What do I need my feet for if I have wings to fly

This is the second part of my post on Frida Kahlo.

 The idea of being deeply connected to nature pervades many of the themes of her paintings. She associated plants with life and fertility. “Roots” is a clear example of this.   In this picture she painted herself with an open bosom that exposes a vine thriving in her body. Frida was unable to carry her babies to term. She had many miscarriages.

Growing and nurturing plants may have helped her to cope with the pain of her losses. She painted plants with great care. The association of plants with life may also be connected with the Aztec poets’ perspective on plants and life: "We are the grass in spring. Our heart comes, it blooms and opens, our body causes some flowers to blossom, and then all withers." 
 Ironically, the plant that sprouts from her body is the Calotropis procera, also known as the Apple of Sodom. This plant contains a poisonous fluid in its leaves that was used by the Indians of Latin America to commit suicide.

 The background of “Roots” is desolate and gloomy, alluding to her loneliness. I noticed the same association in “The Two Fridas” and “Henry Ford Hospital”. The same applies to "The Little Deer".

 In this painting Frida becomes a deer. Her head is crowned with antlers and she withstands the suffering that life inflicts upon her in the form of arrows, a symbol of the fate that befell her.
  I believe she portrays her resilience here. The word “Carma” inscribed on the lower-left corner evokes a belief related to Eastern religions. Her unity with nature is made clear once again. 
 The deer is a male, and this may have to do with the fact that she'd kept a male deer as a pet.

 This is a painting she gave to her friends Arcady Boytler and his wife, Lina. She also wrote a poem to them along with this painting. (Arcady Boytler had back problems and he'd recommended her a surgeon in New York.)

 The deer walked alone

sad and very wounded

until in Arcady and Lina

he found warmth and a nest.

When the deer returns

strong, happy and cured

the wounds he has now

will all be erased.

Thank you, children of my heart,

thank you for so much advice.

In the forest of the deer

the sky is brightening

I leave you my portrait

so that you will have my presence

all the days and nights

that I am away from you.

Sadness portrays herself

in all my paintings

but that’s how my condition is

I no longer have structure.

Nevertheless, I carry

joy in my heart

knowing that Arcady and Lina

love me as I am.

 In 1938 she painted “What the Water Gave Me”, which appears to be a daydream she had while bathing.  This is what she said about this painting:

“It is an image of passing time about time and childhood games in the bathtub and the sadness of what happened to me in my life.” This painting incorporates elements from other paintings. 
  Her toes are mirrored by another pair of fragmented feet, but her legs are not well defined in space. They are also fragmented. The parts of the legs that are not visible are replaced by a variety of symbols and events, suggesting that her life had been disjointed by them.  She gave it to her lover Nickolas Muray, a photographer from Hungary.

In 1945 Frida painted “Moses” after reading Sigmund Freud’s essay “Moses and Monotheism”.  She said she'd painted the sun as the center of all religions, as the first god and as the creator and producer of life. This painting shows a pantheon of gods and historical figures.
 Frida was awarded the Ministry of Education Prize for "Moses" in 1945. I think this masterpiece encompasses the world's collective consciousness, religions and systems of beliefs.

About this painting she also said:

“What I wanted to convey most intensely, most clearly, was that the reason people need to invent or imagine heroes and gods is pure fear. Fear of life and fear of death. I started painting the figure of Moses as a child. I painted him as he is described in many legends, abandoned in a basket and floating along a river. I tried to make the open basket, covered with an animal hide, as reminiscent as possible of a womb, because—according to Freud—the basket is an exposed womb, and water signifies the maternal spring from which the child is born.”

In "Sun and Life" the sun reappears as a central figure amid plants that look like penises and wombs. One of them seems to harbor a baby. The sun has a face with  a third eye that is weeping.  Her obsession with fertility is present in many of her artworks. 
 The year before she died her right leg had to be amputated below the knee. She became very depressed after this surgery.

   

 This is the last painting she worked on before she died in 1954.  On one of the slices of watermelon she wrote her name, the name of her hometown (Coyoacan) and the words “Viva la Vida” (Long Live Life). She might have tried to challenge death through this powerful image. 

   The year she died the first polio vaccine (Salk) was tested in the United States. In Mexico women were granted the right to vote for the first time. 
  Frida kahlo's legacy is still alive, enshrined in the spirit of resilience that she instilled in her works. Like a beacon of hope, her art continues to inspire and empower people all over the world.

 My next blog post will be published by March 27.

