good day

useless things: crochet k-drama crochet k-drama

Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash

“Sometimes when this place gets kind of empty
Sound of their breath fades with the light
I think about the loveless fascination
Under the Milky Way tonight…”

— “Under the Milky Way,” The Church

Thursday was a good day. I stopped coughing. I only had one thing to do (clean C-PAP). I sat on my bed watching a k-drama and some Buddhist/Tao YouTube videos, while crocheting a new “Sunshine Saxon Cable” scarf from Bonnie Bay Crochet.

It only took me about five cables before I figured out the pattern to repeat on my own. The last one, her “Sapphire Cable” scarf, took me more than halfway through, but then I hadn’t picked up a crochet needle in over a year.

Once I start, I can’t put my project down. The world and all its troubles just fade away. If my neck, hands, and legs could hold out forever, I’d never stop.

I love the feel of the different colored yarn in my hands as they unravel and tangle, purposefully, according to someone else’s elaborate design. Both cable designs are intermediate to advanced level, so pat pat pat myself on the back.

As the day lazily progressed, I saw sunlight hitting my yellow yarn on my blue bed, and felt … peaceful. That’s so rare.

I may not show it, but there’s a wolf inside, constantly on red alert, ready to send me into battle, to inevitable chaos and stress, loss and emptiness … destitution, from whence I came. I fought valiantly to stave off my destiny — most of ours really, if we’re being honest — for most of my young life, working two-three part-time jobs, volunteering for experience to get a full-time job, all while studying for a BA at the University of Hawaii.

I had my life mapped out so I would never face homelessness.

Somewhere along the way, I stumbled and fell, and then just plain gave up. I let the more capable adults take over, while I regressed to a pitiful, disabled child.

That’s where I am now.

A friend I knew back in WA, I know, thinks I have it better than her. Maybe not better, just different. I can feel her jealousy and envy and resentment and profound misunderstanding sometimes, and it makes me want to laugh or cry, or throw things.

So, for those who think I have it made, that I’m privileged, surprise! We all have our shit. I just know how to take shortcuts and coast along.

As I crocheted, a thought recurred: what am I doing this for when the person who will receive this gift will die anyway and leave a tattered piece of nothing behind to rot in a landfill? Her children will give my precious scarf away to Goodwill, leave it behind for the movers. If they don’t, they’ll die too one day.

The scarves I crocheted are beautiful. My hands, thoughts, and good wishes are woven into those scarves. I hope whoever receives it will wear a piece of me around her neck during the long, cold winters, long after I’m gone.

The wolf is creeping at the door again. My husband isn’t feeling well. He sees a doctor on Wed. after experiencing mild pain below his sternum for weeks, and now in his lower left abdomen. He’s a cancer survivor. Cancer survivors always live on the edge, because that monster can always come back.

He was suffering from pain, fear, anxiety, and despair on the same day I felt free, happy, and peaceful. That’s life, man. Good with the bad…

Every time he goes through a health issue, I go downhill with him, waiting for the day he calls for me in a panic and I see the light go out of his eyes as he collapses in my arms, again.

It’s why I crochet and watch k-dramas. To pretend we’re fine when we’re not.

Inevitably, thoughts go to my own remaining years.

I’m tired of looking for a way out. There is none.

I hope I die within five years. Five years. I think 65 is long enough. I can plan all the things I want to do until then, and pray I die without becoming a burden to anyone I care about, or outlive my welcome.

I’ve alienated so many people who could’ve taken me in. Moved away from family when I’ve very little family to speak of. I have no one, save my husband and our son, who has his whole life to live.

I wished I could’ve kept up the grown-up act for a bit longer. I had so many plans that went up in smoke. We were going to live in that big house in the woods and leave it with our son…

I’d rather die alone in a ditch somewhere than linger like unwanted trash.

Or here on this bed, crocheting another cable scarf for no one…

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K-drama: ‘Love and Leashes’ and the Jun Effect

Image from MyDramaList

I didn’t really notice Lee Jun-young until the teasers popped up on my YouTube feed for the 2022 movie, Netflix’s “Love and Leashes,” adapted from a popular webtoon called, “Moral Sense” about a BDSM office couple.

BDSM stands for Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, Sadism and Masochism, and it’s done tastefully, almost romantically, in this Netflix movie. It really brought out Jun-young’s appeal as a male lead.

Jun-young recently gained notice for his turn as Geum-myeong’s first true love in another Netflix k-drama, the highly acclaimed/popular “If Life Gives You Tangerines,” and stealing the show as part of a doomed couple in “Melo Movie,” as well as playing unrepentant, malicious villains in “D*P*,” “Mask Girl,” “Brave Citizen,” and on April 25th, “Weak Hero: Class 2.”

Maybe it’s the hair or the role, or the way Jung Ji-hoo looks up at his master, Jung Ji-woo in “Love and Leashes,” but I found myself smitten as if I were in my 20s again. The movie is woefully short and even more woefully tame, but…

…there’s a scene early on, where Ji-woo puts Ji-hoo in a chair blindfolded and the camera pans closer to his face, then his trembling lips. That did me in.

I’m not into S&M, per se, but I could — in my younger days — understand getting restrained during consensual sex. Don’t let anyone fool you, that shit was big in Korea even as far back as the ‘60s.

I’m also not attracted to the actor in any conventional sense. I’m old enough to be his mother, and I’m not that perverted.

But I have this tendency throughout my life to go outside myself and be a kind of objective director/writer/matchmaker, where I can project — as an evergreen actor would — my appreciation into another person. Pure imagination.

It’s how I dream. I’m never really me; I’m playing different parts by inhabiting — as an objective, but appreciative observer — other people.

I only started realizing this about my dream world in the last five years. Sometimes I hit the psychic jackpot, but usually, I’m just living vicariously through other characters, like a viewer would, living outside myself, where I no longer exist.

It’s probably why I would’ve made a great actor. I lose myself in roles all the time. It’s not me, it’s them, and their stories. My problem is not knowing who I am in all this.

That’s kind of how I enjoy this former idol-turned-actor. I imagine him in love with a young, beautiful, talented, kind, empathic woman of his dreams, and fulfilling his potential, from all way out here. I haven’t seen her in any k-dramas of his yet. I live in hope, though. I want to see someone match up with him and be the perfect couple, aesthetically, for his sake.

Does that make sense?

Anyway, I found another k-drama of his on Amazon Prime (free), where he’s paired up with “Reply 1988’s” Lee Hye-ri in “May I Help You?” The subtitles are fucked up and they expect you to jump to conclusions without all of the facts, but the premise is what drew me: a funeral director able to talk to the dead and right wrongs.

Is Jun the best actor out there? No. He’s still raw and too eager to please sometimes, but his ability to tap into his emotions and cry on cue, to access that as a man with all the discipline he’s been through as a pop idol…that’s going to take him far.

If we’re going to go there, and if I were his age, still living in Korea, he’d totally be my type, with a little Son Suk-ku (“Liberation Notes”) and Kim Seon-ho (“When Life Gives You Tangerines”) thrown in.