seanieblue's photostream

Szilagi sees the footage and the pictures and is asked to provide a review for Tower Records of Blue's work with Abbi Hendrix. He sweats his response and gives it to a publicist in the shadows of October on Pennsylvania Avenue. There is only one thing to say about this, he says: it is "beautifully sad." He won't say anything else because he doesn't think anything else needs to be said.

That was three years ago, and the footage and the pictures bloomed briefly in a collector's box called "The Burn & the Scar," but more or less disappeared as Abbi and Blue went their separate ways, into futures fractured by their collaboration about love and pain. And a week ago, on a lonely Saturday night on Skype, Blue says he has plans to go to Budapest and drive into the Tatra Mountains, and Abbi says she and Blue have something to finish, something she couldn't understand when she was in the middle of its creation, but which now reflects the weight in her heart. She's a different person now, and Blue's words and intentions have a different depth, even if the spellings and syllables remain the same. "I'll never be ready for you, Blue, but I am ready for me."

A single gallery of images shot in a shack on Caye Caulker, in Belize, are out of Blue's closet for the first time. The images are intimate and harsh, without make-up or mark-up, and they feature a handmade dress from Hollywood and a handmade necklace from the Congo. Blue brought the combination from California and Uganda thinking there would be one moment when they would combine perfectly with the light and the mood to make images worth keeping. They can be seen at Blue's website until he returns from Slovakia, if he ends up going . . .

www.seanieblue.com/abbi-hendrix/

(. . . and perhaps it should go without saying, but there is some nudity in this gallery of pictures, so please don't visit if you are sensually challenged!)

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She wants a poem I wrote before I left. She wants to learn it by syllable. Pronounce it by heart, she says.

Her pose is a body poetic, as a rhyme is language posing. You should see her jump. She has shock absorbers made of instinct, a fuel pump between her belly and heart. Her father is sturdy, a provider, a wolf who hunts every day and knows every pebble on the surrounding bluffs. Her mother is an eagle, searching for dazzle and freedom, and Maya is crossed by both, a target for anyone susceptible to wounds during their searches for feeling. She has a fortune cookie she keeps in her wallet: When a dreamer comes, you must offer to help him to see, if he promises to help you to feel. She shows me her fortune and says there are many cookies in the world but this is the only one that has her name written on it. We shake hands when we meet, solemn, like bankers, There is a limit to what we can do, because I am running out of time. She sneers politely and points out how language has hidden structures: She has time to do what we need, because she is running out of limits. We shake hands, solemnly. One of us is free, the other bound. But the magnetic poles are slowly switching places. North will be south, soon. In her lifetime. There is a chance when I am dead that she will remember me as a wind on her skin, and she will think, "a self always survives."

The Scientist smiles and walks into his study. He stands before a telescope and seems reluctant to touch it. Gently, he pulls the cap off the eyepiece, but then simply stares at the eyepiece and does not get close enough to look through it. A clock is ticking loudly. He replaces the eyepiece and looks out the window. In his car driving to the fishing club, he will lean forward until his face is almost against the windshield as he looks at the sky. When he stops to urinate, he also looks at the sky.

CUT TO:
Scene 8. Interior. Thing

Four farmers sit at a long table with the scientist. They are inside the Thing, the meeting house of the municipality. The farmers sit according to their orietantation: the farmer from the north, Julius, sits at the north, etc.

Farmer Julius
We need your help, Sir.

Farmer WEST
Only you can help us. I am sure of this.

SCIENTIST
How long have you men known me? (Pause) I am always ready to help. You know this.

Farmer JULIUS
This is not about a lost sheep or a broken axle.

Farmer WEST
We need you to save the future. You can do something we cannot. You have no future, no crops coming, but you have your legs. And you are good with a gun, we have seen this for years. We need you to run a mission.

Farmer EAST
Oh come on. This isn’t Vietnam on TV. Just say it. Or I will.

