It's inevitable, when you skate, that at some point you will fall and hit yourself, your body on the pavement.

I am grateful for my father who taught me to fall.  

I've been stalled in skating... a few days ago on Twitter I said, "Why not rennovate the house during a press tour?" and that's really been quite the issue. Inches thick dust, a confrontation with possessions that usually reside, possibly retired, in closets, all in the open and questioning their own extistential existance. 

Yesterday was long, in good and bad ways.  I took my son to judo, and as he was done, I slipped into the adult class, to my shock making it simply through the warm ups and into the grips and holds.  My son studies judo, my father teaches it.  I myself am a brown belt, but I have not practiced regularily in years.  Sill muscle memory and sheer animal intelligence prevail.  

That night, as I was driving back, my sitter texted me.  Like a drug dealer knowing when her client needs another hit.  "Hey, need any help tonight?"

And just like that, it was on.  It didn't matter that I'd worked ten hours, that I'd just done a two hour workout and was drenched with sweat, that that was my second work out for the day, I was ready to go.  I managed to get home, hastily eat an apple, and dig out my skates.  I did not have my indoor wheels on my Lolly skates, so I pulled out my Hello Kitty Skates, a limited edition skate by Moxi that I'd found by sheer chance on ebay.

I met with my skate buddy and we drove off towards northern lights, swapping stories of our days (we could not be more different professionally) and swearing at the traffic.  The whole communte north is a festering of frustration, raw nerve ends that irritate.  We made it with just an hour to skate, but better than nothing and as I glided out on the floor I promptly stuck one skate pretty  much inside the other and flew forward.  My skate partner is quite a bit bigger than me and well seasoned in derby so I didn't actually manage to knock us both down, he served as a sort of solid human wall.  But I found that I was still warm and alive from judo and quite unafraid of falling.

Even though the skates were stiff, and new, and the wheels aren't my favourite type, by a few laps I felt an ease skating that I haven't ever felt.  Dance moves I'd stumbled over weeks before were fluid.  I wasn't avoiding the floor, or the inevitable crash, I was prepared for it.  The saying in judo is, "Maximium efficiency for mutual benefit," and that applies to how you fall as well.  It was the best hour of my day, my week, it was unsurpassed, actually, and it was, quite simply, what I needed.  

Freedom comes in many forms and many tenors.  For me it's less about the pressures from the outside than the darkness on the inside, of self regard, of a a relentless drive for professional success that can be quite pensive and difficult to carry at times.  I find freedom in a shifting perspectives.  There's not a part of my life I don't carry with me and know the shape of, and regard as part of the mosaic.  Skating is no different.

And it's a simple answer to the next morning's process, when writing comes as it does so often lately, with little difficulty.  The organizational social geometric structures I compose for work, my own pages of words for pleasure and my own projects. I am certainly tired, and a bit sore, but there's nothing in me that scares away from that kind of difficult.

It's fairly easy to carry the falling metaphor to a conclusion and so I'll allow you to walk it there, as docile as it is.  It doesn't make it any less true.  I feel often I can do the most difficult things because I have the knowledge of how to fail, break, fall down hard, repair, solve and rebuild.  I think of this too, in the shockwaves that follow Manchester.  I think of it because yes, it is all connected.  All of it, everything.

From the ground upwards,

QRC

Sometime, about two years ago, an important part of me was hit in a storm.  The way trees suddenly sheer off branches, the way a cliff suddenly becomes a muddy stew of rocks, pine needles sludge.

I am built for recovery.  I'm not simply, strong, I'm adaptive in the heathiest sense I can ascribe to that word.  As long as I've had memory, reaching back to the smallest parts of me, back when I remember how hard it was to climb on a chair, or reach a doorknob, I have had hope.  It's not a delicate, golden, flitting thing, it's inside me, as strong as the as the ocean, and it batters to get out of me when the world becomes difficult.

Some people say "Derby saves," and there are varigated meanings of that, of course.  I think many things can save you.  

But most of all, you are going to have to save yourself.  Even if, even if we all get by with a little help from our friends, sometimes.

