04 April 2012

“Victoria how could you?”; Pendleton takes one from the heart

This is a vintage-era postcard gratuitously
placed and has nothing to do with this blog
I am not a real sports fan; totally illiterate. I am not a follower of popular culture; on the street or any size screen I wouldn’t know… what'shername… see, I just don’t know, I can't think of any female celebrity that captures my attention. I’m weird with my crushes, they’re mostly historical. I am lucky if the camera was invented when most of them did their thing, or that some artist was around during the same century to hear a report of their likeness and capture it in some rendering. I once had a picture in my wallet of Emily Dickinson. I showed to my well-read friend. “Aw! She’s homily!” he cried. She was the Belle of Amherst, and I loved her, although I filed the picture away somewhere. I like female scientists, Lady Ada Lovelace, Maria Agnesi, as well as the real crazy artists, like Valentine de Saint-Point, and Suzanne Valadon. It is rare when I feel a fuzzy, pink-cloud admiration about someone currently on the world stage, and shaking it up. Then came Victoria.

I was a bike messenger for years in Boston mostly, but San Francisco too, and a fairly good one. Cycling history is important to me. The bicycle was responsible for a gender, sexual, and racial revolution in America during the last two decades of the 19th century. Fin-de-siècle women were suppose to be sickly, a costly doctor on retainer was the sign of a man’s success. The bicycle got them out of their corsets, hiked up their skirts, got them throwing their legs up and over a saddle, and sweating. It allowed them to move about freely without the aid of men, or a man’s horse, or other beasts of chattel. New York school teachers were not allowed to ride a bicycle; next she’d be showing the pupils her bloomers, and chewing gum, with a horrible bicycle-face. Sounds funny, but allowing a woman to travel, cheaply, under her own power, and have it contribute to her physical fortitude was a pretty powerful thing. Check The Kominas  video Sharia Law in the U.S.A. for a modern parallel.

A young savvy suitor, for a small investment could ensure some privacy while courting, something that was very new and uncustomary. Ma and Pa looked askance at some mustachioed gent coming a'calling, wheeling up to the homestead, with two rides, or a tandem. They were able to travel some distance into nature, and then let it take over. Sounds a little better than a cramped backseat of an auto, but then I’m a too tall, kinky romantic.

Major Taylor c. 1900
As a historical note Marshall Major Taylor was the second black world champion of any sport for two years around the millennial. The Worcester Whirlwindthe Colored Cyclone was the toast and terror of Europe, yet could not ride competitively in his own country. He died penniless in 1932, his fortunes drained by hucksters, and bad investments, selling his auto-biography The Fastest Bicycle Rider in the World door-to-door. He was exhumed from his unmarked grave in 1948, and laid to rest by a group of former pro racers, with money donated by Frank W. Schwinn.

I was checking the BBC sports RSS to see if there was any advance track cycling news on the Olympics in London. I only follow two sports, both Olympic, with some interest; women’s speed skating, and women’s track cycling. I figure, why would I want to watch a bunch of dudes in tight clothes chasing a ball like a dog or small child? [Don’t get me started about a sport where the object is to dominate your opponents’ end zone, with repeated penetrations, with ends that are both split and tight.] Anyway, then I came across Victoria. There was some blurb about British track cyclist Victoria Pendleton saying how she wasn’t the manic-depressive psycho everyone thought she was, she was just in the habit of speaking her mind. She’s had an up and down career since two gold medals in Beijing 2008. [Which now makes sense, given how this plays out.]

I watched her world record setting performance in the team sprint with Jess Varnish at the World Track Cup in February before I checked the FHM pictorial. My ears burned at my peers comments to the pictures, how dare they puerilely sully her heroic accomplishments,  her incredible spirit and self-empowerment. While there were some incredibly sexy shots of a beautiful strong woman in various states of nudity on a bike and not, I downloaded the one of her riding on the track, no hands, sitting erect in team colors, holding the Union Jack over her head. She was Britannia in Victory personified. I’ve been getting a little anglophile over the past few years, but I felt a welling up in me like a damn Tory. [editor's note: UK artist and avid cyclist Paul Shipley was very kind to send his version of this amazing moment done in gouache, watercolor, and acrylic. The victory well-preserved, Pendleton's expression is even more fixed with determination. More of his art can be seen and purchased at http://www.veritasart.co.uk/gallery.html]  

