Click images for desktop size: "My Asylum" by KarincomaThe past couple of days I've been haunted by some images. Odd because they are not at all personal imagery, but I suppose the feelings they bring up are personal. We like to think those feelings we have are always personal and unique. It's what keeps Hollywood rich and I've no problem with that.
One thing that needs to be understood is how much I dislike the Pet Shop Boys. Not personally, but as concept - mass marketed artiste's who make dance music and claim to be avant garde make me bilious. It lacks even the humor potential of Britney Spear's cover of “I Love Rock 'N Roll”.
It may have been the Millennium Celebration, I'm sure it was New Years. I had to go to some show or other and the Pet Shop Boys were one of the acts. When I walked in it was to a most amazing sight.
The stage was lit in bright but neutral lights. Stage right was filled with risers. On the risers was the Welch Miners Men's Choir. They were dressed in rough work clothes - yellow canvas jackets, filthy canvas jeans and beaten, dusty red helmets. A couple carried picks. A couple more had shovels.
The Pet Shop Boys were dressed in a techno (?) version of Welsh miners gear. They wore black slacks, tuxedo shirts and shiny bright plastic yellow jackets and shiny red miner's helmets.
They were singing the old Village People's gay anthem, “Go West”. It took me a moment to relate that Wales was the far west if you were in London.
While the lead singer stood their or pranced the fifty burly men in the choir stood stock still and sang their lines in deep ultra macho pleasantly profondo voices.
At the time their were a lot of headlines about Welsh Independence. Maybe that was the gravitas they were looking for, I've no clue.
What stuck with me was the similarity of the faces of the men in the choir and the faces of the Virginia coal miners, the men who live under ground scrabbling to provide for their families, the men of Matawan and the men we never think about until there's a mine cave in and a dozen of them die.
All in all it had a power for me that has always stayed with me. A power that pop music has always had but seldom uses.

Then there's the movie that keeps rolling around in my head. Its a Korean flic, “You Are My Sunshine”.
Its one of those films that is clearly inspired by Douglas Sirk and a movie that would have caused Ranier Werner Fassbinder to go apolectic in delight. Its about emotions.
A naive but aggressive farmer is looking for a wife. He takes a tour to IndoChina to go to a wife shopping mart! He doesn't find anyone he likes and creates a scene because he wants his money back from the tour operators. In the one man brawl he is thrown into a pretty skinny girl.
She works at a coffee shop. She delivers coffee. This type of girl is generally considered a sort of light weight prostitute.
He sees her and is attracted. He rents a hotel room and has her deliver coffee. They have sex and from that moment he is desperately in love.

Click images for desktop size: "Deskpad" by ResExcellenceShe is not really interested. She just thought he as fun for the moment. But he pursues her.
We find out that she has moved to this bucolic community to escape from her pimp/husband. She used to be a street walker in Seoul for many years. She escaped. She's sees our farm hand's attempts at wooing her as just another trap.
His love for her gets so tragic that he withdraws all the money he has been saving for years to buy his own farm and a fine cow. He offers it to her so she can stop working as a delivery girl. There are no strings. He just can't bear the idea of her sleeping with other men.
He has figured out meticulously, with pencil and paper how much she must earn as a hooker.
She throws the money up in the air and storms away insulted.
Eventually he wears her down. She dates him. He may seem a big oaf but she begins to see his humanity and she falls in love with him.
Despite the serious objections of his family (His mother spends her time at the Engagement party telling every one, “She worked in the coffee shop but she hardly ever made any deliveries!) the two of them marry.
Their married life is idyllic. They buy a farm and a cow. They see a future.
Until the doctor calls him in and tells him that a recent blood test shows that his wife has HIV. He does not.
While he is finding it his wife is being raped by her ex-pimp who has finally tracked her down.
After the graphic (but not hardcore) sex he tracks down the husband and promises to go away if he pays him off.
He sells his cow to rid his life of the pimp. Of course the pimp keeps making secret rendezvous with her and keeps making abusive threats until she runs away from the farmer and her pimp.
She goes back to Seoul and begins again working as a prostitute. Her reason is to earn back the money to repay her husband for the cow he sold to protect her.
While his family is pleased that she ran off the farmer is lost and devastated. he searches for her every day in every place his limited imagination would lead him.
He tracks her down when she sends him a money order to buy a new cow. He rushes to Seoul and finds her in a way he did not imagine.
She is picked up in a vice sweep to empower a new law. She is tested and discovered to have HIV.
Under the new law sex workers who have the disease are considered criminal and face up to 15 years in prison.
As the first sex worker charged under the law she is all over the TV news and papers.
He rushes to the police but she refuses to see him. Outside he confronts her pimp who admits to him that he was the one who turned her in as revenge for deserting him. The farmer knocks him down.
There is a messy court trial where the bumbling husband defends her but illogically. It is proven that she did not know she had Aids but the Judge gives her 3 years as a warning to others.
He goes back to his farm. She goes to prison.
In prison she dreams of the soft romantic times they had together. He works but every week he comes to town and waits to visit her. She refuses to see him.
He attempts suicide by eating lye. He still makes it to town on visiting day.
Finally her release date nears. This time she agrees to see him. He is ecstatic.
Sitting there behind the plexiglass she is brutal and tells him that she plans to shape her life without him. It is time for him to go away and find someone else. She is tired of his dogged devotion.
She rises to leave, escorted by a thick set guard.
Then, I told you all of that so you might understand what happens next.
As she turns he pounds furiously at the plexiglass and starts screaming her name. Over and over he screams, I love you!
She and the guard both watch stunned as he gets on the ledge and tears apart the ventilation screen, making a hole just large enough to get his arm through.
She breaks down. She pulls away from the guard and rushes and grabs his hand, crying, sobbing, I love you.
And the guards on both sides of the plexiglass try and pull them apart, pull them away but they keep holding hands.

They call both those sort of moments, the music and the movie a frission, a time that thrills become personal, when the excitement comes from inside and out. Better than an epiphany.

My puppy continues to please me. She makes each day a day of hope and fun . . . whether I want fun or not!
My health stays the same. My eyes are bothering me but I went and ordered some cheap glasses while I wait for an opthamologist appointment.
Some odd but good news is that they tried a drug on me gluco something, that they felt more secure with than me injecting myself with insulin. It seems that the trial chemo I'm on had been used with this gluco thing but there was no record of it being used with insulin.
The good news is that the new drug has made me hypoglycemic!! They say it is good because it means that everything is working and that the hypoglycemia will soon measure out and settle down.
You have to be impressed with what doctors consider good news.

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