I Have Been Writing About Jenna Jameson.

I remember when I first started this lame-ass blog and I thought, “I’m not going to do this blog shit if it makes me write even less.”

So I tried to work out a way to mine my blog. The key was twofold: 1.) Go way back in time to do your mining, go deep under the layers, like a snuffling truffle dog. 2.) Use a blog as spark only. Radically edit the spark. Edit the spark like you met it at a bar and it twinkled and smelled self-sufficient. Unfetter your kidney, that type of thinking.  3.) Never blog in the present thinking I am going to mine this later.

(Uh, that’s 3-fold.)

Anyway here’s a new prose poem at The Corduroy Mtn.

Do others mine their blog? Is this “healthy” (Tao Lin quotes).

Tao Lin says he has feelings he will die by a car crash or a hurricane (soon).

Car crash I get. Your odds of dying in an automobile accident are about 1 in 84. You enter a car, or walk anywhere near cars, you are orange plaster waiting to crack. You are a girl sitting next to Jesus. Kiss your ass goodbye daily. (I suggest the morning, right after waking, but before the second Pop-Tart.)

Hurricane? Odds of dying in any natural disaster are about 1 in 500,000.

Tao, you are more likely to fall off a waterfall (or even a sidewalk curb) to your death, or commit suicide, or even die of “excessive natural cold” than by a hurricane.

Hope this makes you feel better, Tao.

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I am selling a new movie. It is an Oscar winner. Buy it.

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I wrote a new long poem today about the entrepreneur  Jenna Jameson. When I say poem I mean crazy-ass hybrid thing. I don’t write poetry. I did, years ago. And one day I woke hungover (when most self-honest, for many of us), looked in the mirror, and said, “Sean, your poetry sucks.” So then I quit writing poetry.

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Hangover poem by James Wright here.

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The new Pedestal is out. I haven’t read it all yet, but here’s a few texts  glowing catastrophic:

Neal Whitman seems fragmented enough I would drink with him.

Holy fuck I love any lit about crows. I would not only drink beer with Amy D. Unsworth (kick ass name–sounds like a Joyce character), I would drink three beers with her, order a bottle of rotgut vodka, polish that off, then invite her to climb the tree outside the bar. We would climb that tree. And the branch would break. And we would end up at the hospital in the most brilliant white rooms, rather happy, or shall I say medicated.

Her poem felt like this to me:

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I watched Six Shooter today with my students and I have a new favorite movie quote:

“You ever shouted at a sheep?!”

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I have more to blog but I don’t feel an epic blog groove. Without an epic blog groove, I should defer. I have disc golf discs to wax, miles to run, wine to drink, Play Station Lego Star Wars to play with my 5 year old before I sleep, with my 5 year old before I sleep…

S

Advertisements

Ebay my Heart. Iceland, a Novel.

AWP roundup blog reports/sites, for those who give a dern.

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I am selling two items on Ebay to raise money for books and the horse track and the aspirin salves.

This movie would be good for you. Also the shiny beads. I bought it and then didn’t watch it, but David Bowie plays Andy Warhol. I wrote about Andy Warhol here, soon after buying the film. If you buy the film you will write about Andy Warhol, like that. It is dark outside my windows now.

This is a baby toy. You could stare at the baby toy and enter a trance and write about the powerful circle of life, how we go from seed to vibrant sapling to sturdy oak to bent over/arthritic lightning struck sodden limb, as in dead. It plays music, too.

Thank you for looking.

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My call for Jesus walking into bar literature has already worked. Here is Sarah M. Wells. I saw Sarah choke on Japanese horseradish once. She seems kind and poetical.

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The “book of AWP“?

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What I am reading…

I finished this last night after reading Harry Potter to my son. (Harry Potter is extremely badly written. This isn’t.)