I got two cheap picture frames, printed reasonably descent prints and hung them up. Keep in mind that ever since my girl left, I’ve been taping up every punk rock show flyer, every pin-up shot torn from a magazine I can, because it would piss her off. I actually bought picture frames; this was serious. I capped the 8 x 10 BiV with a 5 x 7 of her chilling in a black half-suit, helmet in one hand, still in the saddle and clips of one hot stripped-down ride, leaning against the track’s rail for support. Her long flowing black hair and makeup on the top countered the lower natural girl-jock victory shot.

I like two types of strong women; strong, and women—add a rumor of crazy and I’m a sucker. I said that to a friend, when we had people over, some women asked what Victoria's pictures, among all my bicycle ephemra, were about. He called it “bike porn.” Let me clarify, the whole idea of these shots, and pin-ups in general, is that the women are the subject, not the object. Pornography connotes a kind of ownership, hence its etymology; porne is Greek for harlot or prostitute, and is derived from bought or sold. Clearly, the only one owning it was Victoria.

The UCI Track World Championships in Melbourne were coming up in early April. I couldn’t wait, the field had some lookers, even the US’s Sarah Hammer is impressive, but lacks the union of form andintention. Most women cyclists get a little bottom heavy, which is sort of nice, but up top, they generally get too thin. Track cyclists are stronger then the road or mountain riders; Victoria’s arms made Michelle Obama’s look like chicken-wings, and the curve of her deltoids, linking to her trapezius, and down to the cleft of her lats, not huge, but incredibly curvy-feminine.

I read this essay by a psychologist who said that males couldn’t help but think of sex everytime they looked at women, because every gentle round curve; breasts, shoulders, knees, even the reverse curve of the nape of the neck, were meant to remind him of the butt, since early-on most sex was from behind, and that used to mean the success of the species was assured. Sounds good to me. That’s why most muscle mass women put on doesn’t naturally get the bulk and definition that men's does. Her body was an incredible machine, but not for assuring the species' success, but to sprint, with a sudden huge burst of controlled power, and thus assuring victory. She was perfectly, what is known in the field as a term of art, aero. [Now it’s all making sense. How could I be so stupid?]

Anyway, while I was engaged in this idle infatuation, I had attempted to get a little closer to a few individuals in the network of misfits I had recently been running with and found my domain. Right away, I failed miserably, and worse alienated some great people. There were some affections exchanged, but the average American fourteen year-old has more action than I had during these two weeks. The combination of a lot of things coming to head; professional, family, financial, during a period of gross transition and restructuring, caused me to choke. Out of practice, or better behaved, because in my courier days I would have kissed three girls the same night in the same bar [Come on, don’t mean nothing.], and played hand-on-the-knee with whoever else would let me, total lothario stuff. All to crank the wheel home alone, psyched because I was my own man. The fact that I was indeed alone would set in once I climbed into bed, in my dingy basement apartment. I had been trying to do things differently. Ultimately, the ladies who I had developed amiable feelings towards, were otherwise engaged. This was not an uncommon occurrence, and one that I had had a well-trod path on. Why had I saved that one pair of clean underwear, or the razor that wasn’t too dull, for the occasion? I might as well, and I think I did, get the full-on lothario mode going again; dirty, filthy and disrespecting.

But, walking by Victoria’s framed victory shot, with her iconic look of sureness, confidence, pride in her accomplishment; as an individual, as a woman, as a Member of the Order of the British Empire with her Union Jack, made these day-to-day pressures and misfires melt. There was indeed, always Hope; hopefully the offer wasn't just limited to the British. [Guess it wouldn’t hurt to be Australian either, jerk!]

