A Quick Post

The Bike

Power pressed these pedals once,
propelled her in painful ovals,
around banked turns,
hunched low with a grimace
as she suffered alone.

A lone figure in the stands
yelled times from his watch
as she sped by
first thirty minutes:
a record,
and then the reality
that another thirty minutes
remained.

The record stands
at Major Taylor Track.
The bike stands
in dust at the top of the stairs.

Poem:
I figured I'd include this one here both because I'm too tired to write a new poem and because it was remarkable that we got to ride outside three days in a row. So anyway, the poem is about my mom's record-setting ride. She set a lot of national records all at once, which I thought was a cool (and difficult) thing to do. So she set the half-hour record (along with some others) en route to the hour record. As far as poetic technique goes, I like how I repeated the word stands in the last two stanzas.

Observation:
The Australian Open is finished. As a die-hard Federer fan, I was less than thrilled with the final. Some good tennis got played, of course, but I figured I'd use this entry to document what really made this tournament fun to watch. Now, the air bubble under the court is in a previous post, but in that same spirit, here's another funny malfunction:



The best part is obviously the look on her face when she's just holding the handle of her racquet. Now, I have no idea how it's physically possible for a racquet to be holding itself together while she's standing there and then completely come apart, and I'm pretty sure this isn't in quite the same spirit as my other observations, but it was too funny to not share.

Exercise:
"Napo Says"
One way to bring energy into your writing is to bring in other voices. Try this: write something -- anything --- that includes at least two of the following quotations by Napoleon I:
"There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous"
"[The Channel] is a mere ditch"
"Not tonight Josephine"
"An army marches on its stomach"

"Not tonight Josephine." Reginald just wasn't in the mood for another argument. Especially not with his cat. She had been angrily stalking around the house for the past half hour trying to attract his attention in an effort to procure more food. An army marches on its stomach, after all, and if she was to spend the night on the lookout for intruders (or stray bits of plastic and string), she was sure she was going to need another helping. Reginald put down his paintbrush and gave her a glance. She fell over. Her legs stretched out behind her as she arched her back and twisted, bringing her belly into full view. "As if you're going to convince me you need more food by showing off how fat you are." But Reginald got up anyway. As he did so, he bumped the easel and the painting fell forward onto the stool he had just vacated. He swore briefly, grabbing at it quickly and setting it back on its tray. The damage had been done. He chuckled. The perfect nature scene he had been working on now contained what was unmistakably a flying saucer. "I guess it's true. There is only one step from the sublime to the ridiculous."

Me:
I have a temper. Sometimes I regret having matured the small amount that I have, since I recall fondly the days of slamming doors and stomping off. The days when noise was all that was needed to alert everyone to my bad mood and let off some steam. But all of this is really just serving as preamble so I can introduce this other clip from the Australian Open:



Now, Wawrinka is by no means the first guy to break a racquet in frustration. However, he is the first guy I've seen to do it in so impressive a manner. Again, the physical properties of tennis equipment bewilders me. I was sure the racquet would at least bounce. When it snapped along that axis, I was sure this must be something Wawrinka practices. Like "Okay, I've hit my 300 forehands for the day, now to work on my racquet-breaking."
In other news, I actually have a fair number of things noted to write about in the future. I was just a bit tired tonight. Today was my birthday, so I'm still trying to digest all the sugars I ingested. So stay tuned, I guess.