Today I went into the city to see the exhibit on Frida Kahlo at the SFMOMA. in 5th grade I was doing a project on Diego Rivera (to this day I don't know how I found him) and discovered his wife, Frida, who was infinitely more interesting. Her paintings had an intensity about them that struck my 10 year old eyes. I loved her paintings long before I ever had my heart broken. Now that I've lived a bit and know what love and loss feel like, I love them even more.
I spent the past 18 years staring at these paintings in books, reading her diary, memorizing the stories behind each of her prints and each chapter in her life. As as young girl she thrived on her fathers attention and affection while her mother was chronically exhausted and overbearing. In her teens, she tested the boundaries of gender roles, joining a nearly all boys revolutionary fraternity and dressing in her father's suits for family photos. A trolley accident in which her body was pierced through with a bar handle, entering her lower back and exiting her vagina, left her unable to bear children and bed-bound for months. Before she was 25 she had married Diego. He was a constant adulterer, sleeping with models, revolutionary's wives and her sister. She, in unending physical and emotional pain, turned to other men (and women) in desperate efforts to self-sooth yet remained devoted to her love her entire life. She wore the glorious styles of the Oaxacan women she had grown up with in rich colors and patterns of flowing skirts and home spun tops, meters and meters of lush scarves and ornate hair updos and ornaments. Her blue house was a menagerie of native Mexican plants and animals...
And in this reality she painted. Her constant struggle in love with a man who was "physiologically incapable of commitment" and the bitter war with her "Judas of a body" through the raw and astonishing self portraits as a deer pierced with thorns, a broken column, a murdered wife killed with a "few small nips", a dual personality, bleeding out against her most desperate attempts at survival, her musings in her bath with a view of her scarred right foot and her imagination... her pride, anger and pain as a revolutionary, her devotion to her homeland,her heartbreak at being unable to bear a child.
All of this I saw today, in person, for the first time after 16 years of learning Frida. She and I have scoliosis, chronic back pain, surgery on our right feet, scarred hearts, bouts of desperation, depression. But there is so much life in her work, more than any other artist, and I was finally able to see it today. Ooo and I'm so happy!
Saturday, July 26, 2008
Friday, July 18, 2008
the edge
Glory, Glory to the Lamb
You will take us into the land
We will conquer in your name...
I moved to California. By myself. I found a job, a plane ticket and eventually a place to live. I started work five days after I arrived and had the program up and running (shakily) within two weeks. I endured the crippling stress and heartache of leaving home that kept me from eating, the snails pace of university bureaucracy, the isolation of running a program physically by myself, the egos and satan-inspired dissatisfaction of students, the backache of sleeping on the floor when my furniture took a month to arrive, the sprained ankle(s) from walking everywhere and from the first day, the first hour...
I just finished my first year. After taking two weeks to sleep and reboot at home, I am back and working like a woman crazed to avoid what pain I can from last year. Searching hungrily, desperately for what I can do ahead of time that I was not able to in two weeks before. My list is pages long. My personal list is only slightly shorter; study for the GREs, apply to grad school, write a book, buy a car, contact my house mate's friend who is a television exec. about the show proposal sitting in my mind all year...
From the first day, the first hour, and the following days and hours and still, I have been... Our plan died at the back of my mouth when I saw his eyes. He was unhappy and uninterested in my arrival. I was an obstacle. He resented me coming. He didn't move to come near me in the terminal. We stared at each other. He looked tired, already irritated. His hug was weak. I was turned off instantly. We drove in silence. In this alien place that I had struggled up the courage to come to alone and that I knew nothing about, I sat in the guest room of a stranger's house for three days while he talked on the phone with someone else in other rooms. He slept with his back to me at night except for once when he half-heartedly, almost unnoticeably, rocked his hips against mine for five minutes before rolling back over. Where was our plan to fall into each other's arms and weep with relief that finally, after so much time and distance, we could be together the way we wanted to. I watched him laugh with friends and then grow sullen with me in the car. His conversation was reduced to one word answers and I became impatient and angry quickly. I hadn't done anything. On the fourth day, I spent the day alone in his room while he went to work. Unsure of how to operate the television with its three remotes, I read the news over and over again. And I stared at the picture on the desk. When I physically could not keep my eyes open any longer from having nothing to do, I put my head on the desk. When my back started to hurt I considered the bed but couldn't bring myself to sleep in the same place where he had brought her. I laid a blanket on the floor and slept next to the TV. That was my introduction to California. It has not improved. One thousand little words, one thousand little pin sized pricks back and forth have damaged me, darkened me.