It's up to you.  I try to never forget this.  It's why loving yourself and loving your friends as hard as possible feels like the most important thing to me.  

And yes, this has everything to do with skating.

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I am passionately devoted to Valentine's Day. It has never bothered me to be unpartnered, I've never felt constrained to express my love only by traditional discourse, and Valentine's is the perfect day to celebrate the indulgences that feel native to my being: chocolates, glitter, elegance, perfume, jewelry, lingerie, paper, pens. I can't imagine a holiday that more exemplifies the contents of the first two drawers of my antique dresser.  

 I do not know what tipping point I reached when I lost my restraint for loving myself.  

When I realized that the important she was a person that I lived inside and that she was, for lack of any other better word, fun.

When I lost my restraint for loving myself, I lost it for loving other people too.  Now when I meet people they can either flee from the tidal way of my full force of energy or affection.  Or they can step in and be bathed in it.

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I was scrolling through messages to find pictures of my new Lolly Skates by Moxi.  And here they are.  When I first opened them, the day before I left for Europe to go on tour with a client, they were without wheels and laces.  I felt uncertain, I could not see the full vision.  I hadn't had time, see, to daydream the wheels, to contemplate the laces, to envision the toe stops.  I had only hours, to pack, to do those thousand small organizational things that make up a successful tour.  But my friend showed up and carefully wrapped my skates for me, assuring me that he'd take care of them while I was gone. 

When I came home I was startled a bit he offerd to get me from the airport.  Our friendship has been, primarily, in the dark and at the rink, but I was worn flat by the trip and ready for some discourse that did not relate to professional matters.  When he opened the trunk of the car, they were there, in their box.  I was hesitant.  I wasn't quite ready to think about them just yet. 

But I unwrapped them and there they were.  He'd listened carefully, and taken a few risks.  Risks that paid off because the moment I put them on they were perfect.  They held my foot and supported my ankle.  The nerve damage in my faulted left foot was less than barefoot.  I could not believe it.  

I have wonderful friends.  He's a newer friend.  I realized though, it's like the way I give Valentine's.  It's the point that you reach where all the restraint and careful navigation has become simply dull.  No one wants a compass and a map to friendship.  You might as well say what you mean and mean it.

"I'm not too much?" I said.

"Not scared by it at all," he said.

I'm pretty sure we are going to be friends for a very long time.  I would have hugged him but I was hugging my skates and I know that was just exactly what he wanted.

"Hey," he said, "I'm glad you are my friend."

And in a day and age when Woody Allen ruined it for those of us who absolutely fucking can be friends with members of the opposite sex by asserting we can't, that naming of me as friend is like someone put the most beautiful crown on my head.

Friends. 

They are the best thing this world has to offer.  Don't argue with me on this.

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The nerve damage in my left foot is a dull burning reminder of the dues I've paid.  Hours on set of long miles walked, sometimes as long as the Bering Strait.  Stairs and trucks, time on my feet, time paid.  Time unpaid.  I think of the Little Mermaid, how the burning steps she took were punishment for wanting beyond her means, for longing for a life that was, by Anderson's measure (or someone's) sinful.  My burning foot is from duty. And it now interferes with the step I want on the inside.  I need my foundation, I need my feet.  

This body belongs to me.  I make a doctor's appointment, I step up eschewing the pretty bag of spoils from Europe: real honey, creamy chocolates, apricot brandy.  The ability to step, to glide, to dance, is more desired.

I had to write about skating, and it's the silliest thing and I keep saying that, but who dedicates an entire blog to happiness?  Happiness is now a project, a thing that we are supposed to build and construct.  I don't and I can't.  Joy I can find, happiness is the result of unrestricted joy.  I don't want to read about it as it walks backwards anymore.  You don't fall in love by doing it right, just as you can't tickle yourself or give yourself a great hug.  Communion, action, reaction to without dreading the consequences.

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Someone asked recently about my name. I used to have a shirt, "I taste of glitter... and rock n roll."  And I do.  I'm not a faint impression, that's okay though. 