I think Ander Monson sent me this; it just showed up in the mail one day. I think it is absurd like a mirror. It had sex by page 6, so the reader did appreciate. There was a falling-into-a-volcano scene. A woman namd Emily swims with organs (kidneys, lungs, hearts, etc.). The narrator robs gas stations and repairs typewriters. This is my second Iceland book this year. I think I want to visit Iceland. Is it expensive? Aren’t they bankrupt now, the entire country? I think so. I do think so.

Martin Amis blurbed this book. I’m just saying.

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I have decided I enjoy drinking wine out of coffee mugs. It makes me feel three years younger than my actual age. I saw a fox cross the yard yesterday, a red fox. My dog has bloodshot eyes. Is my dog a stoner? Impossible. I’m just saying the juxtaposition of the red wine and the coffee mug (SANTA’S WORKSHOP) made me feel more alive. I am going to run far over bricks today.

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I like this Amy King poem at delirious hem.

This line: “We are metered only by our own machines”

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How To Be Happy.

To be happy shop at Salvation Army. Buy items that spark nostalgia, that make you think childhood, not-so-bad, where did I lose my dachshund? Her name was Jone. Anyway, whatever item you purchase, take it immediately home, fill it with red wine, and get drunk.

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To be happy hide Woody Allen movies around your house. You will find them later after you forget. This will quiver a thousand wings of your serotonin, a little pop and glow of bees humming. Be sure to hide only the older good movies, not the newer shitty ones. Hide them beneath your pile of jeans in the closet. Hide them behind the toilet. Hide them in that top drawer where you keep your grass, those old emails you printed off for evidence, and all of your secret codes.

Note: Martone writes about how the president and secret service call the briefcase with the nuclear launch codes “the football.”

Obama: “Oh fuck, man. Iran just launched a missile at Israel. Go get me The Football.”

Secret Service dude: “No problem, sir.”

(It is always always “no problem.” A guy has a full time job to carry The Football in proximity to the president.)

One of my favorite pics.

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To be happy drugs.

(just kidding, children!)

[just kidding]

{drugs are shucked off sugar}

caffeine, Tylenol, bananas…

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To be happy read Mary Miller’s Big World. It made me happy. I will review it soon on this bad-ass blog. I will fling myself half-naked down onto the snow. I will.

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To be happy vitamin bolus. Do you have any middle to upper class relatives who are elderly? If so, visit their house. Right above the stove or sink is a cabinet. Open it. There are many vitamins and supplements and aspirins. Take one of each, every single pill or capsule. Fill your hand, and then down them all with a glass of cold tap water. Make sure you tell your relatives you are going to take one of every thing in the cabinet. They will find you odd, but happy people are always seen as odd. Don’t be sneaky, just tell them. Secret happiness can have a tinge of sadness, so try not to be counterproductive here.

Right after doing this, for at least three minutes, you will be happy.

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It is possible that personal happiness is not the answer to the short time we have together. Not the answer worth striving for. Something to think on.

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Accidentally dropped nuclear weapons from aircraft are called “Broken Arrows” by the U.S. government. Many times we never learn of these instances but we do know of Atlantic City, New Jersey (1957); Savannah, Georgia (1958); Goldsboro, North Carolina (1961); and many instances of armed nuclear weapons dropped at sea.

Here is a sobering example.

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To be happy the studies say experience always trumps possessions. Sex will be better than a remarkably skinny TV set. Downhill skiing better than leather bedsheets. A trip to Rome over can of Spam. But why are these ideas mutually exclusive?

What if I buy a shotgun and a camo catsuit? That’s a product. But then I go shoot the shotgun into the air while wearing my camo catsuit. That’s an experience. Blending both like a beer poured into glass of Merlot. Like mixing rattle and canopy, like that. Now I feel happy.

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To be happy I don’t know. I miss Joan.

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To be happy get on the internet. The socialization will cattle-tromp your dopamine to new and higher levels. What you do on the internet is up to you. I certainly won’t judge. I can suggest things:

Read this thoughtful essay by Jimmy Chen on Shelf Life Magazine.

Read stuff about Jesus. Here is one by Molly Gaudry at Hobart. It is fucking awesome.

