Sean Blog: It All Relates 2 Writing

Claudia Smith be Wigleaf Five Beers Full

July 9, 2009 · 2 Comments

There is a story by Haruki Murakami, the Second Bakery Attack. It opens with newlyweds experiencing a great hunger. It shows us the contents of their refrigerator: “Our refrigerator contained not a single item that could be technically categorized as food. We had a bottle of French dressing, six cans of beer, two shriveled onions, a stick of butter, and a box of refrigerator deodorizer.”

(Like all Murakami stories, it is 1st person POV, and people will soon be drinking beer. But where is the cat? A rare exception. No cat here.)

We learn all we need to know from the fridge items. They can’t make a meal. While they have a scattering, they don’t have a regalement, a snack, a sustenance. These are characters–and a marriage–in need. The empty fridge is a microcosm, and metaphor. In fiction, objects are significant. They are always an opportunity. (This is one reason you might want to populate your fiction with objects.)

{Metaphors should be organic, like homemade pizza. [I might have possibly made the ugliest pizza on the planet. But dern--it taste good...]

pizza

When I say organic I mean they appear naturally, not as “I am going to write a metaphor now.” Example. Look at Carver’s Little Things (A Freytag story, an allusion, among other things). It is minimalist, so doesn’t have many objects, right? True, but what gets knocked over as the couple fight in the kitchen? A flower in a pot. So? Well, can the pot act as metaphor? Yes. It can also act as image, as sound, as conflict, on and on. But, in its essence, it is a flower pot, in a kitchen first. }

In Claudia Smith’s “Leak” (Wigleaf Top 50 choice, and published in Juked, Juked, Juked), we get this opening: “She used up the bits left in the refrigerator; frozen peas, half a zucchini, an inch of white wine, a yellow tomato. There were five bottles of Shiner beer, something she wouldn’t drink because she didn’t like to drink alone.”

What do we learn here? Something of class. An interesting image of the 5 beers standing there, missing their one companion (the 6th of the pack). A possibly unreliable narrator. We get a sense maybe she doesn’t like to drink alone, but she does do it.

Then we learn she cooks in a Teflon skillet. Her husband took the cast iron one, and her husband, like that one beer and that bottle of wine, is gone.

[Who in the fuck takes a person's cast iron skillet? You can make nachos in a skillet!]

nachos S

I’d argue we learn something about the husband here, too. And as the story continues, we learn its quintessence, every thing we need to know:

“Mom, you know what you do when you stir like that.”

“I’m simmering the vegetables.”

“You shimmer it.  It’s called you shimmer it, Mom.”

The moon was pressing against the door, leaking slivers of light in through the cracks.  The house wasn’t well insulated.

“It won’t get in, don’t worry,” she told her son.

“How do you know?”

“I won’t let it.”

As we know, one beauty of flash fiction is the ability for the reader to take the story off the page. A woman’s life is shimmering. A situation is shimmering. Quivering. Shaking. Should I say tremor? But she has it together (really)? In fact, she can halt the progress of the moon….right.

Things said to children. Tension in helpful lies. Helpful lies itself a phrase of tension. And we know, in our hearts, the children are wise to the game. They accept the lie, but not really…a cycle of mutual help/anti-help, a…coiled thing.

[To me, magical realism is then the fantastic enters realism, BUT IS SEEN AS REAL. The moon might be seeping in the door, or (again) might be metaphor for all of life's tendencies (to eventually fall apart, to harm), but, in the words of the woman: "We're okay," she said.]

Yes, they are OK.

No, they are not OK.

I think this story is about fear. About consequences. About the impossibility of avoiding consequences (stay inside, refuse to move–even that will have a consequence, etc.). About hey look I am trying against big odds here, against like big tides and shit, big forces, the fucking moon!

I think I am trying to write about objects again here. This story swells with them. With things, how they enter our lives and leave them (they outlive us, remember?).

I would like to end by saying I enjoyed this flash. It made my synapses crackle.

And by quoting another Claudia Smith story, “The Harvest Moon”

What is a symbol?

banksy1024_3


I can’t tell you, I explain.  But I know it when I see it.

S


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Nash-Vegas Celebrity god blar.

July 6, 2009 · 7 Comments

New Chapbook Review issue is out. Very wicked site, if you don’t know already.

Smart site. Smart idea.

*

I went to Nash-Vegas for 4th. Almost made it in time to see The Dollar Store Summer Tour, but, alas, no go. A mixture of traffic and then me thinking: If I go see Blake and Aaron and Jac (of the awesome rejection blog, she rocks) read, I will drink a lot of beer. And I can’t drink a lot of beer on that Friday. Why?

dollar dude

The fuck you looking at? One dollar. All of it.

