wacked the little boy who was sitting beside her in the back. I’m not sure what he did. He wasn’t more than three. He started to cry and I put him in my lap. After the lady left, the kids started playing with broken toys again. Another old lady joined the room. She hit a couple of kids with her stick. I’m not sure why. I really wanted to leave, though somehow I made it until noon. When I got home, I still missed kids.

 

The following Tuesday, the weather was cooler and I wondered if maybe I could take the kids outside. Because of their fragile health, the manager had told me she didn’t want the little ones out in the hot sun. She said that they went out in the morning and evening, but it’s hard to say. Nobody’s gross motor seemed particularly awesome from long hours playing outdoors.  I tried to ask one of the elder ladies if we could go out, but she seemed confused.

“Songs, dance, ABC’s,” she said. “Children like.” Dirty dark room it was. Before I could start my brilliant circle time, I saw that one of the tiniest kids was standing in a puddle urine. The oldest he could have been was eighteen months. His shorts were super wet and the pile of toys was just a couple of inches from the puddle.

“Wet,” I said to one of the staff. She was sitting in a chair eating chapatti and rice.

“Pee? Cloth?” I asked. Already a couple of kids had walked through the puddle and were tracking urine on the floor. The woman put her chapati down, ripped off the little boys shorts and used them to wipe up the pee. I remembered the rules I’d set about pee and shit. The little boy kept continued to play with no pants on. Within three minutes he was shitting on the floor. It wasn’t Delhi Belly poop, but it wouldn’t have been a breeze to pick up with a plastic bag.

“Um, clean?" I asked, pointing emphatically. The kid kept walking around with his dirty bum. The woman with the chapati yelled something at a young girl in the kitchen. Maybe she was twelve or thirteen. She sighed, yanked the little boy by his hand and dragged him to the bathroom.  There she hosed him off without looking at him. In a nearby bathroom stall, a three or four year old was squatting while excreting liquid diarrhea. This boy did have Mysore’s version of Delhi Belly, and I wasn't sure he was old enough to hose himself down properly. There was a sink outside the bathroom but I didn’t see any soap.

“Sick?” I said, pointing to the little boy in the toilet. There was still poop on the floor so I pointed to that too. The girl who’d hosed down the little boy went to the kitchen and came back with a pile of newspaper. She handed me a sheet. What was this for? Was it some sort of toy? Then she knelt down and cleaned up the poop with the newspaper. Only newspaper. I think maybe in India, there is some sort of social stigma surrounding cleaning up shit. Having cleaned up shit professionally for the better part of a decade, I feel no shame and minimal disgust while taking part in the process. But not with newspaper and not when there is no soap anywhere in sight

I used to have this big rant about how kids in the west wear diapers for too long and it is horrible for everybody’s pelvis and for the environment. Now this rant is dead.

I paced around the pee spot, the pooh spot, and all the broken toys.

“Sit,” said an elder with a stick. I didn’t understand how anyone could be in this room and sit down. The kids continued to eat the broken toys, rotating around the room like bees in captivity. A little girl, even smaller than the boy who had pooped on the floor wet her pants. The elder knelt down and gave her a huge wack. She was about to get dragged across the room when I walked out. It was 10:15.

I could have made a meeting with the manager, but then what? Judge her life’s work, buy some Lysol, make a big batch of play dough and then go home for Christmas.  I really liked that kid who shat on the floor. He was one of my favourites. Maybe he’ll be okay. It seems that once the kids start going to school, they do a little better. In the meantime, I really can’t watch toddlers get wacked, for any reason. And going twice a week won’t change much long term. Perhaps this is a cop-out, a way to justify my blissful experience here, which consists of one indulgent leisurely activity after another. Or maybe it was just too much. 

I regularly devour podcasts by Buddhist teacher Michael Stone. Over and over again, he says, “We are all happiest when we serve.” He says that we can’t keep doing our practice just to make us feel good, keeping our blinders on, oblivious to everyone else’s suffering. I am not oblivious, and yet, I am not doing a hell of a lot. Often when I hear Michael’s spiel about service, I cringe and think, please no. I can’t serve. I served when I was nineteen. I’m all done. I’m not happiest when I serve. I would rather stay home and blog about my pubic hair. Let’s hope this doesn’t affect my chances of getting my own orphan when the time comes.

