Sunday, September 26, 2010

new plan: i saw it in the distance but it hit me in the face anyway.

soooooo, this weekend, on saturday, i was like, hmmm, there's roller derby happening in a nearby suburb. hmmmm, let's see how nearby it is. hmmmm. a five dollar round trip train ride. hmmmm, why not i guess? (other than the obvious reasons of homework?)

and so i went and watched the women's flat track derby association (wftda) eastern regionals competition. i watched the steel city ladies positively punish providence rhode island and north carolina beat montreal by two soundly disputed points (for the fifth place spot).
and oh, yeah, i fell in love and met my future wife.
but really. i knew i would love roller derby but i hadn't ever seen it live and it was like seeing too much light for the first time. i went, "that. i want to do that. i need to be a part of that."
and then, when i got back to my house i bought tickets for the championship bout today.
new york city's gotham girls roller derby vs. philadelphia's liberty belles. i was rooting for gotham because - duh. i talked to a couple of the girls yesterday. they are awesome.
when i walked in yesterday to buy my ticket, the lady in the box office asked where i was from. i told her i went to sarah lawrence. she liked this and told me that the westchester "suburbia" team is having try-outs next monday - october 4. NEXT MONDAY!!! i have no skates! i am doing too much silly shit at school!! i want to marry you all and be a part of your lives and be a blocker to your jammer and sew you hot hot hot little derby skins (which are what their hot pants are called).
and then the gotham girls have try-outs on november 20.
i need roller skates.
i met a grad student there who goes to my school and used to do roller derby in madison wisconsin. she's gonna try out for the suburbia team. she's gonna practice skating on our school's tennis courts. we should be friends. her name is harlot bronte.

today was incredible. it was such a good bout. gotham was so fast. just so fast and i their three main jammers were just uncanny. and it was great because today, i understood the scoring and the hand motions and i was totally just able to follow it. so then because i knew what was happening i got really into it and my heart was pounding an i was sitting on the edge of the track and - gah! so much love that my heart got sympathy bruises because it was trying so hard to work its way onto the track!
here are pictures from today:

gotham girls huddle.
the leg with the lightning bolt belongs to bonnie thunders who is an insanely awesome jammer.

liberty belles.

liberty belles (aka: 2nd place!) on their pre-game introductory lap.

gotham takes a knee while the belles are on their introductory lap.

gotham!

after the bout.


#46 is "swede hurt." yesterday she was telling me about seeing bikini kill in 1994 when she was 16 and in america on exchange from sweden.


i talked to beatrix slaughter yesterday for a bit about derby and getting into it. she was super sweet and i love her name.


2nd place: liberty belles (in blue). 3rd place: charm city (in yellow). 1st place: gotham girls (in black). these three will go to nationals in chicago to skate on november 5, 6, 7. you should go and cheer in my absence.




and a tiny video i took. who wouldn't want to play this sport? it's strategic like football and cool like feminism and craft fairs had a love child at a skate park.

(the whistle at about 19 seconds is tournament mvp hyper lynx being sent to the penalty box. this was one of the few jams where philly got lead jammer. it's a weird moment that i selected to record.)


thing one: i need skates.
thing two: i need to learn to skate really, really well so that
thing three: next fall when i am not so crazy busy i can skate with suburbia or gotham and begin my bruised career as a derby girl.


Monday, September 13, 2010

the thing about circles.

the thing about class at sarah lawrence is,
when it's a normal seminar class you all sit around a round table.
like knights.
which means that no one sits behind you and
no one notices that your hair is clinging to itself
because it hasn't talked to your shampoo in over a week.
no one torments you and touches it and notices that it has a texture not unlike barbie's blond strands.
i like this.


Sunday, September 12, 2010

to more.

to the first years,
i hope you thought,
when i walked away,
rain will always come again
and you will never get that kesha song outta yr head.
but better.
and i hope you go to yr dorms and use google and i hope you go to yr local sister school for the music and it feels like church.
and i tonight for a second,
in the bathroom,
i thought,
i should go to church tomorrow.
and then i stood in front of the mirror and watched myself place my open right hand over my open left hand and say amen like yes like cannibalism for jesus and his body. like saying amen whispering amen to the elderly people that hand out the host at catholic mass. a year ago my grandpa asked my father if there was a catholic church near my school, because to him it matters and to me i lied to my mirror image in a moment of faithlessness at a break from a dance party that i was throwing with too much pop and too many chips and the world caving in on my pop music sensibilities. because i may have been flirting with a boy who likes billy joel, this kid who may have a girlfriend and uses a complicated word to say that he feels comfortable in his gender. and i definitely broke a girl's heart or maybe just scratched a cube into its surface with a thumbtack because she's been telling herself stories. i can't blame her for fabrication. i spend ages on fabrication. i spent eighteen years fabricating and dismantling a personal christian lie and now i work in the realm of the third dimension and metaphor. the tactile and the unsaid where i got married onstage last night. it was a dream that could come true if i spent more time at my loom and less time tying knots in my yarn.
he climbed 9 feet in the air and i played the only tune that could be "our song" and dropped my flowers on purpose. the world is a funny one when you are the comic relief and don't get to the microphone because charisma and art direction are what's expected, but not delivered. so i make small talk with the first-years and hope to see them again - why not? for a few minutes i got to talk in the words that feel most right, get back in touch with the basements, before i have to fall asleep and wake up a night later in the skin we all expect and again sink into faithlessness.


Tuesday, September 7, 2010

heavens to our friends.



heavens to betsy at the international pop uunderground. their first show, like whoa.


russian double.

as for saying goodbye, we don't know how,
shoulder to shoulder we keep walking.
it's getting darker and darker now,
you are pensive and i'm not talking.

we enter a church - inside they believe
in funerals, christenings, weddings too,
without looking at each other we leave...
why is everything different between you and me?

or else we sit in trampled snow
in a cemetery and begin to sigh,
you take a stick and draw the chateau,
where we'll always be, just you and i.

anna akhmatova
(tr. lyn coffin)


i'm glad your sickness is not caused by me.
mine is not caused by you. i'm glad to know
the heavy earth will never flow away
from us, beneath our feet, and so
we can relax together, and not watch
our words. when our sleeves touch
we shall not drown in waves of rising blush.

i'm glad to see you calmly now embrace
another girl in front of me, without
any wish to cause me pain, as you
don't burn if i kiss someone else.
i know you never use my tender name,
my tender spirit, day or night. and
no one in the silence of a church
will sing their Hallelujahs over us.

thank you for loving me like this,
for you feel love, although you do not know it.
thank you for the nights i've spent in quiet.
thank you for the walks under the moon
you've spared me and those sunset meetings unshared.
thank you. the sun will never bless our heads.
take my sad thanks for this: you do not cause
my sickness. and i don't cause yours.

marina tsvetaeva
(tr. elaine feinstein)



russian chicks understand.