*

Road racing. Ran the Run for Music City 10k race. Results here: I got 3rd overall. It was hot as fuck. It was hilly. I forgot Nash-vegas could be hot and hilly. I wasn’t happy or unhappy with the time. This is basically the shape (or not shape?) I am in right now. My body hurts a lot. My body goes crump-O. Lash. I keep thinking of one advantage to getting older, and haven’t yet got there. Wisdom? Are you shitting me now? I think my hamstring is permanently tight. A stretched rubber band. Twang. Guess I’ll just live that way. Sometimes I flow like a wrench. Flow like gravel, or maybe disposable camera plastic.

250 soldiers in Afghanistan ran the race “with us,” same start time, same shirts, numbers, all that. Interesting. And a NAVY Seal did win the race in Nashville. Usually, military guys are in shape but not so fast, so I was surprised.

So I guess that’s how I roll on the 4th. Patriotic people usually scare me, but I’ll do anything for one morning a year. If I said it wasn’t cool to run with 250 soldiers across the planet I would be a liar. They should have done a flyover (they did in Afghanistan). Maybe next year? They did a flyover at Boston. Whenever I see a military jet flyover low I think it’s pretty cool, and then I think of bombs.

The race started about a block (and within nearly the same time it seems) from where Steve McNair and his girlfriend (rest in peace, seriously) were being killed, in downtown Nashville. I guess she shot him and then herself, but we’ll see. I’m certainly not going to make assumptions. I guess the story will be twofold: McNair the football player. McNair the married man with four children shot down by his 20 year old girlfriend. I’m a Titans fan and a flawed human fan, so can only hope and pray the vultures have their say quickly and the next new sparkling story/glittering thing sends the media pack/flock elsewhere.

Seems a rough stretch for the celebrities, folks. Started with Carradine to Ed McMahon and Farrah and MJ and the dude who screams at you to buy things and on and on and on…I think I forgot some. But I’m not really into celebrities that way. I find them sociologically fascinating, but as for their daily lives/photos of, I’m not sure I get it. OK, that’s a cop-out. I get some of it.

I guess they show us WE DO NOT KNOW ANYONE. Not really, from Steve McNair to your neighbor Fred Fredly, to, uh, you. But this seems an obvious lesson. How many times are people going to go “Hike the Appalachian trail” before we understand, people?

Appearance over here.

Reality over here….

(speaking of literature. This is the terrain we mine)

And, yes, celebrities are clearly our gods now, so I suppose a lot of people’s lives are rocked by all these deaths. Or maybe their lives aren’t changed one single meaningful iota. There’s an essay about this somewhere, fermenting.

barefoot Britney Spears cry picture[5]

About toy dogs.

And about hair.

And about iPhones. I just attended a party where all the adults stared into their PHONES and didn’t talk with me. Maybe they didn’t want to talk to me, or even like me or want to like me, but it just felt really Twilight Zone or maybe worse than that and was the first party in a while that kinda freaked me out. (The last party to freak me out was a Halloween years ago. I entered this house and every room was blue, this eerie subterranean lighting. And every person was on the floor, most of them hugging, or embraced somehow. Room after room of this. Weird. I walked through each room, each one silent, just people on the floor intertwined, and then I just walked out, over to another house, where there was normal lighting and talking and beer.)

Back to this 4th. People kept checking their weather radars online and posting on Facebook and who knows what, but they sure weren’t mingling with me. Oh well. So I attended a party and met no one, not really. OK. Well. I guess I feel depressed about the whole thing. Like now we have three (or 4, 5? I know people have multiple online IDs) identities.

1.) The I Have My Shit Together Self. This is the identity we use during a lot of the day, at work, when meeting others, while ordering a veggie burger at Burger King, etc. This is a false but usual identity. Sometimes things actually get done while in this mode. For all of our faults and mistakes and stumblness, the human can occasionally have their shit together, for real. For a short while. Usually not though. This is the identity that asks people, “What’s up?” or “How are things” and this same identity always answers, “Good” or “I’m cool” no matter what the interior/exterior events of the actual life being lived. I suppose this identity is necessary, but does come with consequences. (the mirror? A superficial existence and then it’s too late? On and on.)

2.) The Actual Self. The actual self doesn’t really Have My Shit Together so much. Not near as often as Self #1 tries to present. This self comes out with authentic friends, some family, right before you fall asleep in night thoughts, or when staring into flames or a deep river or maybe Big Wine or right after some life event. But that’s OK. This self doesn’t walk around in Bad Faith. This self Keeps it Real. It’s probably best to increase the % of this self as you grow older, and that is usually the way it goes. You don’t want to spend too much of your life in identity #1. It’s an existential math problem, but now we have a new data set, new numbers screwing up the equation:

nacho1

3.) The Online Self. WTF? This self has a lot of “friends,” quite a few they don’t even know. Have never seen. What’s up with the obsession with the weather? When has the weather become the new pink? Can I say one thing about Twitter? There is not one human being I care what they are doing minute-2-minute. Not one. Sorry. And if you care what I am doing minute-2-minute, you must, must, must go to Ebay and bid on, buy a life. Friends. Add a friend. Delete a friend. Friends. Newspapers gone. Blog this. Tweet. I’m feeling mossy, like a Sun, Sun System, Youtube lost half a billion dollars last year. Etc.