So, the World Championship arrived and I combed the internet trying to find a source to watch the event. Not on US cable of course, not on my housemate’s forty-six inch HD television that we never watch, but finally I found a vender licensed to stream it live from Melbourne, at 5am, for $9.99 onto my crappy laptop. But while searching, I had been scanning the headlines looking for my Hope, and some expression of confidence, that she was back, and her name was derived from victory after all, and the same name as arguably the most powerful British Queen in history. Could she sweep it, go back to the London Olympics, and grab all three golds? Then I saw it. I didn’t have to read it to know what happened. The headline was Pendleton admits Aussie affair upset team-mates. Maybe the affair the SBS was alluding to was some errant intrigue?, but no it was an affair with a member of the British Cycling coaching staff. An Aussie Sports Scientist? Is there such a thing?, I am an engineer, and that can't even be a real nerd, and a caneater no less. She was acknowledging how the affair began prior to Beijing, was kept secret until after, dude quit the team, went back to Australia, and they’re now engaged. Since the World Championship is in Rooschtupper Central she’s now in his arms, when she should be thinking of being in the drops and clips.

According to the article on sbs.com.au, “She added: ‘A lot of people felt very negatively about it; team-mates that blamed me because Scott [Gardner] wasn't there to help them and felt I was being selfish; members of staff who felt it was unprofessional, even though we never flaunted it...’” And then I thought about her disappointing record since, there were some coups, yes, but somehow there was a fickleness, or doubt, caused… by… love? Then I thought of the most famous FHM cover shot, you can find it online easy, and her perfectly honed body… Freaking Sports Scientist!

"You don't choose the person you fall in love with.” No, you don’t Victoria, sometimes they choose you.

03 April 2012

Poetic Stalkings


By Dick B. Roman
To the reader. We at Panic Down the
Well are happy to have a flagship poetlike Dr. Roman. Only a highly labile mind and libido could adapt poetry in such modern response to what is appropriate in pan-gender interactions.

All must lay prone in the decay of thought,
and the entropy of warm buttocks.
Stepping like a horse
over a three-bar gate,
the disease held deep within,
in check with a latex aura.
Never shedding chitinous armor
no jingling clink about avian ankles,
to reveal a soft ruddy undercore.
Always feeling vile and enveined.
Neither spreading the legs to expose
nor falling within a hidden chamber,
some outer vestibule.
Fearing the neural splatter that would
stain the white bed-sheet of the mind.
World on fire, smoking, sporidial,
seed-sack broken, sown in the wind.
There are few flowers as fair, amongst
Purpled, poisoned ivies



Your locks would level any waters
I would your form to eclipse the sun
through my bedroom window
in your naked gait,
fresh off the savanna.
All birds are startled 'cepting the one
gorged and lazy who wishes
to be devoured by such a
creature that lays lowly
with no baseness
Your perspirate body would
shimmer like cool waters,
like a dozing pond that shivers
in hot breezes.
For a time you are transfixing
as a rosette window of 
stained glass,
a turning wheel of Nature that rolls
over more than my toes,
giving such things as faith
a recourse, causing me for a still time
(while you sit there in study)
to sketch you in words, though
even the air about you is electric and
adamant.
Hammering my head, now a dull chisel,
the only thing I strike are chords of
disdain and remorse
as you raise your apheliotropic flanks
off your seat and bend out on to the street.
You can make on choke on nothing
as I would say, but enterprise as most are
concerned, but these things die as you
shadow the light
through the door
for a second in real time,
but an etenity in
mine.

 

To E.D. [Ernest Dowson, d. 1900; transcribed (and spell-checked) from a cocktail napkin— ed.]

In consumption
Your words are better than tounges
Crosst lips bought at any cost.
May I never see your docks at dusk;
Or you to view Maeve’s eyes at close
As they all are out here at the perimeter.
For your many hands won at Killarney
Are squandered at the price of a few
Scratch tickets, cheap voddy, and imported smokes.
Your mantel is heavy as a lung collapsing in
Jubilee.

 

I have not touched you in months.
Your form pale, taut with blue lines
And rigid-back; ever-spriraling.
Looking over you, into you,
Opaque, not yet creased,
Dry humors sucking stain
From my stylus.
This moment is freeze-frame,
Tableaux. All else is tuned out
But you. Lack of silver and sugar
Mean naught, but to fill you slow
And frantic, each stroke more
Profane than the first look, so wry,
Upon your smooth bareness.
This line the last I have emptied
My cartridge, but still
Turn to another.

