All that's left to say (ultimate post)

It was not a speech I was prepared to give.

We were fourteen teammates sitting in a grassy field, not even making an effort to swat away the flies that hovered around our exhausted, sunscreened, sweaty necks. The silence was enormous, and I was slow to go and sit down in it.

The entire fall season, we would have 8 or 9 or 10 girls, more than half of whom had only been throwing frisbees for 1 or 2 or 3 months, running their legs off, barely catching, making frantic throwaways, probably not scoring--the entire fall tournament season, we would wake at the crack of dawn to travel to tournaments, not win a single game all weekend and yet every time, I genuinely smiled and joked and rallied and told them to be proud, to be radiant, to go and win that party! If anyone had asked my co-captain J. Ames and me about Regionals, we would smile in that knowing way and say, "It's a rebuilding year; we're learning a lot."

But on spring break, we worked hard, slept (reasonably) well, forgot about school, and let go. By the end of it, we were not only putting up valiant fights against decent teams from up and down the East Coast, but beating some of them as well. The girls, their ultimate careers matured by a few months, learned to read the disc, learned to beat the in-cuts, learned to come from behind, learned to dominate. By Yale Cup we were taking Wellesley to hard cap; yesterday we kept our focus to take down Brandeis to break seed. We were ready to be talking strategy and not just spirit now. All of a sudden, if someone asked me about Regionals, I would nod and say, "Yeah, we'll have to work hard for it, but we could do it."

So when the morning of Sectionals rolled around, the words came easily: the concern now was keeping their heads up and in the game, keeping the whole team involved when I knew we would have to tighten up the rotation. I had the soundbyte ready: "You are in this game whether you're on or off the field. We can only do this with everyone's heads and voices in the game. They are a three-person team; we are a 17-person machine. Everyone is in it; everyone is working; let's go, Quasar!" And oh, the energy that followed. Oh, the smooth looks, and the hard defense, and the big backhand breaks with our speedy receivers.

But now, on a different day, after a loss to MIT in the last round of pool play (expected, and well fought), a loss to BU in the second place bracket (more bitter, a spirit breaker), and a loss to BC in the game to go to the game to go (a loss in which we were at game point for at least five points against a team we'd beaten 11 - 3 just a month prior) -- what was I going to say? The last game was one in which I saw us lose our offense almost entirely, in which I couldn't make it happen with the big backhand breaks, in which our man D fell flat, in which my best player's head was hanging heavy with frustration, in which I couldn't crack a smile or a joke or a motivational soundbyte if it would have saved my life, or the game. It wasn't enough that we got broken with IO flicks and beaten by crappy, floating dump passes, but I let us get broken, emotionally, and that was just too much.

So sitting in that grass this afternoon after losing our bid to regionals, I didn't want to lie. I tried to look around, make eye contact with everyone and give them that goofy smile that I give, the one that makes everyone embarrassed, the way they would be at a well-meaning parent, and smile back if only to be polite. But no one was looking up. "Hey Quasar, hey Quasar. There were a lot of great things in that game. That was a hard fight." It fell flat. I wanted JAmes to say something; I wanted Jefe to come back; I wanted someone to just break the silence and I wanted to swat flies in a ridiculous manner so that someone would laugh. JAmes said, "Hey, it sucks to lose." Yes, yes, okay, there's the honesty that we need. But where's the "but"? It sucks to lose, but... we played our hardest? we played our best? This would be dishonest, and it would just hurt more to hear it, because everyone knew it wasn't true.

So I said what I was thinking: "We've come a long way. Think about how far we've come since the fall, ladies. Everyone did something in that game that they couldn't do just three or four months ago. Nine months ago, some of you hadn't even touched a disc before, and look at you now. This could have gone any way, and we didn't pull it out this time. But we have fought hard all weekend; we fought hard all day." Ugh. That wasn't right.

And then silence. I didn't have anything left in me. No appropriate jokes; no appropriate encouragement that rang true. So I just sat quietly, feeling the soreness creep in. No one else had anything to add.

"All right. Let's stretch it out. Let's go for a cooldown." And we ran. And we got in the cars. And we had team dinner. And now JAmes and I are trying not to let it get to us, but both not being able to shake the sense of responsibility, the sense of fault.