Online is awesome. Great place to do many great things. But this identity online thing is unraveling, absorbing, f’d up. And it is only just beginning. We don’t know what we don’t know. Or something.

(the irony of writing all of this while online, while blogging, the irony of….loops and loops, helices)

How to justify a blog? Try to help others. Try to report on others. Try to elevate writing itself, not a writer? Try to…I just hope people are asking. This thing is too young for answers. But we have to ask. I’ll be back to you.

These are thought-notes and way too long.

(Cool thing is when identity two leaks through identity one: woman with loud, crazy laugh; dude giving presentation is clearly hungover, etc. Again, aren’t I discussing literature here?)

Back to the road race. Actual physical movement. Foot on earth. Sweat on face. Pain (never virtual).

*

I didn’t take my dig cam to the road race, so just use your imagination here:

mcenroe_mad-heykobe

Mile 1 and 2, we cross the Cumberland River, huge hills, massive bridges, and I let the whipper-snaps and rabbits go on ahead. I know I will see them later. How cool is that bridge, though? Looks like a concrete rib bone. Hills. I just shorten my stride and keep my knees high. Pump, pump. I think about all the miles I put it on my treadmill with hill workouts.

Running Tip: Train on hills. Most people don’t. Then, when you race, GREET a hill with PLEASURE, not with fear and pain. Think: Hills? I’m about to kick some exponential ass.

asp2

Mile 3 and 4, I reel people in. See that guy in the orange singlet? He’s dying now, and I am going to fold him up like origami. That’s how I always race. I wait and reel people in. I sustain. I’m not that fast, but one of my earlier coaches told me once, “Your strength is your strength.” Meaning: I can grind. Grind. Grind. Maintain pace. Also, the course was two 3.1 mile loops, so I mapped out where to surge, make moves on others while running lap one. By lap two, I knew the course.

Run tip: You are getting tired now. Your form is falling apart. How do you know? Because correct running form is basically silent. Now you hear your feet slapping a bit? So sharpen your form. Let your arms and upper body correct the posture. Relax your mouth, let it fall open. If your mouth and chin are relaxed, the rest of your body will follow.

[If you hear an opponent's feet getting loud, throw a surge on them. Dust them like a crop]

(Tip inside tip: This is why you do weight training, as a runner. Your upper body can carry your form for you, when things get tough in the leg department.)

[When you surge past someone, when you pass, surge WELL PAST, like ten more yards than you need to pass them. Why? It psychologically devastates people to get passed. Then you go even further! Don't even look tired? They see that and they're done. You won't be seeing them again until much later, when you will have to say "excuse me" to ask them to move as you walk up to get your award).

andolf

Note how I bring it home strong here, legs pumping, hands loose, fingers curled like I am cupping/cradling an egg? But I missed getting second by ONE SECOND. Well, hell. Couldn’t catch the dude, what can I say? Honestly, I didn’t realize I was in 3rd.

Oh well.

Next time…

*

Brandi Wells has the best text in the new deComp. It is a 4.35 out of 1-5 scale.

S

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Sean Loses Again but has Running Tip Like Looting Zoo.

July 1, 2009 · 2 Comments

Um, who in the hell runs down a road at night?

Today I got an email from Quarterly West telling me my short story collection was a finalist for their book contest. This is another way of saying I did not win.

This same collection was finalist for the Spokane Book Prize last year. And so on…

WTF?

Somebody fucking publish my collection already.

So I was pretty pissed this morning. I needed pain. Like above video pain.

Fartlek AND Tabata!

3 min 6:00 pace 3 min 6:00 pace

4 min 6:00 pace 3 min 5:56 pace

3 min 5:56 pace 3 min 5:52 pace


Then the Tabata Protocol right after.

Here is workout tip. I call it the “Yawn” test. If you want a sure-fire way to judge the seriousness of a workout, one that increases fitness as opposed to only sustaining your current level, ask one question: Are you yawning immediately after? Like feeling you need a nap, now. Seriously, only a few workouts–esp if you are in shape–will have this effect. It’s a good way to measure your intensity. To assure yourself you are elevating the stress on the body, to get to the next level, the next, the…

Oh man did I just yawn. My legs whimper like secondhand flowers. There is a red dye of rational in my lung-works. Exhale, inhale, hear a click of good.

*

In better news Barrelhouse took a story of mine about cocaine. A shout-out to Samuel Ligon, since he helped me edit the story! I think it will be online in September.

Hayden’s Ferry took one too, about Che Guevara’s omelets.

I’ll link to all of that stuff when it comes out later, later, later.

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7-11-nacho-beef

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I finished the new Quick Fiction 15. Strong, and great variety of style/voice/language flux. It did lean a little heavy on realism for my taste, but that’s not entirely true. A foot does go off walking (Taylur Thu Hien Ngo) and Andrew Michael Roberts drops some luscious language-centered glee on the mirrors of our eyeballs.