My job has quieted down for the summer. It's given me time to catch up on projects that will make next year much easier and I have the satisfaction of knowing I have a job that is hard and meaningful that I'm very good at . I've settled into my house where I have plenty of space and freedom. I am buying a car this month. I am considering the future and grad school. I long to be in the classroom with my babies again. My garden is growing. It is very pretty in the summertime here. When the fog rolls off the sun is sometimes warm. And finally, I feel a break through is coming. My life is my own. I'm not led astray anymore. I have no more delusions about life. I harbor no malice. I don't hate anyone. But I have taken all that I can stand. I feel taut. I'm simply standing at the edge and praying for someone to trip the wire.
You will take us into the land
We will conquer in your name...
I moved to California. By myself. I found a job, a plane ticket and eventually a place to live. I started work five days after I arrived and had the program up and running (shakily) within two weeks. I endured the crippling stress and heartache of leaving home that kept me from eating, the snails pace of university bureaucracy, the isolation of running a program physically by myself, the egos and satan-inspired dissatisfaction of students, the backache of sleeping on the floor when my furniture took a month to arrive, the sprained ankle(s) from walking everywhere and from the first day, the first hour...
I just finished my first year. After taking two weeks to sleep and reboot at home, I am back and working like a woman crazed to avoid what pain I can from last year. Searching hungrily, desperately for what I can do ahead of time that I was not able to in two weeks before. My list is pages long. My personal list is only slightly shorter; study for the GREs, apply to grad school, write a book, buy a car, contact my house mate's friend who is a television exec. about the show proposal sitting in my mind all year...
From the first day, the first hour, and the following days and hours and still, I have been... Our plan died at the back of my mouth when I saw his eyes. He was unhappy and uninterested in my arrival. I was an obstacle. He resented me coming. He didn't move to come near me in the terminal. We stared at each other. He looked tired, already irritated. His hug was weak. I was turned off instantly. We drove in silence. In this alien place that I had struggled up the courage to come to alone and that I knew nothing about, I sat in the guest room of a stranger's house for three days while he talked on the phone with someone else in other rooms. He slept with his back to me at night except for once when he half-heartedly, almost unnoticeably, rocked his hips against mine for five minutes before rolling back over. Where was our plan to fall into each other's arms and weep with relief that finally, after so much time and distance, we could be together the way we wanted to. I watched him laugh with friends and then grow sullen with me in the car. His conversation was reduced to one word answers and I became impatient and angry quickly. I hadn't done anything. On the fourth day, I spent the day alone in his room while he went to work. Unsure of how to operate the television with its three remotes, I read the news over and over again. And I stared at the picture on the desk. When I physically could not keep my eyes open any longer from having nothing to do, I put my head on the desk. When my back started to hurt I considered the bed but couldn't bring myself to sleep in the same place where he had brought her. I laid a blanket on the floor and slept next to the TV. That was my introduction to California. It has not improved. One thousand little words, one thousand little pin sized pricks back and forth have damaged me, darkened me.
My job has quieted down for the summer. It's given me time to catch up on projects that will make next year much easier and I have the satisfaction of knowing I have a job that is hard and meaningful that I'm very good at . I've settled into my house where I have plenty of space and freedom. I am buying a car this month. I am considering the future and grad school. I long to be in the classroom with my babies again. My garden is growing. It is very pretty in the summertime here. When the fog rolls off the sun is sometimes warm. And finally, I feel a break through is coming. My life is my own. I'm not led astray anymore. I have no more delusions about life. I harbor no malice. I don't hate anyone. But I have taken all that I can stand. I feel taut. I'm simply standing at the edge and praying for someone to trip the wire.
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