Read a Catherine Meng poem at Fence.

If none of this is slaying your dragon, you might have the wrong blog. But no worries. There are other blogs out there. I think there are.

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Eleven American nuclear warheads are thought to be lost and unrecovered, primarily in submarine accidents.

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To be happy give away things. I bought several copies of Mary Miller’s Big World today and I will give them away soon. It will make you blee, or even blee blue. Like that.

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To be happy throw things. I like to throw apples into large walnut trees. I must have thrown at least 400 apples into walnut trees last spring. It was fantastic. Once in Tuscaloosa, Alabama I threw a coffee table into a wall. Very happy feelings, an acetylcholine clatter. These big drywall wounds in the shape of archipelagos. One of my friends is big into throwing parties. He seems happy enough.

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To be happy plan things into the future. Have something waiting out there for you. Example. All of you who rocked AWP Chicago like it was a cat made of Velcro and diamonds, think about AWP Denver. I used to live in Denver. I will take you to amazing nachos. You are invited to eat nachos in a nacho town with a nacho expert. Put it on your calendar. Now you are happy.

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“If only I had known, I should have become a watchmaker.”

–Albert E

Bankers Never Sleep Well. Tao Lin Interview. Cocaine.

I have a 5 day rule about any epic event, say AWP Chicago. I stop recording. I think nostalgia creeps in, colors things wrong. I just park the event in my memory vault (of course, to bring up later and view–while huddled in some rainy tent in Colorado, some hospital bed in Arkansas while my broken bones heal, some platinum/dried manure rocking chair years from now in Bangkok). I left Chicago 5 days ago, and so this will be my last photo or post posted (post posted? Redundant?) about those lost (the good lost–where you stumble into Shangri-La, free cold, cold beer, devout Buddhists who also do Indy Lit readings and want to play you in disc golf, or sushi tossing, etc.) shredded days of broad shoulders, the shrugs.

John Wang offers a refreshing LIT. I say, No, I will not accept your refreshing LIT. I will take 3.

A truly cool guy. Good heart all the way, I felt. Good vibe. Hope to meet him down the road and we drink for freedom, or for Amphibians, or for that space right before the both (true conversation).

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The Urban Elitist interviews Tao Lin about how to make money as a writer. With so many writers giving books away at AWP, I think some of you need to realize you should make money with your writing. There is no shame. Why do people feel shame? This from a guy who writes book reviews for NewPages where they pay you in the very book you review.

My next mortgage payment I am going to send the bank a book. I am going to send them a book with a note that reads, “Here. Here is my payment. Read this. Maybe you will grow, alongside your throbbing gallbladder, a dollop of integrity, or a soul.”

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I was about to read at Quickies and I glance up and there is Robert Olen Butler, at a table….

Do you have any celebrity stories? I remember once years ago in Memphis Andre Agassi bought me a glass of wine. At the Peabody Hotel. He said, “Man, you look like you need a glass of wine.” Then he walked away. That was a good day. Later, on the taxi ride home, the cabbie insisted he take me to a strip club. I guess he was getting kickbacks from the clubs or something. I detest strip clubs. But he kept insisting and insisting, like I was a chump, like I was going to let a cabbie destinize me, mind-jack me of my free will, my existential birthright. I forget the rest of the evening.

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This photo is for Emma.

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From the Chicago Literary Scene Examiner, concerning the off-site AWP RUI reading: “Sean Lovelace (who’s RUI quickie last night on guns, cocaine and action figures won the crowd)…”

Word on that.

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Here’s more AWP photos, notes. To follow the rules you have yourself made is an illness.

The final Chi-town AWP 2009 photo I will release to the public. This is me with two big-time short-list Pulitzer writers (one is vomiting into the garbage can, so I cropped her PhotoShop  in the interest of discretion, but that’s cool–the writing life is torture, all that paperwork, adoring fans, etc.). We went to the Joyce Carol Oates after party and they wanted to return to my hotel for drinks. Fine with me, ladies.

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“Never play poker with a tattooed lady.”         –My dad.