I like “Clerk” by Stefan Kiesbye. It is about a promiscuous 60 year old woman. and the young man who sold her running shoes. I would like to see more stories involving running shoes and sex. Some of the best were written by Andre Dubus.

I like “Flight to Maui” by Jen Marquardt. “Her neck was bent like a Klimt painting…” Word on that.

The best was “Heist” by Elizabeth Ellen. I read it several times. It is damn good, like cold air through cracks of the mind, under doors. It has word-play and more authors need to word play now. It felt human and real to me and I think that’s why we do this. To feel less alone in our meanderings. To make someone feel less alone. Also, in a sad way, which is the best way, it is funny.

To figure things out.

To figure.

*

IMG_0294

whooooooshhhhhhhh

S

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Peruvian Nachos. Four Minute Workout. Sucker Fish Blues. A Fucking Minotaur. Question for Sally the Runner.

June 29, 2009 · 5 Comments

south nachos

I have decided to beat my 41 days streak of nachos. Why? Well, lately I’ve felt spiritually lonely, adrift, abandoned on the beach of this planet, in a miasma/jellyfish glob of purposeless night thought, with no rhyme or reason to my life, no guide, no siren or beacon or call, no image (sorry Farrah) or word (sorry Billy Mays) or song (sorry Michael) that can provide an answer, no destiny but the sad one I build, build, build and un-build daily, daily brick on crumbling brick,  as I…I…I forget what I am saying. The wind bends the trees outside my window, and I hear the roar  of the garbage truck making its rounds. Bird feeder like a skeleton of sky. There is a fly in here buzzing and I am thinking about Emily D or maybe that poem where a wasp drops into the cake batter. Like that.

So I decided the answer is nachos.

Tonight went with one of my South American selections (but that’s obvious isn’t it–the kidney bean is native to…?), recipe #114 (Western hemisphere; I actually begin numbering anew [and backwards, just like the toilets flush] once we switch to eastern nachos, the various chip/flattened bread platforms, secondary bean strata, etc.,) Vallejo’s Revenge. The green sauce is native to Peru, basically mineral water (fuck vinegar! Bane of hot sauce!), sea salt, with a touch of cilantro, diced lime, shot of pisco, and three reduced rocoto peppers.

(If you can’t find rocoto peppers, substitute three ounces of tequila. If you can’t find pisco, substitute a canteen of Robitussin. If you can’t find true love, substitute a life of constant physical activity and/or chess, Chevy Chase during his funny period [3 movies and 1.4 years of SNL], and maybe Nintendo and vanilla extract on weekends.)

They tasted like telephone blush.

like industrial glee.

like blar me. Or rotations of blar. Golden.

etc.

*

[What the fuck is a Tabata Protocol?]

*

Dudes, Blake Butler has a pretty cool post about his book physically arriving. I thought the Ever arriving post way back was better, but this one made me happy too.

*

Got my Quick Fiction 15 in the mailio. I am reading it now. And now.

Will report more later, as I just cracked it open. But already I like Daniel E. Wickett’s work, as it reminds of O’Hara, or those “Beat” (Sorry to all of those who hate that term, or any terming/summing up, as in label) poets who wrote about the mystery and magic of the every day, every single day.

Michael Meyerhofer works in an office a few doors down from mine and I often pass his name on the office, outside the office, and I think, “Man, I see that guy’s name everywhere” and by everywhere I mean in literary things online and in print and then sometimes on poems I find posted on walls or walls of my mind or even once a poem as a cloud, or a poem as dachshunds running through fields of wheat or something like that similar. Like that. That.

His thing is a good thing in Quick Fiction.

It imagines the earth as lover. As erogenous zone. As alive and  swollen with desire.

*

Question for Sally the Runner:

Q: Sally, I love your column (and your thighs. Ha!). You often write about a “Runner’s High.” Have you ever experienced a similar high while not running?

A:

Yes. Drugs, particularly pethidine. Downhill snowboarding, especially when I tried Black Diamonds (more a falling than control). Sometimes during sex, if slow and sustained sex, which is pretty unusual for me. I know this one young man and all we did was kiss, for hours. That’s all, for months of a relationship. Very odd. And, sometimes in our kissing, I felt a runner’s high. I mean we were like kissing artists by this time. We went to some very deep and strange places in our kissing, into caves and labyrinths of the mind. Wine, if light and dry and Muscatine (I make this on my stove), and if I have not eaten in days. Or if very dehydrated while drinking the wine. Hooking a big deep seawater fish, when the line is singing. Right there, when the line is about to break, the humming thrum. The last few yards when a large monkey is about to close within blowgun range, which means twenty feet, so immediate and huge—the taste of adrenaline in my mouth, copperish. I’ve also caught this flow during dancing, back years ago when I danced, but then again I was always intoxicated when dancing, or on some potent drug. Lastly, I once caught a runner’s high when at about 10,000 feet in the Himalayas (Pakistan Nanga range), as I peered over a ridge, into a deep valley, where a bull yak was fighting another for control of a harem of cows. This back-dropped by brilliant white snow. The clashing and running and bugling yak. This rumpled massive sheet of snow. Surreal. And I couldn’t figure out if I was seeing, or in a dream/drug wash, or even alive. Well, I was floating. And I always float during a runner’s high.