Last year and the year before, when I wrote about our less-than-stellar performances at Regionals, I wrote something along the lines of and "Jefe turned to me and said, 'That could be you next year'" in reference to playing in the game-to-go, and "But I hope I'm not writing the same thing next year..." in reference to how much potential we had for next year.

Now, as a captain, and in anticipation of another big year, I am full of something quite different than hope. I have always thought of frisbee as another sport in which I could run my heart out, feel the thrill simply of physically working hard and occasionally making a big play or two. This year, there is an element of responsibility and ownership unlike any that can be felt when you are a rookie or floundering second-year, one that makes the anticipation of another year of captainship that much more loaded. The questions seems purposeful and challenging in a way that a lot of other things right now don't: how can I shape a team emotionally and physically? What does it take to change and capitalize on the potential of a group that could come back more than 15 strong and with rookies to boot? What particular social dimensions, attitudes, and inevitable academic obstacles will I have to take into consideration? And of course, how can we play better frisbee? How much of it will be how fit I am and how well I perform?

I no longer ask myself why this is so important to me, why sitting in that field after Sectionals was so emotional or why I almost got teary talking to my former captain from freshman year afterward. I don't need to justify feeling touched when my team surprises me and my co-captain with a lovely personalized breakfast (complete with males in Speedos with guitars serving us mimosas) and a hand-drawn construction paper card with all of them drawn out in stick figures. People often seem to think that I am eager to be a leader and take charge of things, but really, what it boils down to is just that I get involved and end up caring so much that I can't help but doing what it is that I do. I want to make people happy, and for a sports team this means not only being happy with a social environment and feeling loved, but playing well and winning games and feeling the pressure-- I've had less experience with the latter, but that's what I'll be working on this next year.

I've prepared a soundbyte for this coming year, it's been thrown around and murmured back and forth between teammates and between my new co-captain and me for years. Sometimes it was in exaggerated jest, sometimes with deluded pride, but I say it with total earnestness now: "Quasar at Nationals '09 or bust." Put that on the record for Spring '08, and I'll be back next year for the last time to report.

April 15, 2008

is overrrrrrr!

That's right, tax season has ended. I can now be a real person with a real life again. I'm SO EXCITED! Just thought I'd share that :)

Why's Half What so dead?

Abortion/Conviction

After seven aborted drafts and an electronically mailed kick in the butt from Lindsey, I've decided to set something down. You are all lucky that I hadn't found the time to finish up entries about relationships, art history, writing, sexism in politics, and some trip I took to Wesleyan in November. It was just too much information.

Over the last month or two, I've lost a job, failed some exams, screwed up my chance for a sublet, and failed at painting portraits so consistently that my professor told me to paint something that would make me happy (not faces!), because we were all miserable looking at the pathetic attempts at likenesses. And also, my room is a mess. To a disturbing degree.

But the important part of this night, tonight, April 17, 2008, is that I went to see Sokari Douglas Camp, a female, Nigerian-born, British artist, speak about her work. Usually, I am not so interested in these talks, and I am even more uninterested in the awful questions that get asked at the end of them. But tonight, I didn't care about the irrelevant questions, didn't much care about the fact that the fiancee of my now ex-boss was sitting in the front row, since she organized the talk-- tonight, I listened to a woman talk about her "attachment" to two countries, about being a woman, about her heritage, and being interested in physical manifestation and welding and boats and politics and the people who walk by her studio during the day. These were her convictions about her life experience and about her hopes for the political futures of the countries with which she feels a connection (without making claims about ownership of particular identities, whether racial or political or otherwise) and her desire to bring the vibrant memories of her Kalibari town to London.

And I realized that I have these convictions, too.

By some funny twist of fate, I have developed reputation as some kind of visual artist here at Harvard, something of a painter and a go-to graphic designer for publications--from literary journals to economics reviews to sex magazines. Sketches and portraits of folks from professors to classmates to strangers are done in lines rather than letters. Yet I never could call myself an "artist" the way I was pretty comfortable calling myself a "writer" before. I didn't have any conviction; I didn't have any purpose in my painting.

But now I see that I care, about being a woman, a girl, a Taiwanese -born American, a college student, a citizen, a lover, a daughter, and a friend. That I care about materials and experience and that these are all legitimate points of departure for making art. I still don't know how I feel about what it means in the cosmic scheme of things, but at least I have a reason to carry these paintings through.