mona lisa - no, not that one

What do you get when you mix a very young Korean child with a new country that's foreign and where she cannot communicate with anyone?

You get a person who ends up spending twelve years in a sanatorium after several years in a foster care system that failed her.

Ironically, she had been brought to the States for political asylum, to shelter her from a homeland where she was in danger.

That didn't quite help her, did it?

Now, she's 22 years old and practically illiterate and uncommunicative because of so much time in a straitjacket and in isolation.

People regard her as dangerous, even though she barely talks.

That's because she has mastered one cool trick: if she can catch someone's gaze, she can take control of their mind and make them do whatever is needed to set her free.

Nice defensive mechanism, right?

Now Mona Lisa is on the lam in New Orleans, in late September or early October, a time which is certainly best for such things, in regards to the weather.

That's good, as she only has on that straitjacket, at least until a group of young folks getting high give her a pair of sneakers and, a bit later, a "sometimes" drug dealer named Fuzz gives her his T-shirt.

Those are folks on the fringes of society, like her.

She only has problems with authority figures, like the cop that makes it his personal mission to return her to the asylum, especially after she gets him to shoot his leg when he tries to forcibly handcuff her, just for wearing a straitjacket.

Silly sap, he should have known after that first encounter with her that he needed to leave her alone, but he persists.

Good thing that the pole dancer leads her to a helpful, if slightly bent, 11-year-old boy.

"Mona Lisa And The Blood Moon" is one of the best movies I've seen with Cinema Savannah.

Thanks, Tomasz, for bringing this 2021 here for us!

And thanks, Cameron Frost, for the raku firing demonstration afterward!

I'm so glad he was wearing all the right safety gear for such work, too.

He made sure folks knew I had been his chemistry teacher, once upon a time.

(smile!)

He had been a rare art major who wanted to take chemistry for the sake of knowing more about the world around him.

I can't say I remember his grades - but I will say that I always enjoyed talking with him!

I look forward to doing more of that, as he is the ceramics instructor there at the Savannah Cultural Arts Center.

That means he knows Tomasz' movie schedule and knows to look for me there.

(smile!)

Here is the finished sculpture, after a few hours of cooling.

He calls it "ossified amalgamation of hands".

I preferred my take on it: a faded tattoo of maps for favorite places.

(smile!)

I'm glad dos de mi tres amigas were there to witness that event, too.

Barbara and Sandy had never been to a raku firing, either, so it started a nice discussion about ceramics in general and our personal experiences with it.

Maybe I'll have to look into having Cameron teach me for a change!

(smile!)