(I hope this helps, Dear Reader. BTW, one of the best workouts to obtain this “high” is the new Tabata Protocol. All the kids are raging over this one. Sally says, Give it a try!)

*

Took Little Man fishing, the best activity for the Art and Science of Little Man. He can not read books yet but is getting rather good at reading the eddies and commas and sentences/lines of a river. If you didn’t know a river is a wonderful moving book, I feel sorry for you.

You still have time, though.

focus fishing

Zen-like focus.

Results in a sucker fish. Fish so ugly, it is beautiful, no?

sucker

*

The New Yorker?

Yes, they can be elitist. Yes, you can turn past the political essays, they are often weak. Yes, for a long while, the weekly short story (please give a hand; they still print a weekly story) was mixed bag, lower yawn, and getting formulaic, the “New Yorker” story, but still, still, still, sometimes this magazine slays the dragon. They get it right. I have noticed this year the fiction has been on! (The poetry is never on.)

This story be rad to the bad-ass highway dogs of room blue/yellow. A fucking Minotaur and a little girl. An odd wonderful sandwich of a story, hatching chrysalis blur.

I think you should get over your prejudice against The New Yorker and read Ziggurat now.

*

I just ran a new workout that takes four minutes. Did I mention it takes 4 minutes? Four minutes it takes. A workout. Four. Minutes. What is this, an infomercial?

The Tabata Protocol (wicked name)

Workout is Japanese and like their game shows, nuts.

“On paper, the Tabata Protocol offers a quick way to get fit in just four minutes of high-intensity work per session. But don’t be misled: This regimen is grueling. It was originally developed for Olympic-caliber athletes, and Dr. Tabata reported that they were wiped out by the routine.”

I went with 5:27 pace, since first time. I am sitting here now dripping sweat. After-sweat. Pretty good leg burn, residual glow. Lungs kinda hollowed out good. Need to go faster next time, and I will, I will, I will…

*

Honestly. I wish I was a braver man.

DSC00927

S

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Laura Ellen Scott goes Kinda Odd, as In Good.

June 25, 2009 · 4 Comments

An atypical one today at the Wigleaf Top Fifty, Laura Ellen Scott’s Render, or to Transmit to Another

It is at elimae. It is at elimae. It is at elimae.

My head dried stick to the ground…

Opening line: “It has been a couple of years since a woman I did not know sent me by email, the picture of her fiance’s corpse.”

Voice established, and voice is key here, in that a strange, unsettling tale is spun out, but also a character–the narrator–is revealed. I really admire this flash for how is is NOT like many others. We all know flash is often image based, leaning poetic, a burst, a bang, a fade-out of sensory blur near the conclusion…all of that. And I love those flashes, but look what is going on here:

1.) A story told not shown. (A friend of mine said all fairy tales are told, not shown. Is this a fairy tale? Discuss.)

2.) Almost a 19th century, Chekhovian feel to the voice. “Dear reader, come with me to discuss this incident…”

I mean to say accumulation: “business” “contract” “formalized conclusion”

My head by the bed, red shoes.

The words merge, couple, thread throughout to give us an atmosphere…

office-workers

I mean to say Bartleby, the Scrivener (one of the oddest stories ever, and a line I steal often…Sean, stop drinking that giant beer, Sean stop eating nachos 41 days in a row, Sean, get off the treadmill….I would prefer not to.”)

Opening of Bartleby: “I am a rather elderly man. The nature of my avocations for the last thirty years has brought me into more than ordinary contact with what would seem an interesting and somewhat singular set of men, of whom as yet nothing that I know of has ever been written:—I mean the law-copyists or scriveners.”

My head all sings when he stripes shirts.

Like Melville here, or certainly Chekhov in many of his excellent (and often overlooked) flash fictions, Laura Ellen Scott (for some reason I like typing out her entire name) opens us up to a glimpse, a moment/movement, a fable (?), cracks open, I want to use the word exquisite, or create an image here of a jeweled Faberge egg. Now open the egg; I think it has a golden hinge. Inside the egg is a slip of paper. Folded. What is the meaning of the paper? Unfold the paper. Carefully.

I’d like to return to voice. I want to say haunting. It seems the narrator had this happen, and now is changed, disturbed (as in awoken some way), some residue of the event hanging in the air. Isn’t it the same with Bartleby? I suppose I keep comparing the two as a form of compliment, and a working out in my mind, or: How do these stories do this?

3.) A series of declarative statements, almost a wisdom.

“There was no foul play.”

“My parents, like your parents, believed that the whole of life is construction: collect, make.”

