THAT EVENING

My friends and I see FRIDA, with Salma Hayek playing Frida Kahlo. How accurate it is, I don't know--affairs with Leon Trotsky and Josephine Baker? But it is moving. Such a short, hard, fiery life.

THAT NIGHT

The Office of Homeland Security considers this girl a revolutionary terrorist. She's just a natural performer. Dances and sings a sexy show she wrote. She's short, slender, cute, with a long neck and round face. She wears only purple panties with ridiculous ruffly lace, and a string skirt dangling amethyst beads every inch or so.

Homeland Security cops come and drag her offstage! They stick her in a drafty cell, with nothing but her stage costume. Brrrr. Her girlfriend or sister, a painter, visits. Photographs her and paints a whole series of lush oils of her in prison. They're both lesbian pin-ups AND scorching propaganda. See the Public Danger! (Or is it Pubic Dancer?) See the Panties of Proletarian Menace! See the Beads of... uh... Badness!

Her paintings are very good. Lush, sexy, yet show the atrocious conditions the Office imposes: the rough stone walls and floors, the wicker pallet for a bed, the lone mangy blanket.

The Jail Paintings become notorious.

The Officers of Homeland Security do read the news. Everyone's sneering at them. But freeing her would mean admitting they were wrong; can't have that.

So instead, they redecorate!

But cops are lousy decorators. Visitors to their Office, willing or not, just don't feel Homy or Secure.

When will they face that they have to free her?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Jail: Frida Kahlo really was jailed once, briefly--for the murder of Leon Trotsky! The Mexican cops wanted her to accuse her husband Diego Rivera. Fat chance! Everyone knew it was Stalin.
• The dancer: short like Frida, but her face looked more like her beautiful, battered sister Cristina.
• Dancing topless: Josephine Baker? The film claims Kahlo and Baker had an affair.
• Prisoner, bad décor: my room, crammed with junk right now. The dancer is me. Jailed at home by illness--and by my refusal to take my time, effort and focus away from art to healing--since there's no guarantee it'll work.
• ACTION: Get out. Just get out. But I see no way to. As with Frida herself, the real prison is my body. Chronic illness. Always has been.

I did slowly deduce stuff about my illness, and finally self-diagnosed a rare genetic problem called Ehler-Danlos Syndrome. My doctors had to concede it fit, but said it's untreatable & incurable--slow death. I designed a diet, supplements, and strict behavioral discipline. Two years later, I'm the healthiest I've ever been. But I did have to do my own research and fight my health plan. Oh, it saves them money, sacrificing the odd cases...

But I decline to be sacrificed.

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