I am Queen because my entire life, I was the princess.  The princess that knew she wanted to grow up to be Queen and take over the world.  Who was never bothered that sometimes one might be saved by a prince or menaced by the dragon.  Princes after all, only become consorts in your own kingdom, so really they are just helpers after all.

Queen.  Queen of my own destiny, queen of the world, Queen of Air and Darkness, Queen Mab.  

Everything that is ridiculous, over the top, and too much that lives in me is in that name.  

I'm not saying this right.  The words won't come out of the air and sit down and play nicely on the page.

But I'll keep trying, that's the reason I write here.

Q.R.C.

A post, written in parts.  So some of this is several weeks old old and some is new.

That said... on with it!

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I went to a derby bout this past weekend.  It was delicious.  When you are mid bout it feels so fast, a flurry of arms, legs, glimpses of faces.  Jamming makes your heart pound so hard against your chest.  But watching it is such a different experience. It can be easy to think that it's simple to remain on one's feet during it.

I love derby.  I really think that with some focus I could be damn good. But my heart is far more in dance skating right now.  I'm so frustrated that it's been thwarting this week.  I've scarcely had rink time, once on Thursday.  The rain comes down and while I can skate, I'm always half an eye on my knee high that she doesn't shove her precious toes underneath one skate pounding down.

My friends on my deep secret OPW will tell you I am somewhat obsessed with systems of organization and belongings.  This week, related completely to everything, we began to deconstruct my front garage.  My house is a wreck and that's saying something. 

What I keep thinking about is this: why this?  I mean you have eight hours to work, eight to sleep and eight to play ... in theory.  Why, in the full life of a solo mother of two, with a strong career swing, would I choose this as my play and what cost?

No, for real, everything has a cost.  A minute flies by, another replaces it, but that's a minute gone and that new fresh one is only there for sixty seconds.  Life is precious. 

So I organize, structure.  The things I love, I try to give a lot of space to to breathe. Including skating.

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Two nights a week I slip out the front door with my skate bag.  My friend picks me up and we drive off down along the waterfront.  The first part of the conversation is usually about skating as is the middle parts and the end parts.  My entire week I am other things, but starting in the darkness of the car, our faces only lit by the dash lights or the lights of passing vehicles, we are just this part of ourseleves.   For three or four hours, twice a week, I can narrow my focus down to a few things: my skating, my technique, the music and myself.

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I return from a long work trip.  My skate friend picks me up with one thing in mind: In the trunk of his car are my new Moxi Lolly Skates.  When I left they were without wheels, full of potential.  In his hand they have taken on pink wheels, pink toe stops, and on deeper inspection, tiny teal nuts hold the wheels on, constrasting sweetly in a personal way that only I would notice.  Finding friends to skate weekly with you can be a challenge, and these details are a love letter to a shared passion we have that is by some measure, silly, but as I've said before, a necessary balance for me.

I am jet lagged.  Two countries, three time zones, but the next night I am at the rink and lacing up my  new skates.  I'm so tired I am still lurching standing still on my own feet, much less wheels, but I can't resist.  The skates are everything I thought they'd be.  Moving in them, across the light speckled floor, is like unicorns and glitter, like the smell of a brand new Lisa Frank sticker book, like Hello Kitty purses, Zebra bubble gum, cream soda, blanket forts and drawing rainbows.  It's like the first thick line you draw on paper with a new box of crayons.  It's the first time you see someone at your front door and that strange feeling in the bottom of your heart, that is hopeful and shy all at once, that knows, "We're going to be best friends."  For all the movies and songs that catch the bad ending of things, the lurching moment where you realize that everything you believed and loved is not real, skating is the opposite.  It's about the things that are real, that are always fun, that make you smile.  

It's easy to lose these sensations, my daily responsibilities are so big, so large, the spaces I move in are so fantastic.  But sometimes I want to be in that simpler part of me where the magic starts, where things grow and change, where my default is always, always, happiness.  I was born a happy person and despite or in reaction to all, I am always happy eventually. I'm a lucky penny with two sides, and I live a wonderful life.  

Skating is just an extension of that. 