“Experience, for example, is a word for something that never happens, and yet its four syllables build an arc of rising and falling action.”

wool

Let’s return to voice, or narrator. We feel we can follow. We actually trust. And the matter-of-fact telling, the purposeful psychic distance (cool, calm, there is nothing hysterical or dramatic, and we are discussing a corpse here!) somehow attracts the reader, deepens us into the tale.

My head all thinning mints. Thinning mints. Dad I’m going to grow up and be a mint-thinner. Fine son. You do that. No idle hands, etc.

Again, I’m not sure how. The technique. And I am dancing around this flash like some insect buzzing a new type of plant it doesn’t quite understand.

Well.

That’s a good thing.

Land.

Inhale.

Read.

*

You go to the ballpark and you eat the nachos. That’s how. Everyone is running around, yammering about The Dream, when all you do is go to ballpark and you eat the nachos. I’ll be damned if I’m not going to…you little!! Come back here! Oh, this is exasperating. GO TO THE FUCKING BALLPARK AND EAT THE NACHOS!!

Ok, calm down…

calm your spirit, Sean.

Sometimes my head feels like a heart, thumping. Or should I say naked as Chit-Chat. Blar.

Citi Field Nachos Stand and Menu

S

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The News in the Note of C. Next Marathon?

June 23, 2009 · 3 Comments

I got up this morning and wrote my ass off. I wrote about Memphis (TN not Egypt). This is unfortunate since I am a distance runner and don’t have much of an ass. It is hard and scrawny. My mom said her trainer said, “If you have two dents in your butt, you are in shape.”

I have two dents in my butt.

But I always know when I am in “racing shape” because I can not sit in any wooden or metal chairs, like table chairs and so on. My ass will hurt too much. So that’s how I know. This seems very bloggy. To write about butt-dents. Well, at least it’s not calling someone on a cell phone and asking, “Where are you?”

Or fucking Twitter!

Die Twitter!

But I was proud to write that long on a project. I am an unreliable, sometimes insane writer, and might go days, then might write something while drunk at midnight. Luckily, I am a relatively bad writer, so I don’t need too much concentration.

Today I got two email acceptances. That felt OK. I would say where, but one of the pieces I have now changed considerably and want published anew, so sent an email back; and the other I sent some correspondence back on things and am waiting. Sorry to be vague, but have to take care of my bizness, no?

They are print mags.

My big-ass book/collection is out to a contest and then a publisher is reading it now and deciding. I got great feedback from a publisher and it seems maybe close, but we will see. Again, vague. Sorry…

Getting a book published seems like a long, uncertain journey, through sour taffy dropped in sand maybe.

*

Ander Monson sent me this link. I really do like it. I mean it’s funny, and you know most links people send are never really so funny. Tnen you have to reconsider the people who sent the link. Then again Ander is actually smart and funny (read his book/books!), so it’s a credibility link-send thing.

*

Speaking of running, I have decided on my next marathon: THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE MARATHON

Wow, all military and shit. This should be weird. They do a flyover and a USAF captain places the metal over your neck, if you finish. I hope he doesn’t recruit or try to kiss me, too, but whatever. I don’t know…Main reason I’m running it is because it’s 1.5 hours away and I am only running unique marathons now. No repeats. I am too old for repeats. I want a fresh experience EVERY time.

I am dying…we all are dying….butterflies…

I am way out of shape and usually in pain, so need to crank it back up. Don’t mess with the marathon fool! Today I did Fartlek. I did:

6 min mile X 3min        6 min mile X 3min        6 min mile X 3min

6 min mile X 3min        6 min mile X 3min        6 min mile X 3min

5:56 mile.

No biggie, but a good start to getting into shape…

*

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Fuck you, Jerry Falwell! You see my friends got my back!

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The New Dos Equis Ads are Actually Charles Bukowski.

June 19, 2009 · 6 Comments

The new Dos Equis Ads are actually Charles Bukowski. Weird.

Image 1:

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The most interesting man in the world?

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Or simply a drunk postal worker/poet?

See…

*

8 Count

from my bed
I watch
3 birds
on a telephone
wire.
one flies
off.
then
another.
one is left,
then
it too
is gone.
my typewriter is
tombstone
still.
and I am
reduced to bird
watching.
just thought I’d
let you
know,
fucker.

*

S

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Lydia Copeland in the Wigleaf Top 50 House!!

June 18, 2009 · 2 Comments

The Sway of Trains in Wigleaf Top 50.

“In the bed at night…” Night thoughts. When we review the day, the days, our days–when we are alone, existentially alone, as in no one on the earth can think my night thoughts, but me. That blue space, sidled up and unscrolling. Interstitial. Something about night thoughts, some enriched air of the mind, maybe because we are finally, finally silent? And isn’t sleep a taste, a sample of death? So before we enter the arms of Morpheus, maybe these thoughts as best, as authentic, as actually crackling real.