“Who am I and what should I do?” Michael Stone says that everyone who goes to a psychologist is asking one of these two questions, and usually both. Coming to India is the equivalent of going to about seventeen psychologists, and at least a few yoga students here in Mysore are asking themselves these questions. What should we do? Some students are tutoring school kids with special needs. Others volunteer at a centre where young people were rescued from human trafficking. My friend fostered five little kittens, only three weeks old. Already four have died.   Yesterday there was a photo shoot raising money for the kids at the orphanage.  This is a kind initiative and I’m sure it won’t hurt, but I just don’t see how the money will prevent kids from getting hit when they pee on the floor.

All my life, I’ve watched my parents take care of people. They met at a group home for kids whose families were in temporary crisis. Often, my father would bring home young teenage boys. I remember them coming camping with us. At Christmastime, we always had people with nowhere else to go around the table. When I was sixteen, we started providing respite care for Glendon, a young boy with cerebral palsy. Four years later, when his mother could no longer take care of him, my parents took Glendon in as a foster child.  Even after they separated, my dad kept Glendon at his house for four years, while he was working full time as a schoolteacher.

 

Glendon. Rocking out on Lakewood Road

My mom has a bit of a Mother Teresa complex. She feels responsible for fixing everything and feels guilty when she can’t. Glendon is now 21 and almost as big as her. Every week, my mom goes to take him for a walk. But she can’t take him overnight like my father can, because she is too tiny. I always say that nobody loves Glendon the way my mother does. My father takes care of Glendon in a way that doesn’t seem to overwhelm him. As long as my father’s in town, he has Glendon overnight, feeding him, bathing him, and taking him for long walks or for swims in the lake.

I didn’t go to the orphanage to serve, or to be the change I want to see in the world. As I said, I just felt like hanging out with kids. Maybe if I was staying longer I would have done more than just walk away. I keep thinking about what constitutes a reasonable contribution. And how to make this contribution without inheriting my mother’s Mother Theresa Complex or becoming an arrogant and obnoxious white saviour figure. Until I figure this out, my contribution is postponed.

“Let God take care of the world, you take care of your anus.” Pattabhi Jois said this once. It is not one of his most beloved and frequently referenced sayings. He is talking about squeezing your anus until moula bandha works its magic deep inside your pelvis and everything becomes beautiful. Probably he was trying to cure Mother Theresa Complexes. My mother doesn’t know about moula bandha, but she always says, “Let God take care of it.” She has to tell herself this or else she worries constantly about Glendon and all the kids in the world like Glendon, and how she’s not fixing everything for everyone. Bless my mother, and bless everyone out there who is raising money and saving kittens. Bless those little kids eating dirty, broken toys, and you know what, bless the ladies watching them. Whatever blessing means. I conclude with no wisdom, and no real solution. People shouldn’t kill their babies, and I don’t know where else they can leave them. I could say something cheeky about the pull-out method, but I will almost surely end up sounding insensitive and obscene.

God may or may not help. Only taking care of my anus will probably not yield fruits beyond narcissism and neurosis. I wanted all the yoga students to read about the orphans in the hopes that it might cure some of their self-absorption and sacro-iliac angst. This is what the psychologists call projecting. When I was a grumpy French teacher, I used to believe that I was totally dead inside. My experience with kids in India and the orphanage has shown me that there is more in my heart than cynicism, sarcasm and neurosis. I suppose this is somewhat of a relief.

At the yoga shala, our chanting instructor has made some very subtle hints about not bringing loud children to chanting. So now we can chant about sun gods, peace and elephants without being disrupted.  As serene and spiritual as this is, I feel like something is missing.

I still think about kids the whole time.

 

The End.

 

 

Do Not Kill Your Baby

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook

@mypelvicfloor

I Let Go, my $2.99 self-help book

21st Century Yoga and an End to Self-Care

A Broken Body Is Not A Broken Spirit
Not Separate From All That Is

Michael Stone's new website

 

 

Happy

“2-9 it is today. Somebody’s birthday. I don’t know them.”

Jadwiga used to announce this every morning at breakfast as she stirred milk into her coffee in the mug with the cat on it.

