Chasing the Manatee: Abbi Hendrix in Belize

image information

	+Seanie Blue
Status	General artist
Title	Chasing the Manatee: Abbi Hendrix in Belize
Category	none / none / none / none / none / Photography / Miscellaneous / People / Portrait
Gallery	Abbi Hendrix, Unhappy Assassin
Created	February 29, 2008 at 00:00
Published	March 4, 2008 at 07:03
Art Limited verified	Yes
Seen by members	70 times
Seen by visitors	1012 times
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Comment	Abbi calls and says she wants to talk. Or, rather, she has something to say and she wants me to listen. Has me listening to you ever done you any good, I ask Abbi, and she laughs. I am a sort of professor emeritus of failure to her, full of ruined ambitions and broken intentions, and she calls me at odd hours whenever she needs to hear a question. I learned my lesson walking the canals in Bruges, when she had a problem and I was full of advice, and she suddenly snapped at me: “Don’t try to solve my problems, Blue! Just listen to me. I don’t want you to fix anything, I just need you to hear what I am saying. Don’t be such a man!” So I shut up and listened and learned lesson number 2: “And don’t just listen. Be interested. Be really interested. I have a problem and I’m going to fix it myself if somebody just listens to me long enough.” So now she wants me to fly to Managua. If I need money, she’ll hire me to shoot, or to write a few paragraphs: “What was it you said that I said? That when I am president of the Amazon I will declare peace, and when I declare peace I will enforce it ruthlessly? Just come down to the volcanoes and write me a paragraph and I’ll give you fifty bucks a word, okay?” Can I ask you a question, I say. Where’s the fishing boat? “I sank it. And it wasn’t a fishing boat. It was for the manatees, and you know it. But I’ve been having dreams about being an assassin ever since I scuttled the boat, and this is a weird assassin, forget your oil executive victims, this is an assassin who makes mistakes.” And when she says the word “mistakes” I hear it as if she is speaking in italics. And almost instantly I think how perfect an assassin who makes mistakes would be for the lead character of a TV series I am trying to pitch to Hollywood. (Rather, that I am trying to roll like lit ammo into the backdoors of Studio City.) The series is called “The Clone,” but this is another story. Abbi Hendrix groans: “You’re plotting something, I can hear it.” “Dude, you’re on the phone in Nicaragua, how do you know?” “I am not in Nicaragua, I just want you to meet me there. Don’t you ever listen?” “Why are you calling me if I don’t listen?” “Ha ha Blue very funny, but you won’t trap me with geometry. Just tell me you’ll be in Managua next time I have this dream about making a mistake.” “Send me a ticket and I’ll think about it.” “You think this is two thousand and three,” she laughs, “There are no tickets! Just kilobytes. Stop acting the romantic.” “I’m romantic because I liked 2003?” “No Blue coz you are hopelessly addicted to impossible situations and when you work with me everyone gets to see how badly you missed what you thought you were going to get.” There she goes quoting me again. I laugh and hang up. And when the phone rings I go outside where it is 22 degrees and walk timidly over the ice like I am 80 years old, soles smoothed to glass, ready to slip like a chopped down tree. It’s hot down there among the volcanoes, I must admit.
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