“In the bed at night…”

A flash of tone and mood. The author seems to feel what we feel here, the serious carefulness of each word (reminds me of “Night” by Brett Lott, a haunting story, but always cold, hushed, quiet…). Copeland’s work here whispers along, “moving,” “looking,” “…through the long hollow.”

Form=Function. A text of reflection, and what is reflection? What are thoughts, that moment. Floating. Drifting. Synapses crackling, a quiet sizzle. An echo. A wave off a wave. A spin and angle. Reflection. Thought and mirror, mirror and thought…

What amazes me here are the transitions. “Bed at night” to “conversations” to “in the living rooms” to “the bay and the ducks” to a bed, an intimacy, and “Your hands fold under my pillow.”

This piece actually flows, spirals and eddies, like thought, consciousness, a tributary to tributary to the cognitive sea.

And what moves me in this flash fiction (and many others) are the spaces. I get to fill them in. Here we get the form of thought, the brush strokes of juxtaposition, the way our mind “works,” the way we, as reader, are allowed to work. That’s what I want from flash (and from poetry), to add my thoughts to the spaces, to read off the page, to join the writer in rounding out the form.

People who don’t “get” flash make one of their errors here. They see the short story form as more complete. Maybe. But some readers desire the undone, the stitch, the dim and clear/clear and dim flickering, the starlit, the stars, all the space/spaces in-between.

I believe there is a war against the imagination. Flash fights for the good guys. It says, “Add your part to the page, actively.”

It says Join.

Copeland gives us tone and mood. Objects and image. But for story, there is one, many–like a painting, or the shape of a certain cloud–and then the one you name, and write yourself.

*

worlds_largest_nachos

I had a dream last night….

S

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How Artie Lange Relates to Literary Magazines…

June 17, 2009 · 2 Comments

Anyone see comedian Artie Lange takeover and destroy broadcaster Joe Buck’s new HBO show a few days ago? Joe Buck seemed to have forgotten that HBO is LIVE and CABLE. Artie went exponential Artie, and Buck suddenly looked like someone over their skis, and naked.

Here

Here

Some video here (HBO, Buck’s lawyers removed the earlier material from the web, but here is a bit still online, and very Artie Lange, as in purposely offensive)

slapclap_artie-lange

Artie, kicking it…

Afterward, Job Buck acts all disingenuous, all self-righteous, claiming Artie wrecked his opening show, blah, blah, as if he didn’t know Artie Lange’s humor, that Artie is a PERSONA, dumb-ass, a heroin addict homophobic fat guy drunk, another in the long line of “slob as out-sized outsider” comedians [fill in obese comedian who uses their image as material here].

[Fill in the ones who bought so much into their image they couldn't separate id and ego/superego, and died young here]

And HBO sports executive Ross Greenburg is clearly full of shit. He says:

“Frankly, we were stunned.”

And

“I think most people realized we were blindsided.”

Right…LISTEN:

Artie has made millions (and lost millions) being Artie. And if you book him on your HBO show, he will arrive as Artie. Just like Marilyn Manson will arrive in his persona (vampire/Goth/whatever) and David Letterman will arrive in his (Ah shucks, I’m just a Midwestern middle American, d-uh) and on and on.

Both will arrive via limo, BTW…

And so–assuming Buck isn’t playing me right now, and wasn’t in on the whole thing–how does Joe Buck’s awkwardness during Artie’s rants, then sad and phony “shock” afterward at Artie’s behavior relate to lit mags?

Good question.

One of the last class sessions of every semester I hold a “How to Get published” class. This is an opportunity for the students to gain some insights I’ve gleamed from years of this funny, funny world of publishing. I have many tips, and naturally, the best thing to do is revise/revise/revise and have a quality piece of writing, but there are also other things.

DSC00929

Persona Dennis Rodman kicking it in my office…

My number one tip: KNOW YOUR MAGAZINE.

If you are going to “book” a magazine for your show (submission), then know something about the magazine. If you don’t you are going to get rejected, rightly so, like when Artie Lange looks right at Joe Buck and says, “Your show sucks. You should have stuck to broadcasting.”

Read the magazine. Several issues. Visit the magazine’s website. Look at the authors in the magazine. Read the contributor notes. Read every piece in the magazine. If you don’t like the magazine’s content, why in the hell are you sending your work there? Look at the language, structure, themes, tone. Look at the cover. The spine. Does the paper smell good? Sniff the magazine. (Online–just press your nose to the screen)

Is this excellent magazine like this excellent magazine??

Uh, no.

When I worked at Black Warrior Review, we would get thousands of poems. All types and shapes and skiing with brothers. So maybe one day a packet of Christian poetry arrives, rhyming evangelical work….

Is there anything wrong with that work? No. Plenty of magazines out there would adore and publish the poems.

NOT BWR!!

Obviously, the poet had not even read our magazine. That’s an insult to itself.

A few years back, writers would have to subscribe to every lit mag, or find them in the library. Not all writers had the cash to do this, or if they had the cash, they spent it on weed or veggie corn dogs or palm readers or golden dragon charms or loutish crowd activities, etc. . No worries now. Almost any magazine (and obviously online ones) have a web presence, with excerpts, with opportunities and images and words to get to know the magazine.