“B-b-b bir-day, shanana nana. Cococococa.” Cococococa was Marc's name for me. Whether or not it was my birthday, Marc liked to chant B-b-b bir-day, shanana nana. Cococococa this all day long. On the toilet, while he was shaving, and while he was slicing his breakfast banana. Birthdays were a big deal at my L’Arche house where I lived with five adults with intellectual disabilities. Weeks ahead of time, Nathalie, our head of house, would make sure the L’Arche workshop was preparing a beautiful homemade card for you, along with a Happy Birthday banner. You got to invite your favourite people, request your favourite meal and pick the kind of cake you wanted. My favourite food is Indian, and from her years living with Muslim families in Madagascar, Nathalie knew how to make it from scratch. Homemade samosas, papads, chana masala. Eight, nine years later, I can still remember how delicious it was.

Before cake, it was L’Arche tradition to have a birthday prayer. If you weren’t into Christianity, then they wouldn’t read anything from the Bible. But at the time, I was trying to get a thing going on with Jesus and I didn’t mind. For my twentieth birthday, Nathalie picked a verse from the Beatitudes, in the Gospel of Matthew. The line went, “Blessed be the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”  Since my twentieth birthday, I have definitely drowned myself in cynicism, negativity and self-deprecation for days, weeks or months on end. During such periods, it is nice to remember that somebody once looked at me and decided I had a pure heart, and that I would see God.

After the bible verse which was short and sweet, Madeleine read a poem that Judith, one of our assistants had helped her write. Madeleine came to L’Arche when she was in her early fifties. Coming to L’Arche, she had all these big dreams. She wanted to learn to read and write, and maybe get a boyfriend and learn to take the bus by herself. Whenever we went to church, she would hold the hymn book open and concentrate so intently on the words, dying to be able to understand. It took her a long time to accept that not all her dreams would come true. Still, she wrote really wonderful poems.

Madeleine’s poem began with, “A twentieth birthday is a special day, and you are a very special person.” I will keep it forever. Another L’Arche tradition during birthday prayers was to pass a candle around the table. When it was your turn with the candle, you gave thanks for the things you loved about the person. Some people gave thanks to God, and some people just gave thanks. It all sounds so cheesy and yet, it ended up being pretty perfect.

Madeleine always gave a big speech that was similar to her poems. And thank you, Erica for taking us to the library. And thank you, Erica for that time we walked all the way from… Usually we had to tap her on the shoulder to get her to wrap it up.

Jimmy, a new L’Arche member liked to make speeches too. He was obsessed with Power Rangers, and with me as well. At every birthday, he made fun of me about the time I was having dinner at another L’Arche home and I stuck my hair in my mouth. “Remember, I asked you if you wanted ketchup? I have to tell your mother about that.”

“B-b-birday, cocococoCA, shanana-na-na,” Marc would say a few times. Then he would take my hand and whisper, “Cococococa,” one more time.

Isabelle loved Jesus and prayers. She was the same age as me. Born with cerebral palsy, Isabelle doesn’t move or talk that much, though she laughs and smiles a great deal and says yes and no with her eyes. At my birthday, Nathalie held the candle in front of her face and she broke into hysterics. Over and over again, her eyes looked up.

No matter whose birthday it was, Jadwiga said just about  the same thing. "Awe, what should I say? Same as Madeleine. Happy birthday. Keep up the good health. Keep up the good work in L'Arche."

 

These days, it seems like some of the cool people don’t like birthdays. People are too cool for such frivolous celebration. Oh well. Too bad for them. I’m still alive and I’m happy.

 

When it was a child’s birthday at Montessori school, we put a brass sun in the middle of the Circle time floor. Polishing brass is one of the Montessori activities. The children polished the sun with diluted all natural licorice -flavoured toothpaste.  Sometimes this made the sun shiny and other times the sun became encaked with greenish chunks. In any case, the child with the birthday took the painted globe and carried it around the sun.

“Isaac is one year old,” we’d say when he completed the circle.

“Isaac is two years old.” The child would walk around the circle as many times as the earth had rotated around the sun with him on it.

“Isaac is five years old." Then we would sing happy birthday in as many languages as we knew. English French, and Spanish.

More than once, I teared up as I watched a child walk around the sun. What a surprise.