Frida Kahlo

“I paint myself because I am the subject I know best. I really don’t know whether my paintings are Surrealist or not, but I do know that they are the most honest expression of myself, taking no account of the opinions and prejudices of others.”
 Frida Kahlo

In the spring of 2008 I enjoyed an exhibition of Frida Kahlo’s works at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I was deeply impressed and inspired by the boldness of her originality and by the energy that emanates from her paintings.

 Frida Kahlo (1907-1954) was a self-taught artist with a skeptical attitude toward academic training. Yet she was a voracious reader of literary and scientific works, who had an unquenchable curiosity and an intense passion for learning.

 Through her art and life she challenged the status quo with the force of her authenticity. Just by looking at the first self-portrait on this post, you can see how she does not attempt to hide anything about her face -- not even her sadness. (I don’t remember seeing many paintings or photos of Frida Kahlo smiling.)

 Frida Kahlo had a streetcar accident when she was eighteen years old. This crash changed the course of her life, for she had to endure the consequences of it until her death at age 47.  Her physical ailments provided her with periods of solitude in which she explored her inner self and then dared to project this examination on her artworks.  

 She suffered extensive spinal and hip fractures, broken ribs and a broken foot as a result of this accident that made her abandon her plans to study medicine.

  During her life Kahlo produced around two-hundred works. 

 The self-portrait with Thorn Necklace and Humming-bird, for example, is a surreal image in which she wears a necklace similar to Christ’s crown of thorns. Her face expresses sorrow, but she is surrounded by plants and animals: there is a black cat, a monkey and butterflies. A humming-bird seems to be trying to disentangle something from the necklace.  The restraint around her neck contrasts with the beauty and wilderness of nature around her, as if she’d sought comfort in that universe. Mindful of this unity with nature, she expressed it in her works in surreal themes in which she also included elements related to cultural matters and religious symbols.
  Her works display her multiple identities and different dualities (sun-moon; man-woman; life-death, etc.)

 “I never painted dreams. I always painted my own reality,” she said.

 When poet and essayist Andre Breton visited Mexico, he came across Frida Kahlo’s works and described her art as “a ribbon around a bomb.” He encouraged her to exhibit her paintings in Paris.  

This photo of Frida Kahlo was taken by her lover Nickolas Muray. In this picture she wears the earrings that Pablo Picasso gave her as a token of his affection when she was in Paris for her exhibition in 1939. These earrings also appear in a self-portrait that she gave to her beloved friend Dr. Eloesser.

 Over the course of her difficult marriage to Diego Rivera, Kahlo gave more than 400 photographs and close to one-hundred letters to Dr. Eloesser to hold for safekeeping.  In 2006 this collection was donated to the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, D.C.

  In 1932 Kahlo and Rivera traveled to Philadelphia for a performance of the Mexican ballet, for which Rivera designed the sets and costumes.  The following month they moved to Detroit because Rivera had been commissioned to paint a mural at the Detroit Institute of Arts. Four months into a pregnancy Frida lost her baby and was admitted to  Henry Ford Hospital. She almost bled to death.  During this time, she painted "Henry Ford Hospital" and made the lithograph "Frida and the miscarriage".

 This same year, Frida painted Self-Portrait on the Borderline between Mexico and the United States, an intriguing masterpiece that deals with the conflicts of being trapped between two cultures. 
  On the Mexican side of the border we see the sun and the moon. On the American side the American flag levitates amid clouds of smoke spewed by the chimneys of a factory. There are also skyscrapers that contrast with the partially-ruined pre-Columbian temple on the Mexican side, where we also find pre-Columbian fertility idols and plants with visible roots.  Frida stands on a pedestal facing the Mexican side, a flag in her hand, as if she were trying to protect her native country from the shadows of industrialization. 

  In her painting “My Grandparents, My Parents and I” (1936), Frida shows her family tree. Her father was from  Germany, and her mother was a Mexican of mixed European and American Indian ancestry. In this picture Frida is a little girl. She is holding a red ribbon that supports her family tree. She looks much bigger than her family home. Under the ribbon, to her right, a school of sperm is targeting an ovum, and fertilization is about to take place. Close to this image, we  spot a flower and distinguish its reproductive structures. There is pollen floating over it. Frida reveals her mixed heritage here.
 Originally  her name was "Frieda".   In solidarity with the Jews she got rid of the letter "e" with the rise of Nazism. 

