Love is a Bomb Dropped into the Fictions of My Life
One of my characters today stalked an oil executive into the stairwell of his headquarters and pulled out a gun and completely missed his first shot. My character and the oil executive looked at each other in stunned surprise, with my character thinking, Ow my shoulder, and the executive thinking, Damn he’s serious.
And the same character today set the bathroom of a restaurant on Canal Street on fire. As he walks out he tells the owner that maybe he should take the shark’s fin soup off the menu.
And in between these chores, my character took out his camera to catch a flock of infected birds swooping into the sunset, but the air was too thick with particulates, too smudged by profit, so I settle for this purple export, of tendrils seeking to be plucked.
My character tells me to write you and say the story ends with you and him hanging onto dear life on an island with an outdoor toilet and unlimited coconut trees, with the whole world searching for the killer of 37 oil executives who gets away with it. Not the foolish shit from Hollywood, where every immorality gets punished. Thelma and Louise can only die in Hollywood.
And in the lobby of the Philadelphia airport, when we see each other for the first time in years, you feel the same impulse to be bitten that you felt the last time we took off for disaster. Remember? Me, circling you like a shark, and you, ready to slit a vein if it meant I would fall into your dreams?
My character implores me to remind you of the flowers we picked in Andalucia, how we marveled at their structures and slept among their broken petals, pretzeled together into a present tense we believed would echo in every version of the future I could ever describe.
But even a killer gets lonely, and my characters point at the business part of this flower and remind me of all my endings: the hero gets away with everything by extracting thorns from everybody’s paws, and this purple flower pregnant with desire reminds me of the Philadelphia airport, where my teeth met your skin, when your dreams trapped me in a world I will never get out of alive.
The nectars my characters taste, the sweets of the future, are tinged with toxins filtered from the air exhaled by stockbrokers and financial analysts, and this pretty purple export is a harbinger for your new dreams, where you will kill me before you let me go, even if you swear by the rules of love, even if you say you understand the art of love is often the act of denying your desire.
The reason for this note, Ananda, is my nervous character, the executive-killer: Bombs fall in his life, and my character is just realizing that I am not the person dropping them. My character wishes you to know that in this picture there is no corporate poison, no spice of fossil profits, and I wish you to believe this, even if we both know it isn’t true.
23 responses
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Alexis Gerard gave props (31 May 2008):
The only way I can do justice to this image is by saying it's as good as the writing that goes with it. The only way I can do justice to the writing that goes with the image is to say it's as good as the image.
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Laura Boston-Thek gave props (1 Jun 2008):
...wow, I feel like I have been ease dropping...like I found a precious love note, I knew I should not turn my eyes to but curisoity got the better of me...so many of your words make a lasting visual imprint in my mind...what a gift you give with your words and images....I feel honored to have been given two this morning.
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Walburgis Meijers gave props (1 Jun 2008):
amazing macro abstract
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Vicenç !!! gave props (1 Jun 2008):
Espectacular!!!!
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John Linton gave props (1 Jun 2008):
Ah, Andalucía...What a trip that was.
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j dixon gave props (1 Jun 2008):
you always give us more than photo- a whole picture, everytime. Beautiful.
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Nelson Campbell gave props (1 Jun 2008):
bliss...
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adniloj added a link (3 Jun 2008):
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seanie blue said (3 Jun 2008):
I rarely add comments to my own shots, and prefer to respond privately and directly to people who write here, as many of you know, but Jolinda's post stabs a deep nerve. Senator Harry Truman took Exxon to court because the company insisted on supplying the Nazis with gasoline in WWII. The day before Truman was to charge Exxon with treason, the company gave in, and one of the lasting images of the war's end was Rommel's tanks being pulled thru the desert by camels. The Nazis ran out of gas, and the war ended. Remember also that Exxon does not invest a single dollar in any non-fossil fuel research. Nada. Zilch. Zero. If any global organisation can be accused of an evil profile, this company is the one. And it is the richest, most profitable entity in the world. Their plan is to extract every last ounce of flammable moisture from beneath Mother Nature's skin, and they're lauging all the way to the bank as they do it. Buy BP. They invest directly in solar energy. They're an awful company, too, but they have become perhaps by accident one of the leading players in photovoltaic technology. I have not spent a penny on Exxon since they began fighting the court rulings over their spills in Alaska. They are public enemy numero uno. (Let me get off the soapbox now.)
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Magnus Lundquist said (4 Jun 2008):
This a a great photo! Great colors and perfect focus point!
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Audrey Kanekoa-Madrid gave props (5 Jun 2008):
Stunning image!
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judy fouse gave props (12 Jun 2008):
Strange to hear you speak so directly about a subject. I hear the fire in your gut. And I can't agree more. Not too much gets me upset in this world. But gas companies do. I think we all fantasize about what we would like to do to those monsters who hold the world hostage. My heart goes out to all those families, already struggling to survive, who are being undermined by these thoughtless, heartless entities. It is like, if you go outside and listen closely, you can hear America crying.
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Sherry Davis Johnson gave props (1 Jul 2008):
I’ve spent the last decade on my soapbox cajoling friends not to fall victim to the American car companies orchestrated fossil fuel dependence with the mass introduction of the SUV! But we’ve put petroleum into every part of our lives. Polycarbonate resins dominate households in TVs, VCRs and the computer you use to upload your photos!
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Ray Kenn gave props (13 Jul 2008):
Love the color.
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Kiwi ana gave props (24 Jul 2008):
Ahhh Seanie, You never cease to post the most technically wonderful photos and then pull the most amazing comments both as entertaining. This pregnant purple is poetic, this discussion of fossil fuel usage deep and necessary though unpleasant thought. Then comments like Ray's and John Linton's just make me guffaw!
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Elyseo Nagel said (26 Nov 2008):
questa foto mi fà sentire come se dei pezzeti del mio animo siano sparati in un grande universo e si sentono smarriti, ma cio che li circonda è una realtà luminosa e piena di colore!
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Abhishek Majumder gave props (13 Dec 2008):
love this colour.excellent captute.
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Teresa gave props (28 Dec 2008):
SO beautiful.
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Rob Case gave props (16 Jan 2009):
Absolutely beautiful photograph....I'm speechless
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Christina Atik gave props (12 Feb 2009):
your photos are so expressive...i love the color in this one :) fantastic job
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Kel Casey gave props (5 Apr 2009):
Wowie. A whole new meaning to macro.
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k. pasa? k. pasa? gave props (20 Sep 2009):
:) you are the greatest.
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adniloj gave props (13 Oct 2009):
btw, this is a really cool photo Seanie :-)
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