(why dad?)

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“Sean, why do you have to use that F word in your blog?”       –My mom.

(Fuck, I don’t know why, mom)

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I drink oily coffee and write words at the kitchen table and look outside, at my boccie balls buried in the snow, an odd juxtaposition. When I think of boccie I see sunshine, green and golden hues, and sweet, sweating 16 ounce gas station beers; Tuscaloosa, Alabama and my friends heaving the boccie balls around a sprawling grassy field, a city park, a jagged stone ruin of a Civil War era courthouse. We called this “modified boccie,” or as we would tell others, “We don’t really play the game like you’re sposed to.” Stuart (an athletic madman/freak [in the good way of freak]) hurling the heavy clay balls into the sky, moon-shots rising, rising, then arching down with ferocious intent, into mortar walls, brick stair steps, ricocheting off crumbling cornice edges. Stuart actually split boccie balls in half while playing; we all did, I shit you not. Maybe except for Will, who preferred to open his hand and drop the ball nearby, plunk. Will and his titanic gin and tonics (this was a man who would order triple straight gins at restaurants, served in a tall water glass, to the rim). Myself, the others–Charlie, Mark, T.J., Don–our little demented clique, sipping beers, sprawling on the grass, talking shit and tossing boccie balls. Metallic taste of canned beer. Rustling breeze. Silk-blue sky. A crystallized moment, Georgian idyll. Fuck. I do miss it. I do. You turn your head one day, look back, and find your friends scattered, your boccie balls scattered, your mind, well…I guess some things are obvious, and here:

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S

Cella is Tripping. Nachoolic. Quick Fiction.

Lots of people only use one type/grain /grain perimeter/size/endpoint/shape/scoop layer/etc. as their base chip selection for nachos. This saddens me. A tremendous error, and an urban legend, really, like believing the northern wind is not your ally, or that cocaine is a bad idea for wedding parties. Just a real closure to the possibilities of life, I feel.

Folks, you can use secondary, even tertiary (Nacho King, anyone? How did you think they so quickly dominated the Philippines?) layers of foundation, especially if the nachos are going to be utilized as primary entree. The laws of superposition still do apply, obviously, but I’ve pushed those theoretical constraints many times.

Example?

Just last week, at a local mixer (OK, keg/key/self pity party) involving all of my unemployed neighbors, I brought a platter of nachos (I always do), but no ordinary entree–rather I established an underpinning of roasted plantain chips, a schist of flax seed tortilla, then even threw in (OK, placed ) a thin but even sedimentary layer of plain ol’ store-bought kettle corn chips (fried). Did they go over well? Does a mountain dew? A McCarthy go all Cormac? A bull doze? Does Blake Butler straddle train seats and shout all crazy when hammered drunk???

Hell yea!

(Um, sorry Blake)

People kept asking for the recipe but I told them that would be like Mozart playing at your house and then handing out laminated cards of sheet music. At the extreme edge of nacho construction, it’s not the dance, it’s the dancer. But I digress…

Lunch. Can anyone say Argentina? Thank gods for Latin American and the regional influence on nacho topping considerations, especially the bean of black.

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Cella is tripping like a car-struck sparrow. Check out Ander Monson (and my interview of), Matt Bell, Peter Schwartz, more.

I also heard their flash fiction editor was total badassness.

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Quick Fiction took my story!!! Yahoooooooooooooooooo

I tried three times before. They said 1.) No. 2.) Uh, no. 3.) Dude, we can’t even open your document so forget about it, and then 4.) Hell yes, mofo!

I am yappy. Quick Fiction advocates, adores, annihilates, other a words to the image/idol/glim-glammer of FLASH. I am humbled to appear in their wonderful pages.

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I think I should publish a collection of poetry about Jesus walking into a bar.

Here’s one by Susan Rothbard at pif. (scroll down)

Here is one by me at Press 1 (scroll down, #6)

Elimae is basically ridiculous now. I thought last issue kicked the can of placenta, wings, hmm. But wow. The new issue is glow, and large, and glowing large, like lightning off the throb of waves, whales slick backs. Sick.