SCIENTIST
Is this about the tractors? You’re going to tell me you have no yen to pay for them. Or no dollars? And you want me to rob a bank because I’m dying soon?

(Long pause.)

Farmer JULIUS
Do you think we are meeting here as a joke?

SCIENTIST
I’m sorry. Go on. I will help as I can.

Farmer SOUTH
I told you he would be diplomatic. Did I not say it? Ah, he will help as he “can”! Let’s send him home and let him expire in peace. (To the Scientist . . . ) What the hell do you mean, if you can. You have no choice!

Farmer JULIUS
Sit down and shut up. We’re not Polish. Sit down and shut up. I will tell him politely what to do.

Farmer South sits down, a look of disgust on his face. The Scientist stares silently at the men; he has never seen them so irritated.

Farmer JULIUS
I am terribly sorry, Sir, that we have not asked about your prostate. Are you in pain?

CUT TO:
Scene 9. Interior. Living room

Anna is sitting on the sofa, a book in her lap. Lights reflect in the window as her husband arrives home. She sits back and sighs, as if she has something difficult to say to him, and dreads his entrance into the living room. She puts on her glasses and pretends to read as he walks in. But she is surprised when she sees him, because he walks in holding a rifle by its barrel. He lifts the gun in the doorway and shows it in the faint light of her reading lamp.

ANNA
They want you to shoot more foxes?

SCIENTIST
No, they want me to shoot Westhamson, the car importer, because he is in town for a few days from the Canaries.

ANNA
Your uncle?

SCIENTIST
They’ve already talked to my aunt, and she has given her blessings and wants me to visit her before I see him.

ANNA
Do you mean, shoot, as in murder?

SCIENTIST
Yes. Cold blood. One of the farmers has had a vision, and claims I will get away without detection, and that my remaining days will be peaceful and pain-free.

ANNA
That guy would have been burned to a crisp down on the beach just a generation ago for his visions. But what do you think?

SCIENTIST
I have no choice, really.

ANNA
They’re not blackmailing you because of me or because of your mother, right?

SCIENTIST
No, no. I don’t care who knows my secrets. They are worse than pride, I have no strength to carry them any more.

ANNA
You know I will help you however I can. I’ll drive the getaway car, give you a blowjob, pretend to be my sister . . . I will pull the trigger, even, if you make sure I am on your life insurance policy, please.

SCIENTIST
You are my beneficiary. Don’t worry about that. I can’t use your help, Anna. If I could, I would ask for it. You’ve been the best partner any living creature could ask for, and what I feel for you is beyond love, really. It’s a sort of religion. I will try to find the insurance papers.

ANNA
When will you see your uncle?

SCIENTIST
The day after tomorrow perhaps. He’s not really my uncle, so let’s not call him that.

ANNA
Will you tell George?

SCIENTIST
No, George hates his father and he would want to be involved if there’s a plot. And if George is involved there is a possibility of a screw-up. And Westhamson will be very suspicious if his son suddenly wants to see him. It will just be me.

ANNA
Let me call Westhamson and tell him I am coming, too, so he will be sure to make the time for us, alone, without secretaries.

SCIENTIST
Okay, that’s a good idea. Tell him you’re coming from the spa. But sleep tight, I want to work a little bit.

CUT TO:
Scene 10. Interior. Study

The Scientist sits in his study. He is looking at his telescope in the foreground. The instrument seems to glow, as if reflecting some astronomical disturbance in the sky outside the study’s large window. A clock is ticking loudly.

A night in early winter with Roy Lichtenstein's "Brushstroke" looming in front of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden.

Orion and Sirius constellations glitter in a rare clear sky over the Watergate in Washington, DC. The buildings are under perpetual renovation, and there is a unmistakable sensation of petty vandalism to the place as you walk around at night. Entire sections hve been abandoned; the hotel is silent, the restaurant boarded up, curtains in the window torn and tumbling. This was shot on a nikkor 10.5mm fisheye.