In Halifax, I picked up on a tradition of doing the same number of sun salutations as the age you are turning. Some people also do this many backbends. I tried this tradition for a couple of years and it was fun. Here in Mysore, you can hardly expect the crowds to wait for you as you whip off your age in sun salutations and backbends. But although there is no official birthday tradition, Mysore is just one big birthday party anyways.  In most cases, I would advise you that not everyone is as happy as they appear on the Internet. And yet, here I am, and my face and the insides match.



Fake Rebellious Yoga Selfie I

The joy is real.



Fake Rebellious Yoga Selfie II
Some of the joy must be attributed to the Fanny Pack.
Also to the Spiritual Pants.
 

And to my dear friends
Got this from the Boatman this morning. It's our friend the moon.
The Boatman is going to be the moon for Halloween.





Wish you were here, Babe.
Otherwise I am the luckiest girl on Earth.

Follow the Boatman on TUMBLR: verysatisfied.tumblr.com

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
I Let Go, self-help book by Erica J. Schmidt 

 

Day Trip

A couple Thursdays ago, I woke up and my vagina was bleeding. Since I am very advanced, I don’t practice yoga when I first start menstruating, not even in Mysore. The day before I had maxed out on lying around, masturbating on the internet and eating very strange ice cream. So I decided it was time to take a little Day Trip.

According to Google, there was an interesting little town called Srirangapathna that I could visit in less than a day. I wandered down to the shala to see if anyone wanted to come. People seemed busy looking for tiger balm to rub into their hamstrings and buying curd for their morning granola. On practice days in Mysore, the quest for tiger balm can be more than enough excitement for one day. People applauded my ambitious plan to catch a bus in Mysore city, but no one was feeling my sense of adventure.

Oh well, I figured it could be sort of fun to hit it up on my own. I went to the main road to see if I could find a rickshaw driver who could drive me to the bus station. One seemed particularly delighted to see me.

“Where you going?” he asked. His name was Sri Brahmanam or something spiritual like this.

“I’m a guide. We go to Big Century, Temple, Museum. 500 rupees. Good deal. Good guide.” I didn’t know what Big Century was, but, what the hell. It sounded like a pretty good deal. In Halifax, 500 rupees can’t even get you from one end of the city to the other.


Mysore rickshaw. I thought rickshaws in India were guys pulling and I swore I would never take one. They have rickshaws like this in Halifax. In Mysore, rickshaws are kind of like sturdy black and yellow golf carts.

From the horror stories I’ve heard about driving in India, I’d imagined that getting on the road would mean chronic fear for my life and spinal cord as I scarcely survived one head on collision after another. The reality is much less terrifying. I like riding rickshaws. The wind cools me off and I can look at things without worrying about my horrible sense of direction and driving skills. On the way to Sri Rangapathna, we passed many fields where people work all day in the hot sun. I asked my rickshaw driver what they were growing in the fields.

“Good guide,” he answered. “First we go to Big Century.” And he pulled into the Rangantitthu Bird Sanctuary. Although most of the birds were far away on an island in the middle of the river, it was refreshing to be out of the city. We walked along the path by the river. After about 300 metres, my rickshaw driver seemed tired.

View from Lookout at Big Century

 “Tired,” he said. “No breakfast.” I told him to rest on the bench while I explored. I climbed up and down a couple of lookouts and could sort of see birds. All I could tell is that they were white. Further along the path, a young man was painting an iron fence yellow.

“You need guide, Miss?” he asked.

“My guide’s resting,” I said.

“Come with me,” he said. He motioned for me to go under the fence. Probably this was a terrible idea. But I figured he worked there, so that was somewhat legit. Also, I felt like I hadn’t seen 300 rupees worth of birds. Maybe this guy would show me something interesting. I went under a part of a fence that wasn’t covered with fresh yellow paint. Yellow Paint Man grabbed my hand and led me down a wooded path. I let go, however, my hand still got covered in bright yellow paint. Yellow Paint Man continued to reach for me on the steeper parts of the path.

Yellow Paint Man's Hands, with red flower

“I’m okay,” I said. We came to a clearing.

“Marriage?” he asked me. The Boatman and I have never been married or engaged, except for Indian purposes.

“Yes, I’m married,” I said emphatically.

 

“Beautiful,” he said. “Photo?” He took out his phone

 

“No no.” He showed me a red flower, and a bush with fuzzy red sumac like plants on them. Yellow Paint Man mushed the fuzzy part until a red paste formed between his fingers. He pointed his red and yellow index finger towards my forehead.