You should read it all. For example…

Blueberries (by Brandi Wells)

We eat blueberries while he drinks a Newcastle and I sip chocolate milk. Really, I am drinking the Newcastle and he is drinking the chocolate milk, but I thought it sounded better the other way.

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Anaïs Nin? A hack. Go read KGM.

I will drink a giant glass of red wine with you any day, KGM. But no fucking Big Macs. No way. Lord…

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Am I the only one to notice that no one seemed to care when Updike died? I think he got about 14 seconds of coverage. Weird. I don’t want to get into all the reason he was hated–many I see, some I don’t see–but I still thought it sad and odd and sad. 61 books aren’t what they used to be, folks…

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On the way out of Chi town I hit this place for nachos # 8 of the trip:

I give this place a 4. I could go into detail but going into detail about mediocrity is a loser’s game. Or to put it another way: Just how much life you got left to live?!

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S

50 Life Sentences AWP 2009 (my head is a chewing leg)

I couldn’t blog in Chicago. I was too drunk or too busy with work or too compartmentalized. No, that wasn’t it. The hotel’s internet was slow like boiled sugar. A lot of people told me their Internet didn’t work in Chicago. Didn’t work well. I think I heard the term sluggish. I heard a lot of great terms in Chicago. I heard Painbis, hip-swinging, also annihilates. Words and writers of words appeared in front of me like kicked doors, or armored saints growing day to day.

I am going to blog now; I call this:

50 Life Sentences AWP 2009

1.) I have arguments inside my compartments.

2.) Shards inside I feel the need to fill, with alcohol, rationalizations blue, interstitial fluid, food.

3.) My many Chicago meals were triangles.

4.) A goal of mine was triangles…

5.) A goal of mine was to meet Kim Chinquee.

6.) Why didn’t I take a photo?

7.) Why was I too afraid to take a photo, to seal my memory in everlasting angles, perfect ghosts, in queens and hearts of glimmer?

8.) The poker game was a ghost everyone was talking about but no one had actually seen (like sustained love?).

9.) The poker game was mystical as a flower (on the moon).

10.) Listeners at readings whoop, laugh, bloom and flutter.

11.) Listeners at readings will buy you bourbon, will buy you shots of congratulatory bourbon, and you will drink that golden sun-struck poison like a harness-maker, like a household of leaking cells, drink them all and all and very well…

12.) In the swanky hotel lobby of the Hilton, Blake Butler voiced an opinion that authors shouldn’t just pick humorous work for a reading, just to be funny, etc., and I agree and disagree: They shouldn’t pick just funny work; they should pick funny work that is also sexual.

13.) I have arguments at Abjective.

14.) I have arguments inside my compartments, my flux and flow.

15.) Why didn’t I take the photo?

16.) I can’t get my head around Chicago, my actions, non-actions, and faulty do/do not/residue.

17.) Right alongside my heart, a nick of rib bone, I keep shaking inside like the El.

18.) I was intimidated by the El then learned to observe, conform, climb aboard, overcome something, or some thought inside my skull rolling.

19.) To meet (drift and swerve) with Samuel Ligon was glacial, as in very very cool.

20.) To meet Jac Jemc was glacial, as in very, very cool.

21.) To meet Molly and Matt and all others glowing was glacial, as in very, very cool.

22.) My many Chicago meals were fermented/distilled liquid.

23.) My many Chicago meals were squid, were prawn.

24.) My co-eaters were 1.) a woman who was raised in a “town” (my quotes) of 92 people, who runs marathons and swims with whale sharks; and 2.) a woman who writes drafts of poems about experience so recent (the El looping) so quickly and fine it makes me shiver.

25.) I bought sake and rode its candy-cane high.

26.) I bought more sake, diet cola and books (stored in my car, a Shane Jones signed book, Barry Graham signed book, Mary Miller, others…).

27.) I bought a form of hesitation, medication, some other ation.