Covered in glitter and smelling of rock n roll,

Queen Rage-Crush

I realize I'm not on week three of increased skating sesssions. 

My feet are gaining strength.  I do ballet foot exercises as I'm decidedly uninterested in any injury I can prevent. or the amount of couch time or bench time that would come with injury.  I have gorgeously healthy knees, ankles and hips, my back is a happy back.  My adult body is the result of a coach father and a mother who felt that "you only have one chance to grow bones and teeth" and fed us very well and with a great deal of thought and consideration.  I'm extremely grateful.

So it's not time to undo the gift now.

When I started derby, we learned to skate and hit fairly quickly.  From that point we transitioned into team practices.  For myself, I'd have preferred a far more gradual increase, to build muscle memory and also, skating uses lateral muscles and ... I don't know quite how to describe it but if you've skated in a rink you know... rink skating uses them unevenly.  Your inside leg develops differently than your outside leg.  I was in another sport for years and performed at a high level that also created a difference in my body like this: cross training was very important to long term structural health.  I'm sure each league does it differently, but skating is such a different activity and everyone enters at such different ages, experience and fitness.  I do daydream of derby again but I'll give myself my own year of rebuilding my skating muscles before I risk injury with the sort of punctuated, quick skating that you need to do to jam or the heavy hits of blocking.

For squad skating (I really don't know what else to call it) I want to take it long and steady.  I've set a week by week fo things I want to learn and work on.  So far so good.

So I've been going to the gym a lot more, and on the days I don't know, stretching and doing some additional work outs on that side of my body have helped.   I've lost about eight pounds in three weeks, which sounds startling but that's not from skating alone.  I've been lifting weights and on a structured diet as a project to reduce my weight - separate from skating and more related to a desire to be able to safely run long distances again.  I'm "up fifteen" now from the weight I've been my entire life.  My youngest is two and a half, for me I usually seem to be able to relinquish the weight when they turn three.   I've been struggling against this weight for the last six months. 

But it's amazing to feel the transformation in my body going into week four from week one.  Each session is about three hours at least, and by the end, I've been in constant motion.  Muscle definition is emerging from my legs and calves,  it feels like my body sings when it aches.  

So this was my third week.  I've slowly regained my feet and I spent most of last night skating backwards.  Not just skating backwards but working on weaving and remembering my comfort forwards or backwards.  I tried a few jumps - unsurprisingly to me I can jump and turn better than I can skate backwards effortlessly.  Next week I'm going to really focus on those turns and balancing on one foot to build my lateral muscles more.

That's the technical.  

But here's the rest.  Last night as I worked on things I said to a friend that I just wanted to feel what all the sensations of flying backwards felt like without the visuals.  Sometimes what I'm seeing, or the rink lights, seem to throw me off balance.  So my friend put out their hands and said, "Go ahead."  They are a steady, firm skater, and I doubt I could take them down.  

So I did.  with my eyes closed, I could feel the rink lights flashing across my eyes as I moved around.  The sound of the wheels underneath the music, and strangely and comforting, the speed, because for anyone who has ever been depressed, stuck artistically, or in a place in their life where things are less thank sink-your-teeth-into-it satisfying, momentum is important.  

It's not uncommon, I think, for adult athletes to feel very passionately about their sports. It's a chosen thing, for one, in lives that are largely dictated by smaller choices made against practical necessity.  

And in all of that, anything that brings that feeling of flying, that sensory experience that leads to an explosion of happiness in my chest, anything that brings that I will seize.

I have always loved roller skating.

I struggle with how to explain this, fluidly.  Everyone can tell the story of their first love or something they love, but really, the core of it, the gold inside the egg come down to two questions: 

What freedom did it grant you?

Or conversely, "What safety did it provide?'

As an adult woman, I vacillate strongly between these two needs: the need to feel safe, the craving for freedom.  Routine and schedules that span more than a few days or weeks give me a tight laced feeling in my chest.  As children came into my life, the driving need to be alone along with the perishment of personal time (note: I am a solo parent of two) pushed up like an insistant animal at the backdoor of my thoughts.  