Sumac Type tree. I am not excellent with plants. Anybody know the tree?

“Bindi?” he said. Bindi are red dots you see Indian women wear on their forehead in line with their ajna third eye chakra. Marriage is one of the reasons women wear bindis and to protect you and your husband.  It is also good for cultivating your third eye chakra wisdom. I love chakras, and suddenly the Boatman and I were married. Even so, I did not want a bindi, especially not one mixed with yellow paint.

 

“Oh, no thank you,” I said. We continued into the woods. Here Yellow Paint Man reached for my butt and tiny boobs once or twice. 

 

“No touching!” I said once I was positive his caresses were not accidental.

 

“Oh, okay mam. Sorry mam.” Well, I guess I had been confusing about my marital status since I had refused the Bindi.  Now we were at a river bank. He motioned towards a bed of dried grass reeds in front of a bunch of bamboo trees. “Lovers, mam,” he said.

 

“My lover is in Canada,” I reminded him. On the way back, we made one more stop at a grove of bamboo shoots.


Lovers

“Lovers,” Yellow Paint Man said again, showing me where couples had carved their initials. I did not ask for Yellow Paint Man’s initials, nor did I write Exuberant Bodhisattva + The Boatman inside a heart. Finally we were back at the yellow fence. I climbed under and said good-bye.

Probably the whole ordeal took about twenty minutes.

“You losted! You losted!” my rickshaw cried out when I found him.

“I’m fine.”

“Where were you? You’re my response. 500 rupees there and back to Gokulam. You’re my response.*”

 

I suggested we sit down the steps leading up to a gazebo.

“No breakfast. Not resting. Worried. You’re my response.” He let out a big sigh. Then he put two fingers in front of his lips and turned to face me.

“Kiss, kiss?” he asked.

“No!”

“Oh, oh oh. Sorry, miss. So sorry, so sorry. Testing. Testing only. You’re my response.” Anti-harassment activists reading this are most likely horrified that I landed myself in two potential molestation situations within half an hour. Perhaps I should have fired my rickshaw driver, taken the first bus back to Gokulam, and made the non-negotiable vow to never do anything else by myself ever again. Honestly though, neither incident left me very traumatized. Of course crawling under a fence was not consent for Yellow Paint Man to grab my ass, but at least he more or less  understood the concept of no-means-no. And to give him the benefit of the doubt, there might have been some misunderstanding  about the marriage situation. Maybe he thought I said yes, I’d marry him, or maybe he thought my marriage with the Boatman wasn’t serious because I’d refused the Bindi. In any case, as far as horny, sketchy dudes go, I have met much worse in North America. To me Yellow Paint Man seemed like a 14 year old and the rickshaw driver was like a small child. 

Even so, before continuing on with my rickshaw driver, I made sure he got the message.

“Don’t do this again! Never do that again.”

“Oh, okay miss. So sorry.”

“Guides should not do that.”

“Oh okay. Testing, miss, just testing. Good guide, good guide.”

“No, no. Never do that again.”

“Okay miss, so sorry miss. Good guide. Excellent guide”

At the Sree Ranganatha Swamy Temple, he repented by giving his gods several bunches of coriander. Everywhere I went, people stared. I guess they were captivated by my extreme height and whiteness, and possibly my curly hair and biceps.  Several people asked if they could be in a photo with me. If it was women and children, I said yes. When I shook their hands, they got all giddy. It was a little bit sweet. Even hunching, I towered over them in the photos. I hope I didn’t make too many funny faces.

 

Besides the temple, we went to a jail, the grave of Super Warrior Tippu Sultan, a mosque and a couple of art museums. My favourite place was these steps by the river where people swam and did their laundry. Got the biggest stares here. 

By the river

 At one o’clock, my rickshaw driver finally had some weird deep-fried chip like concoction for breakfast. Then he drove me back to the Gokulam coconut stand.

“Needing good guide. Calling any time.”

I’ll be sure to keep this in mind.

The End.

 

*my response=my responsibility

Now my most recent post is no longer about pubic hair.

