Well, my sis is totally hooked on the Korean drama, Stairways to Heaven. She recently went on a trip to Korea with her friends- It was a rather 'unplanned' trip. It's like her friends and her, after they were done watching this and other Korean series, decided on-the-fly to apply for leave to go to Korea. Hope you get the level of their addiction now. After she came back, it's like Stairways to Heaven day-in and day-out on our TVs. Wherever she's around, Stairways to Heaven is playing close by. It's that eerie.
Anyway, Stairways to Heaven reminded me of the Bob Dylan song Knocking on Heaven's Door. That, in turn, reminded me of the long opening sequence for that other korean movie- Windstruck (the part where she leaped off the skyscraper). The Korean Invasion into our innocent lives, brought about by my sis, started all this. Next thing I know- I'm getting nightmares about being cast in a Korean drama or something. If you noticed, actors in Korean dramas all does a similar 'irked' reaction. They all do the same facial gesture when they're annoyed by stuff. It's like a part of their culture. I do that irked-face to my sis often these days. 'Spoken-Korean' gets on my nerves too. It's more fun listening to a buncha seals squealing in a zoo enclosure. But Jeon Ji-Hyun is korean.
Windstruck reminded me of Jeon Ji-Hyun (of My Sassy Girl fame) and how I disliked the male actor in the movie. Mere jealousy, maybe. The movie wasn't that great too. But everything else in the world stood pitifully inadequate in the face of Jeon Ji-Hyun. Jeon Ji-Hyun, in photo-stills or 2-dimensional, is just an ok, very pretty Korean girl. Catch Jeon Ji-Hyun on the move and it's quite something else. How do you define beauty of the tallest order? How do you define beauty etched in a dimension outside time and space? How do you define beauty that escapes trappings of it's own definition, that isn't beauty anymore? How do you define words like eternity or immortality? Ok, I'm choking. *Cough*
(Corn. Flakes. A pic is supposed to go in here. But I couldn't find a photo of her that she wasn't in a pose of any sort.)
Now, here's someone who can maybe do it without choking himself. Milan Kundera explained in the opening paragraph of his book, Immortality-
. . . She walked around the pool toward the exit. She passed the lifeguard, and after she had gone some three or four steps beyond him, she turned her head, smiled, and waved to him. At that instant I felt a pang in my heart! That smile and that gesture belonged to a twenty-year-old girl! Her arm rose with bewitching ease. It was as if she were playfully tossing a brightly colored ball to her lover. That smile and that gesture had charm and elegance, while the face and the body no longer had any charm. It was the charm of a gesture drowning in the charmlessness of the body. But the woman, though she must of course have realized that she was no longer beautiful, forgot that for the moment. There is a certain part of all of us that lives outside of time. Perhaps we become aware of our age only at exceptional moments and most of the time we are ageless. In any case, the instant she turned, smiled, and waved to the young lifeguard (who couldn't control himself and burst out laughing), she was unaware of her age. The essence of her charm, independent of time, revealed itself for a second in that gesture and dazzled me. I was strangely moved. And then the word Agnes entered my mind. Agnes. I had never known a woman by that name.
- Milan Kundera, Immortality.
Off to play some Warcraft Dota now.
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