BTW, you should subscribe now to what you can afford. If you don’t support lit mags, as a writer, who will?

Artie Lange?

Artie_68715

Uh, no.

On the same subject, Kyle Minor told a funny story a while back. He was visiting BSU, and we had him meet with some students and one of them asked, “How do I get published?”

Kyle told the students about the years he spent sending stories in and all his rejections, the usual writer/rejection path of badness/goodness. But then he told a hilarious story about editors not only rejecting him with the usual canned form letters, but then adding in handwriting “Never send here again” or “This story is so bad, you should quit writing.”

I have no idea if Kyle was using hyperbole, but it was a funny story.

The point of the story was that one year Kyle broke through; he started publishing. Consistently. Why? Well, obviously, after years of honing his craft, he was a better writer.

But he said this: “I started putting conflict in the first sentence, on the first page. That was the difference.”

If you read Any Kyle Minor, you will know this is true. His stories start hot, then turn up the heat. And you should also know most editors read your FIRST PAGE, then nothing more (I don’t blame them. They have, uh, lives, and more submissions than you would know.)….unless you give them a reason to read more, as in conflict.

Throw a fit.

Arrive late.

Dress in black…

Blow something up.

hellmuth

Persona Phil Hellmuth kicking it in my office…

S


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I decided I needed some brie.

June 15, 2009 · 2 Comments

I decided I needed some brie. I thought, “Brie. I need Brie.” I knew my life would change with brie. Almost all women with the name of Brie are attractive, and also many of your better writer parties (wooden floors, secretive cats, cool eyeglasses, cheesy dude with ponytail [throat-clearing sound here] all that) serve Brie. Brie would elevate and sparkle like suitcases unpacked late at evening, or maybe marigolds made of butter. Like that. Very Brie.

One time at writer party my friend got on his vintage bike and then we built a ramp (seemed like good idea at time) in the street then we lit the ramp afire with quality vodka and then another guy sprawled out below the ramp and my friend jumped over him on the vintage bike and I think maybe broke the bike but the memory appears here and now as whole.

Question: Why did my brie have so many layers of packaging?

DSC00926

1.) Package, cardboard. Colors less vibrant than I expected. My mind kept going, “Jello” while thinking, “Brie.” Like two things at once. If you grab a very hot plate, your mind will go, “Drop the plate!” and at the same time, “Don’t drop the plate! The plate will break.” Two thoughts simultaneously. Like that.

At Mexican places they always go, “Hot plate! Hot plate!” Like I am an idiot or a lawyer (but I repeat myself there).

In disc golf putting, they say, “Have a positive thought as you putt. That way no negative thought could get in.” I told my friend this and he said, “That’s bullshit. Only dumb people can’t have more than one thought at once. Most other people do it all the time. That’s why we are all neurotic.”

Hmmm…

2.) Remember back when we were all crazy and supposed to hate French people? It was like our government was saying, “People of the states. Like this. Hate that.” I never got that one. Then in one of those wars Turkey didn’t let us use the Northern front, and no one said, “No turkey this thanksgiving!”

20030320-freedom-fries

And I love French Fries.

Sometimes people go, “Sean, when’s the last time you ate a vegetable? And I say, ‘Fries this afternoon, about four.’”

* McDonald’s has best fries, but I boycott McDonald’s. Have not eaten there for over a decade (since I did research on an article about their food practices for a small magazine in Tuscaloosa, AL).

* Burger King fries suck and taste like grease.

* Wendy’s fries OK if minutes fresh. Company adds too many fragments and also doesn’t mind serving blackened, stubby fries.

* Backyard Burger has best fries (also rings) I can ethically eat. They also have black bean burger. All you fast food places that will not serve black bean burgers, I hope you fall into a Volkswagen, or at least a malaise of the soul.

FriesRings

3.) Then a big-ass can for the brie, like a cat food can, or tuna. Weird. This is some serious-ass cheese. This can could handle bomb damage, or like your dad mentioning he likes your shirt. Like that.

4.) Then a crinkly, waxy foil-like covering. You could free-base on this foil, but I wouldn’t.

5.) Brie is a soft cow cheese. What is a soft cow? If I was a cow, that would insult me.

Hey man! You calling me soft? How about I get these horns and go exponential on your ass, city boy!!

(Big cow roar here. Hooves and dust, all that.)

6.) Then the skin. Can you eat the skin? Yes, you can. In fact, if you don’t, some people will think you unsophisticated, if you care. You don’t, right? Whew.

Cool thing is French people will describe a cheese as “moldy” and mean it as a compliment.

sheep

BTW, my brie tasted like sponge, with a hint of ammonia. I’m not sure it will change my life, so might move to Alaska, like that Carver story, or the idea that moving around externally will change your internal reality, as if you can escape you, and where to?

Must go teach my summer class now.

S

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