That's a relief.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
$2 self-help book: I Let Go

Other Cool Things to do in Mysore (Butt Club, etc.)
Laundry Day
Ham Wraps, Pool Noodles, Iphones 

 

Peanut Butter, Pubic Hair

Somehow I have made it through three and a half years of blogging without inflicting friends and strangers with my long elevator speech about pubic hair. Pubic hair used to be my Designated Issue. A Designated Issue is a matter you deem to be of such utmost importance that should you succeed at dealing with it, then all of your problems will disintegrate. Common designated issues include paying off your mortgage, finding a life partner, or perhaps finally achieving a sought after yoga posture. Once you cross the Designated Issue finish line, the whole world becomes easy. In my early twenties, this is how I felt about pubic hair. A good friend of mine from high school shared in my misery. Because we had thick curly hair on our heads, we were certain that the hairy reality down there was much worse than everyone else’s. The roots ran deeper and our razors left behind itchier, redder and more hideous bumps.

Also, I’d been traumatized by the Vegan Life Coach who had once complained that the hairy abundance on my nether regions was “not aesthetically pleasing.”

One summer I was back for a visit to my home town, when my friend and I decided that enough was enough. It was time to get our bushes ripped off professionally. We found a newly certified aesthetician who raved about the sugar wax she used to complete her full Brazilians. I have yet to find anyone quite as cheerful and enthusiastic about ripping out pubes.

“It won’t hurt that much at all,” she promised.  The cost was 35 dollars. We considered drinking beforehand but our appointment was at noon and we decided that maybe this was too early. My friend popped a couple of advil and I went in sober.

“This will be so easy. You’re so flexible,” said the Cheerful Ripper. Then I took off my underpants. “Wow.” she said. Our sessions took about 45 minutes each. I tried not to make too much noise. My poor friend cried out profusely and consistently. It was the closest I have come to witnessing a birth.

“You guys are hairy beasts,” the Cheerful Ripper exclaimed. When it was all over, my fellow Hairy Beast had sweat stains down to her waist.

“You’re going to feel so great though,” the Cheerful Ripper promised. As fate would have it, we felt okay.

Back in Montreal a few days later, I walked up the stairs to my apartment after biking home from the yoga studio. Something felt a bit off. In the bathroom, I found a large pinkish bump along my groin.

Even though I hadn’t had sex in ages, I felt absolutely certain that I had herpes. I walked across the street to the hospital where I begged for a spot at the walk-in clinic. Three and a half hours later, the doctor on call said that herpes was highly unlikely. She took a swab anyways and suggested I might come to the hospital’s anxiety workshops.

My herpes scare provided no cure for my Designated Issue. I made room in my poor student budget to get my pubes waxed off every four weeks or so. I also had to budget for alcohol since going sober was far too painful and humiliating. In the metro, I sipped Mason jars filled with fruit juice and vodka. Mostly I went to little spas run by Asian women. Alas, none of them had sugar wax and I often hobbled away with a burning, pockmarked crotch.

“Oh. Very hairy,” said almost every single aesthetician I went to.

“The ass?” one lady asked after forty five minutes of seething torture. I rolled over and spread my cheeks.

After a few months of this, I found a lady in Old Montreal who used sugar wax. Everything in her spa was maroon and felt very exotic. Even so, aggressive ripping was still involved and my pubic area continued to suffer from its fair share of blood and pock marks. At least I was pretty sure it wasn’t herpes.

One time the ingrown hairs were particularly bad.

“You have infection,” said the Exotic Sugar Lady. “You are touching. Don’t touch!” Through my vodka buzz, I tried to promise Exotic Sugar Lady that in fact, I didn’t spend my spare time rubbing my ingrown hairs. She didn’t believe me. Cheerful Ripper suggested using a dry brush. This brought only moderate success, and as my student loans dwindled away, I felt it was harder to justify the 50 dollar monthly expense.

I gave home waxing a try and managed for about a year. This practice left me patchy and blotchy. It also became less sustainable as my tolerance for drinking during the day consistently decreased. I asked my fellow Hairy Beast how the pube situation was going, and she reported, “I just shave the sides and call it a day.”

In preparation for my Sex Trip to go see the Boatman in Halifax, I decided I would try for a similar tactic. I used a combination of the sketchy toxic smelling nair, a new razor and some tweezers. The Boatman had no complaints, but within a few days I was itchy and pockmarked. Despite this, the Boatman still invited me to move in with him.