Lyrical Snares


by Charlotte Praecox-Regina
to the reader: Dr. Roman was adamant that we include the work of his paramour, Ms. Regina. Though we first harboured doubts, a lively and and rather insinuating conversation with the French chanteuse convinced us of her penetrating literary depth. We are proud to present her here.

I was new born dead
when you found me,
Blue veined alabastered,
Body thin as kindling,
With no Eulogy, you
lay me upon a linen
slab and loved
me like an autopsy.
The moment. swung
like a pendant  'gainst
my still chest.
Your thunderous roar
echoes through my empty cavity.
Your grip fills me
with the heat I lack.
How you laboured,
How you travailed.
With my deaf ears
You need not say thanks.





When I was a little girl
I would whirl like a dervish.
Spin so fast the world would blast off
In electric white
And I would finally be alone and
Subterranean.
I whirled myself warm on cold winter
Mornings at the bus stop with 
Legs too long
And sweater too small.
When my cycle came down like a
Whip at the
Town pool I whirled in my first 
Two-piece.
When my brother and his grubby
Friends would
Hoot like apes in their treefort I would
Make
Them ascend with the blood pulsing,
Ring in my ears until
My mother would punish me for
Lifting my skirt which had flown up
Like a tilt-a-whirl
I’d rather be a spinster.



In which is there more discomfort:
My silence, or your revelous
cacophony;
My quietude remains amidst your
joyous sounds,
Your face twisted in frenetic zeal,
Embracing friends you pretend to
Have missed.
But not the unknown. You are not a
plumber or spelunker. 
You are cattle mooing
And cavorting, far less civilized than
You'd like. I to like to cavort,
But it is on the pallet, in a hay
Stack. On a checkered blanket,
In a grassy grove 
Or a graveyard.
My joy comes from a oneness, not a
multitude.
Not many, nor a mass. Never have
I seen so many bored faces amongst
What you'd call, if you knew the
Word
Euphony. How joy is silent. pulling
The ear of a smiling face whose
Eyes lock mine like a loving raptor. 
It is not the bestial beating of bodies.
but
A reach that touches. A pucker
Received
And eyes that shine like stars in
My silent room.



Sister Autumnal,
You of equal night,
How you blush in the
weary hour of your fading
And lighted touches,
Which push us beneath
Quilted bed clothes
Embroidered with
Maples, oaks and elms.
With lips stained 
by blackberries, and your
Nape smelling of greened
Apples you bring me
Deeper to embrace you in
Your dark slumber.

Well of Grubs— Preface to the first issue of "Panic Down Well"

Beelzebub— from Dictionaire Infernal, Jacques Auguste
Simon Collin de Plancy; 1818

To the reader: This preface to the first issuing of Panic Down the Well was penned by one of our contributing editors, on the night prior to his deportation.

The ground breaks wide and there is a full-fractal fall into a larval cistern. Pupils become constricted shining no light upon the back of a hollow skull. The visage is incandescent in panic sweat. An August desert sun rolls on by in apogee. These chitins are repulsive. Their society is sonic, constant mechanical hysteria, like the groans of metal seething suddenly, atomically. This noise is their pogrom against thought. Eons of evolution are unraveled and the primate is revealed. All gods are destroyed with cries for the tit. Living far beyond the real of time, there is a short, bright tracking beam that is burst asunder— in an instant. It shines across a prehistoric horizon, and is witnessed by a man with a malted brain, who knows he will soon be dead, and the hunt drums pound. All visions fly away in the vapors of breath on an autumn night. Blue smoke curls into a halo, about an eggshell bead, in oily despondency. All things remain foreign, expatriated, and half-caste. Porcelain figurines in the moonshine doing a candle-dance. There is no grandeur in the naked trying to affect a firm grip upon the shuddering shaft of Light. All is lost amongst heady perfumes and fine linens, used only to conceal a deformity in the human condition, an aberration that shackles us each alone, to a great stone jutting out of a wine-dark sea, beneath an azure sky.

The third eye turns hazyy upon construction, yellowed and half-lidded.