28.) I bought the poison and inhaled the poison.

29.) I bought the books; I bought the books in front of the SmokeLong table.

30.) Mary Miller signed the books.

31.) Why didn’t I know she was awesome?

32.) At my age, why don’t I know what I am doing?

33.) I read her book immediately, last night, such likable object, such simpatico of scene and non-scene (I know so well, beer cap moth-ing through air), such castles of crickets and leftover wine.

34.) Sometimes I watched, in all my hours shifting weightless.

35.) Sometimes I watched others and wanted to be with them, or be them.

36.) Sometimes, less often, I felt watched, or should I say observed.

37.) To be my age and feel lostly.

38.) To feel hesitation and unrest.

39.) the photo…

40.) Why do you think I didn’t take the photo?

41.) Honestly.

42.) Why?

43.) I felt this blue crackling in the air.

44.) I felt this moment after.

45.) Of course I took the photo!

46.) (A man can only shelter so much regret…)

47.) (I am learning.)

48.) (and now.)

49.) and now.

50.) And..well, now.

AWP Itinerary/Readings/Poker/Nachos

Most have seen the press release. But the press release is false, a Blue Tuna, a technique to throw off the paparazzi and several stalkers. Here is really what I am doing at AWP. I hope to see all of you (well not all of you, just the ones of you I like). You can buy me a beer and I will buy you another. Etc exponential.

1.) My primary role at AWP is to assist my colleagues in hiring a new professor at BSU. This is exciting, and will be my Professional Mode. If you see me carrying manila folders, or anything produced in Manila, I am in Professional Mode. Eye contact during PM will be direct. Also my voice will lower, one could say sonorous or just the term International Foliage. My hair style will resemble a cashew. My walk a Big Walk during PM. Most verve will be expressed by a very fucking cool necktie. Also I might spontaneously limerick.

2.) The necktie is rent away and buried in a potted plant and I am in Book Buying Mode. During BBM, I glide like champagne. I wear bright yellow shoes flecked with glitter. I drop at least 100 American dollars on books. Maybe more. If you are selling a book, now would be a good time to approach me (but never from behind). If you shoot me with a free book cannon I might read that book and then review that very book on this blog. Here is an example, Ever by Blake Butler.

(Not to imply I only review free books. I bought EVER, and others I review.)

(visit CELLA!)

3.) If you see me reading aloud I am in Reading Mode.

I am reading here on Wednesday night. Reading Under the Influence? Uh, no worries. I always ingest beer during readings to alleviate my self esteem. I will be wearing sunglasses made of the sun.

I am reading here on Thursday night. The list of people reading this night is humbling. I should not be on the stage, as I will attempt to prove.

NACHO DINNER?? Anyone want to meet for nachos before the Th night reading? I like nachos. And tequila.

Any other reading will be of foot-pounds pressure, mattress creases, air in the limbs of skyscrapers, bubbles rising in glass, catastrophes, or my two cards as I out-flop all comers in…

4.) Friday night I will be in Poker Game Mode. There is a poker game! So far, rumors of Ander Monson and Blake Butler and Barry Graham and others, others…

(Game of choice will be Baccarat or Texas Hold ‘Em. I have also been known to bet on how close a person can throw a penny to a hotel wall, what gender will appear first in the next TV commercial, man or woman; and any other prop bet you might devise.)

What? I out-flop Mark Neely again!

5.) Any other free time (not much) I am the guy at the bar. Join me. I promise to tell a beer and drink a dull story.

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Other modes for AWP include disc golf, Mojave Slammers, rocket glares, Scottish coats, jogging, higher pitches of living, time-out understandings, opiate withdrawals, further nachos, and don’t you know all the museums are for free in February?

Me, final judge, this:

There are ten million other cool things going on during AWP. Support all the art you can, folks, and be careful, or I will blog you.

Anyone interested (all 1.7 of you) in getting my phone number to make contact easy in Chicago, just zap me an email: leapsloth14@hotmail.com

S