When I arrived in Halifax a week later, we obviously got into the habit of having sex every day. Eventually, the Boatman noticed my red marks that had become worse from persistent shaving.
“You know, babe,” he said. “You should just let yourself heal. Let it grow.”

Over the past three and half years, there have been a multitude of signs that the Boatman and I are meant for each other. The “Let it grow” speech is one of these signs. From a bare waxed vag to a seventies bush, the Boatman is happy with all of it.

“It’s all about variety,” he says. What a saint.

Judging from models at the Boatman’s life drawing nights, it seems that almost all adults around my age have joined the “Hairless Generation.” Although zero pubes can be fun, exhilarating and exfoliating, it should definitely not be obligatory. To be repulsed if someone lacks the bald crotch of a seven year old seems highly questionable.
 



Caption: Life Drawing Model from the Hairless Generation

Drawing by the Boatman

Follow the Boatman on TUMBLR at verysatisfied.tumblr.com

 

That said, I hear that in India, you can get yourself waxed for pretty cheap. I thought maybe this would be a relatively interesting experience for the blog. Since I don’t wear Kino shorts, I was all set to let my pubes grow for the occasion. Then my friend invited me to a secret silent pool for the afternoon. I decided that this would be an excellent opportunity to chat while attempting to even out the farmer’s tan that I’ve developed from constantly covering my shoulders. Of course I would come. With bells. Despite my sincere efforts to have a fully liberated crotch, I had mixed feelings about letting stray hairs poke out the sides of my red two-piece bathing suit. My waxing excursion would have to be postponed. So I shaved the sides and called it a day.

Probably red bumps appeared within approximately 27 and a half minutes.

Oh well. At least it looked like I tried.

The End.

 



The Kino shorts that got lost in the mail, giving me a pass on grooming.
Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
My $2.99 self-help book, I Let Go

Menstrual Blood, Peanut Butter
I cling to things until they die
Everything You Need To Know About Butt Club
Spiritual Beard, Secular Vagina
 



 





 

Brand New Mysore Clubs

In Mysore, I have a Cool Friend From Belgium (CFFB) who I met while I was in Miami. The other morning we sat together in chanting, as we almost always do. My CFFB loves chanting, but as she looked around the room, she scrunched up her nose and rolled her eyes.

“Everyone here is so boring,” she said. “All they ever talk about is yoga.”

“I know,” I exclaimed. “Only 89 percent of what we talk about is yoga.”

“Well, at least you talk about other things. Like masturbation.” I knew she was going to say this.

The thing is, even if you talk about masturbation, you are probably still very boring. Most people are very boring. The key to life is finding boring people who you like. Then when they go on and on about their pelvis and their lunch and their mother, you still have a nice time.

The Boatman and I are extremely boring. The Boatman likes to draw and drink tea and laze around and read and watch Netflix. Sometimes he goes to the gym. He likes buying food at the market. What else? Every once in a while, he has a beer. These days we are taking up the outdoors. So far we have been camping two and a half times.

Besides taking up the outdoors with the Boatman, I like to do yoga, write, and occasionally meditate. I go for walks in Point Pleasant Park in my five fingers shoes.  Sometimes I watch Netflix with the Boatman, or go to the market. And I like yattering away like a verbal machine gun. Lucky for me, the Boatman doesn’t mind.

Obviously, we take breaks from the Netflix and the verbal machine gun and the outdoors to hump each other. It is quite ideal.



Boring Happy Dorks, in the sky

But in Mysore, me and many other people have no one to hump. And even if you have found yourself a few boring friends you love, it’s quite likely that you have more time than you ever imagined possible. Most people get bored at least once. If this happens, probably the most spiritual thing to do is learn Sanskrit. But for those of you who are too lethargic, and/or you don’t want homework, my CFFB and I have invented these three brand new Mysore clubs. Unlike learning Sanksrit, they require little to no skill, commitment or prep time.

Club Number One: The Glutes Group

My CFFB is very concerned that everyone who does Ashtanga has a flat butt. The other day we spent at least twenty minutes observing our own butts, as well as all the other Ashtanga butts that we could find on youtube. I am pretty sure my butt isn’t that flat, but I’ve been known to be delusional. You won't be able to judge whether or not my butt is flat, because I would never ever post my butt on the Internet.