In 1939 she met the Surrealists in Paris and was disgusted by their elitism. She wrote a letter to her lover Nickolas Muray about this:

“You have no idea the kind of bitches these people are. They make me vomit. They are so damn ‘intellectual’ and rotten that I can’t stand them anymore. It is really too much for my character. I rather sit on the floor in the market of Toluca and sell tortillas, than to have anything to do with those ‘artistic' bitches of Paris. They sit for hours on the ‘cafes’ warming their precious behinds, and talk about culture, art, revolution and so on and so forth, thinking themselves the gods of the world, dreaming the most fantastic nonsense and poisoning the air with theories that never come true.”
   Frida witnessed the suffering of republican refugees from the Spanish Civil War and arranged for 400 of them to immigrate to Mexico.

The Two Fridas (1939) was completed after she divorced her husband, Diego Rivera. One of the Fridas -- the rejected one -- has a broken heart and is trying to stop her blood from dribbling. This appears to be futile; blood continues to spill over her white dress. The other Frida has an intact heart and a picture of her former spouse, whom she would remarry a year later.  
   The two women clasp hands, hinting at the idea that she was her most reliable source of comfort and support.

 In 1939 she wrote an entry in her diary that helps us to understand the creation of The Two Fridas. When Frida was a child she suffered from polio. It was around this time when she created an imaginary friend that she described in her diary entry.

 “I must have been 6 years old when I experienced intensely an imaginary friendship with a little girl the same age as me. On the glass window of what at that time was my room, I breathed vapor onto one of the first panes. I let out a breath and with a finger I drew a ‘door’. Full of great joy and urgency I went out in my imagination through this ‘door’…

“I went down in great haste into the interior of the earth, where my ‘imaginary friend’ was always waiting for me. I do not remember her image or her color. But I do know that she laughed a lot without sounds. She was agile and she danced as if she weighed nothing at all. I followed her in all her movements and while she danced I told her my secret problems. Which ones? I do not remember. But from my voice she knew everything about me… Twenty-six years have passed since I experienced this magic friendship and every time I remember it, it revives and becomes larger and larger inside of my world.”

I will post the second part of my post on Frida Kahlo by March 12.

When kindness is misunderstood

 I said that I wouldn't post until March 5, but I need to get this off my chest.
A society that venerates rewards, exchange of favors and money treats kindness with suspicion. Making a new friend here is tough. When I connect with a person in meaningful ways, I am kind to them. Then my attitude is treated with suspicion.
 All of a sudden the new "friend" believes I have secondary intentions of some kind. Who knows what those intentions are. The new friend stands back. Strangely enough, my parents taught me to be kind without expecting anything in return.
 Friendship is about spontaneity, affection and communication. Some people confuse spontaneity and kindness with the idea of a boundary getting trespassed. It may be a cultural mismatch, or a misunderstanding. The new "friend" is distrustful.
 I have finally come to the realization that it is safer to wear a shell and to stick to my old friends. The ones who love me and accept me the way I am.
 I am curious to know if you have encountered similar experiences.

Problems are opportunities

 The double nature of some human beings baffles me.  This poem of mine published by Vox Poetica is about that.
  If you are in the mood to read something uplifting, feel free to check my two poems published in the winter issue of the Greensilk Journal. I'm sure you will be tempted to read the other poets' work too.
 Today I wrote something about "problems".
Even though we may be prone to feel irritated or frustrated when we encounter certain problems that challenge our beliefs, we can also choose to adopt a different attitude: we can  welcome these problems and treat them as unique opportunities to learn something new. We can embrace them with a positive mindset.
  Problems are challenges that invite us to think of creative solutions.
 They can encourage us to ask questions.
 From my own personal experience in the workplace I conclude that whenever problems are a consequence of conflicts related to communication in human relationships there are three elements that are relevant to handle these situations:
-the art of listening
-the art of non-judgmental persuasion
-the art of negotiation
   The goal of this post is to emphasize that a problem may have the potential to improve something. This does not always happen, though. Sometimes we know there are boundaries that we cannot trespass, no matter how hard we try to make things better. There are situations that are out of our control, and our scope of action is limited. However, we can accept these situations knowing that we have tried our best.  And these unique situations may have taught us something about ourselves, others, or the world we live in.

 I will publish my next blog post on March 5.

Reading like a writer

“All men have stars but they are not the same things for different people. For some, who are travelers, the stars are guides. For others they are no more than little lights in the sky. For others, who are scholars, they are problems. For my businessman they were wealth. But all these stars are silent. You—you alone—will have the stars as no one else has them.”

Reading is fun, but reading like a writer is even better. It is expansive. I will reveal the reasons why my mind becomes hyperactive every time I read something.

1)      I pay attention to the choice of words. If I encounter words that are not familiar to me, I look them up in the dictionary. Then I write them down. They become part of my “bank account of words”. Feel free to check my post on my endless love affair with words to understand this eternal infatuation.

