Sad muscular men ride kittens to undistracted victory

 Undistracted

The stillness vibrates
Soundless air too empty
To remain still.
The thunder of eyelashes
Colliding in blackness
Echoes in my empty mind
As dim lights gleam
Off metal scraps
And mentality alternates
Between throbbing foreground
And backgrounded thoughts.

My heart announces itself
In my eardrums
Steadily increasing its pace
As reality shrinks in,
Glinting metal melding into
White walls, replacing pictures
With shadowed shapes

Unbearable
Headphones convey life's soundtrack
Drowning out my mortal heart
With unsteady beats of bass
Intangibility replaces
Real walls and shining splinters
Sheltering my mind
From the void of closed eyes.

Poem:
It has been obvious to almost anyone that I'm constantly on my phone. The reason for this is that if I don't constantly distract myself with something, my mind wanders to odd things that I hardly ever feel like thinking about. So rather than take the chance, I give it no choice but to focus on something inane. I think if I want to write well, though, I'm going to have to start weaning myself from my technology. I can write a bit with music playing, but it's never my best work. And I never have interesting thoughts until I unplug myself. I'm so unused to just sitting and thinking that I'm sure it will feel strange, and I might even get scolded for being lazy, but I'm pretty sure it's necessary. The real trick will be not falling asleep. I'm pretty sure that's my Pavlovian response at this point to turning off my phone. The only time it happens is right before bed. When it's off, it means I'm tired enough to sleep, and I'm not sure I will be able to have it off without napping. We'll see.

Observation:
I looked at my phone recently and realized I've taken hundreds of pictures with it. So because I don't really have a plan for what to write about, I thought I'd include a few to talk about.

The photos for today are of my mom's cat Fuso. I don't feel as thought they accurately portray the animal at all, but they're pretty funny.

Let me clarify. It's not that they portray it in too unintelligent a light. It's more that they don't show the side of the animal that is constantly hissing at me and baring its teeth. This cat seems to only be dormant about five percent of the time. That time rarely coincides with times I want it to happen. He is capable of yowling nearly constantly for hours at a time if he thinks there is even a chance it might affect his situation. This has resulted in him being relocated to the basement at night, since he is incredibly annoying early in the morning, and if you don't provide at least a floor of separation he will sit outside any closed door and be just as annoying as if he were licking your face. But this picture shows him in a different light, where he somehow decided that he was the right size for that box. I had to snap the photo.

Every once in a while, I am able to manipulate a cat into doing something I want. This time, Fuso was playing with the sandals (why he would do that, I have no idea), and my dad and I scratched at the floor on either side until he tried to paw our hands by reaching through. Then we kept him distracted until the picture could be taken. Adorableness ensued.

Exercise:
From any book or magazine, take 2 lines and 10 other words, all randomly chosen. Using this as your raw material, rearranging in any way, what can you write in 5 minutes?
Four others had fled the scene and have since remained anonymous.
Why he was crying he couldn't fathom.
Finally, Affirming, Pursed, Truth, Slightest, Green, Thick, Rich, Pass, Threadbare
Josh pursed his lips, the slightest green tinge crawling down his face and passing into his thick neck. His muscular shoulders heaved, the threadbare shirt doing a poor job of either covering or soaking up his sorrow. Why he was crying he couldn't fathom. He was just passing by. These rich folks didn't care about him, and any other man in his situation would be glad they finally got what was coming to them. When the police asked their questions he nodded, affirming what they suspected. One gang member lay on the street, unconscious or worse he couldn't tell, but others had gotten away. He heard a man on the tv say later, "four others had fled the scene, and have since remained anonymous."

Me:
I won a race this weekend. It has been a while since that happened, and I certainly wasn't expecting it to happen on a course with no hills or anything, but I guess it all started with a haircut. That's what my mom said anyway. I had quite a bit of confidence from that fast ride I did on Friday, and I knew the course for the criterium Saturday was flat, so I just gave it everything pretty much from the beginning, knowing I could go twenty-five or more the entire time. In fact, as we were all on the line waiting for the race to start, my teammate Gavin asked if I was going to go right from the whistle. I said only if I could get my foot into the pedal, since that was a severely limiting factor over the Memorial Day race weekend. Well, I did, and I sprinted for a while to start the race. I got caught quickly, but went hard again as we came across the line for the first time. I got another gap, and this one stuck for a bit more than a lap before the field made up the ground. Gavin took over soon after that, making sure the pace didn't fall too much. It might have been better if he had attacked hard enough to get a decent gap, but it set me up well to go again soon after that. I was joined by Mark Beatty off the front, but I wasn't quite willing to kill myself to stay away at that point. It seemed like I could get a break when I wanted, and it wasn't worth risking giving it everything in case we were caught later. So once again, I rejoined the pack. This time I sat in for a couple of laps, but when the pace slowed, I kept attacking. This happened two or three more times. At one point I was just pulling through to the front because it was slow (but not attacking) and a guy said "watch out, he's going to attack." Flattering as it was, I didn't oblige. I kept up the shenanigans until four laps to go, and then started waiting for a good time to make an all-out move for the finish. Gavin attacked with three laps to go, and when he was caught, I was set up perfectly for my move. I went with two to go, and nobody responded. I gave it just about everything, I had, looked back, and still had a gap with three corners left. I looked back before the second to last corner to see Mark (from earier) charging strong off the front. Before the last corner he had gotten about halfway from the field to me, and I gave the sprint everything I had left. I guess it didn't wind up being that close, but it was a bit intimidating trying to win from so far out.
I kinda collapsed after the race briefly, but my legs felt okay the rest of the night. That carried over to this morning, where I played some of the best handball I've played in a long time. So based on the way things have been going, it certainly seems like the haircut was the key. My mom's theory seems to hold water for now. Of course, if things keep going well, I'll have to start cutting my hair every other day or so...
Speaking of my mom, she raced and got money too. It helped that not enough women showed up to fill the prize list, but she certainly wasn't slower than the other ladies in the race. She never really caught on to the group, though, and chased the whole race. But she didn't lose much time on them, and looked good from what I could see. My dad was in my race, and I looked back a couple of times to see him on my wheel, which was cool. One time I was moving up the pack, and some guy said "here's a lead-out," which I thought was pretty amusing. We still had nine laps to go! That would have been some lead out. But talking to my dad after the race, he said he was doing a good job of keeping people off my wheel, and was able to get to the front to disorganize any effort to chase me when I went with two to go. It's great to have teammates, even cooler that some of them are my family!