Got glutes? (not sure what is happening with these red patches...)

Even if your butt isn’t flat, it could still be dysfunctional. A couple of months ago, I read about a big yoga butt scandal on the internet. A yoga teacher from Toronto was trying to protect her injured knee, so she went crazy with hip openers. Over time, her glutes weakened and overstretched until one day, pop, pop, pop, all three glute muscles tore off the bone. Ick. For years, this teacher remembers being told, “Soften your glutes! Soften your buttocks!” Perhaps this is why so many of the yogis have flat butts. Flat butts may or may not go along with other pelvis and lower body problems. This is why my CFFB and I have invented The Glutes Group. At the Glutes Group, we thought we could do some extracurricular butt exercises to cure our Ashtanga butts.  My favourite butt exercise is the Fire Hydrant.

Fire Hydrant Butt Exercise

My CFFB doesn’t have a favourite butt exercise yet. In April, Eddie Stern posted a bunch of butt exercises for people with Femoral AcetabularImpingement Syndrome. I have tried Eddie Stern’s exercises many times. Me and my femur bones have zero complaints. Plus Eddie Stern is so funny and cute. We will definitely do some of his exercises at the Butt Club.

Eddie Stern Heals the Ashtanga Butt

Club Number Two: Knitting
Knitting is relaxing and soothing, but not as boring as meditating. I am jealous of my CFFB because she brought her own knitting needles and wool. My CFFB has extra knitting needles for me, but no wool. It seems like she only has enough wool to knit one shawl. So far it only has one or two holes in it.

My CFFB's Shawl

As she knits, I alternate between turning on my verbal machine gun, and looking at Facebook. When my CFFB runs out of wool, we will have to go on a search for more wool which could be a challenging adventure. I thought that India would be too hot to wear woolen things, but on a Day Trip last Thursday, I passed by a stand selling woolen caps. Somewhere in India, there is wool. We just have to find it. If we can’t, maybe my CFFB could be like Ullyses’ wife Penelope. Over and over again, she can unravel her shawl, and then reknit it. That sounds very spiritual, doesn’t it? My grandmother always says, “A good knitter is a cheerful ripper.” My grandmother is an excellent knitter, and very spiritual.

Woolen Hats

Apparently there is a yoga student here in Mysore who crochets. If he or she would like to join our knitting club, he or she is most welcome, along with anyone else.

Club Number Three: Lying Down Club (LDC)

This is a solo club, and all you need is a floor or a hard bed. Lie down and close your eyes. You can put a pillow under your neck and your knees, or not.  If you received a mask on the airplane that doesn’t have formaldehyde in it, then wear that. (Mine has something in it that burns my face so I stopped wearing it.) Lying down with your eyes closed is easier than both meditating and sleeping. Both meditating and sleeping can be difficult in Mysore. I try to do each of these things once or twice a day, but sometimes it is too hard. The scooters and the birds and the dogs are really loud. And my brain is not the same as it usually is from getting up for practice at 3 a.m. and also from talking too much. Maybe I will get used to all this and start sleeping and meditating like a pro.  For now, I am grateful to be a member of the Lying Down Club.

Please feel free to join any of these clubs, in body or in spirit or with your very own boring friends. We thought that the first Glutes Group Meeting could meet this Monday at 4 p.m at my CFFB’s house. Let’s say shala time, just for fun. Knitting Club meeting time is yet to be determined and we invite your suggestions for time and location. As for the Lying Down Club, this is ongoing and we sincerely value your consistent and devoted participation. 

The End.

In other news, I no longer walk with a stick because I am no longer afraid of the dogs.  Mysore is like the Land of Oz. Things come and go very quickly.

Some people have been reading my recent Ashtanga Yogalogue, You Cling to Things Until They Die. Or at least they have been clicking on it. It is a little long, as these days I have been rather long winded. But maybe you are between Mysore clubs and you have a little time... Serene Flavor wrote this kind response clarifying that I am not a poster child for Ashtanga Dysfunction, but that I do fall upon the Ashtanga Spectrum. Success.

Exuberant Bodhisattva on Facebook       
Twitter: @mypelvicfloor
$2.99 E-Book, "I Let Go"

The Lying Down Club (from the future.)
The Benefits of an Ashtanga Yoga Practice, Part Two
Why I Like to Pee Outside