2)      Whenever I read a story, I pay attention to the way each and every sentence is crafted. I notice how they are arranged into paragraphs. If I like their rhythm, I read them more than once.

3)      I notice how the writer unfolds the plot; I examine the ways the author manages the tension and the conflicts.

4)      I observe the characters. I learn to see how the writer reveals information about them.

5)      Many times I take notes on ideas that occur to me while I read the story. I explore the layers of meaning. I delve into the psychology of the characters and analyze their relationships and conflicts. I relate them to the world.

      6)      My mind elaborates the scenes. Snapshots of the characters and vivid images of the setting flash into my mind.

      All these actions that happen simultaneously while I read something enhance the reading experience.

 What about you? What is your reading experience like?

 I will be taking a break from blogging for 4-6 weeks. I will keep posting links to my works on my list of published material located to your left (my right.) If you miss my posts, feel free to check them. The upper part has the most recently published ones. 

 Thanks.

Humor in poetry

 Today I was supposed to publish a post about art, but I had no time to complete it, so I decided to share  this poem of mine that was published  by The Artistic Muse.
 

For poetry lovers... and those who don't care about poetry

"The sun strikes deep into the wells of the sky: depends on how you look at it -- for someone it is the hour to be shot at dawn, for me the infinite gift of red, of violet and blush-graying white above the bridge across the Loireo."
Tomaz Salamun

  Poetry is a universal dialogue that invites voices from every corner of the world. It embodies the desire to explore emotions and new realms.
 Poetry invites the mind to set itself free from its prison, but it is also a medium that can understand and console us. If I had to choose an anthology out of all the ones I read this year, I would pick Edward Hirsch's "Poet's Choice."
  Most of the poems he selected landed before my eyes just when I needed them - as if I had been destined to read them. Edward Hirsch brought together the voices of poets from all over the world without being biased by gender, country of origin, popularity, political ideas, religion or social class. Edward Hirsch was inspired and motivated by his passion for poetry.
   I was spellbound by Hirsch's essays on the poets and their works. I admire his wit,  sensitivity and open-minded approach. I savored each and every sentence he wrote and was compelled to read them more than once. This book is a masterpiece. It unleashes the vast universe of human experience.
   Not only did I fall in love with the poems he selected, but I also experienced a strong kinship to most of these poets.
 Now let me share with you Edward Hirsch's quotes on poetry:
  "I have tried to remember throughout that poetry is made by flesh-and-blood human beings. It is a bloody art. It lives on a human scale and thrives when it is passed from hand to hand."
   "Poetry is a means of exchange, a form of reciprocity, a magic to be shared, a gift. Poetry saves something precious in the world from vanishing."
   "Poetry challenges us to find meaning in the midst of suffering. Poetry answers this challenge. It puts us in touch with ourselves. It sends us messages from the interior and also connects us to others. It is intimate and secretive; it is generously collective."
    "Poems defend the importance of individual lives and rebel at the way individuals are dwarfed by mass culture."
    "I have carried poetry with me like a flashlight-- how many small books have I crammed into my pockets?-- and used it to illuminate other lives, other worlds. I discovered myself in discovering others, and I have lived with these poems until they have become part of the air that I breathe. I hope they will become part of the reader's world too."
 Some of the poets he included in this book are Jorge Luis Borges,  Sappho, Blaga Dimitrova, Charlotte Mew, W.B. Yeats, Rainer Maria Rilke, Czeslaw Milosz,  Radmila Lazic, Primo Levi, Taha Muhammad Ali, Yehuda Amichai, Kadya Molodowsky, Avraham Ben Yitzhak, Saadi Youssef, Cesar Vallejo, Miguel Hernandez, Pablo Neruda, Julia de Burgos, Alfonsina Storni, Octavio Paz, Amy Lowell, Naomi Nye, Wallace Stevens, Jane Mayhall, Dorothea Tanning, Kathleen Raine, Mark Strand, William Carlos Williams, Jane Mayhall, William Matthews, Robert Bly and many others.
 I believe there is something urgent about poetry, something that rescues us from our own uncertainty...
 
Ars Poetica

Write each of your poems
as if it were your last.
In this century, saturated with strontium,
charged with terrorism,
flying with supersonic speed,
death comes with terrifying suddenness.
Send each of your words
like a last letter before execution,
a call carved on a prison wall.
You have no right to lie,
no right to play pretty little games.
You simply won't have time
to correct your mistakes.
Write each of your poems,
tersely, mercilessly,
with blood -- as if it were your last.

Blaga Dimitrova (Translated by Ludmilla G. Popova-Wightman)