I skated derby for two, short, intense years.  They were also the two years I'd relocated cross country and started a new career.  My derby career ended quietly and without fanfare - or anyone noticing really- when I booked an away job for three months. I took my skates, but I never went skating.  It was a ghosting break up with skating, in a way, I just knew I couldn't but I couldn't really bear to explain to myself why.  They were all compelling, professional reasons.  My job relies on the health of my knees and feet.  Solo parent.  Sole provider.  My career has physical requirements.  

Derby had been an intense outlet.  I could never put the time into skating that I longed to, but what I learned there was incredible.  I could fly, or feel like I was flying.  I never really attained any sort of strong skill set as a skater, or so I felt, but for me it had been worth it.

I was on another job, a few weeks ago.  As I took out my kit to prepare for the job, my neglected skates rolled out of the closet, denting my Prada shoebox, as if saying, "What's the deal, Prada, can't take a hit?'  I looked at them and rolled them gently back.  I thought, to myself how my business partner and I often talk about our "fun check in's."  Fun check in's go like this.

We do the activity (drinks, etc)

We head home. 

We text each other, "That was fun!"

Until one night she said, "No it wasn't. I don't know what fun is but that same bar, those same drinks.. it's not fun anymore.  I don't know what fun is but I am ready to find out again."

I laughed.  But it was one of our side projects.  One we'd joke about, "Have you had any fun lately?" and laugh, and say, sadly, "Nah, not really."

My skates looked like fun.  I set them outside the closet and went to work.

That night on the shoot, I ran into someone I'd skated derby with.  It felt like another lifetime ago, I hadn't even recognized this person out of context but they said the magical words... 

"Want to go skating sometime?"

A week later, we were pulling up to a rink and ducking through the darkness to slip feet in skates.  I pushed out on to the floor, and felt that same feeling that skating has always given me, since I was very young.  Freedom.  The music is loud, you don't need to talk, just move.  This, I thought, this is fun.

I still have the same constraints, in many ways.  I am still a solo parent of two children.  My son is a high level athlete in a another sport.  There are a lot of checks and balances.  I don't know if I could commit to a derby team, if one would have me.  But that night, I thought, there must be to be others ways to skate, to do this, other than just the rink.  And there are.  There are teams like the Moxi Skate Team.

I'm not good with routines and schedules.  Augusten Burroughs, in This Is How: Surviving What You Think You Can't writes about how many of us move in deeply entrenched habits, even when we travel.  It's valuable to think about, if you aren't meeting the person you want to meet, if you don't have the friends that you think would fuel your heart and light you on fire with ideas, or, if like me, you have felt a lackluster wondering that whispers quietly, corrosively, "What if this is as good as it gets?"  Because of course, that's a lie.  It can always be better, or even sublime, if you are willing to be uncomfortable and move outside of routine.  Just as it can always be much worse, for no apparent cause or reason at all.  But it's up to you to craft it, no one is going to do it for you. No one will ever care about your happiness as much as you do, so it's yours to build.  And if you struggle with that, well, there's always people a little bit ahead shouting out encouragment if you look in the right places. 

I suppose....I suppose.... I've learned to listen to that little irrational impulsive voice inside me that can feel the electrical thrill of what is destined to come next.  My own Tinkerbell lantern.  I've learned to trust it as far as it can be trusted, which isn't very much, but more importantly, to listen to it as it is wise.   So when I roll over, unable to sleep, restless, with a bruised and warm feeling in my chest, like a distanced lover, to watch yet another video, I think it's time to give in.  Relent.

So. Regardless of the weight I feel right now, the plodding rhythem that we must sometimes adapt to to finish our projects (artistic or otherwise), my responsibilities and that I've lost touch with all my derby friends...

I ordered the Moxi Lolly Skates yesterday.

No idea when they arrive, but when they do, you'll know.

Yrs truly in the silvery light of the late afternoon-

QRC

PS Ended up watching Planet Roller Skate and practicing two wheel turns while on a call this afternoon.  Put that under the hashtag fun, babes.