Thursday, August 4, 2011

Sorrows and more of the same..

"I tried to drown my sorrows but they learned how to swim"
Suffering!! Who wouldnt like to avoid it? I don't know of a person or I can't even recall one from fiction whising for suffering. Masochists...those exist in many types, but they are searching for some specific pain which pleases them, so they dont count. No even Job from the Bible! He offered it and accepted to God as His will. Jesus also prayed for what he was about to go through to be able to resist it.
We do so many things to not suffer or feel pain: We study hard, we try to get a good job, we restless search the love of our life, we sedate ourselves in different ways: some meditate or pray, others excercise....sometimes we also use "aspirins" like alcohol, medication, excess on anything even on religion, lust, frivolity.... just because we want to get away with not feeling any type of pain like solitude, poverty, rejection, remorses and God know what else! We drug ourselves in many forms and we get surprised after the effects for being worst just to face at the end, despite of all our efforts, the disappointment of reality: From time to time it will rain for sure. From there we might have the sayings: "God squeezes you but He will not asfixiate you" or "After any storm, calm will come" and even more comforting "The darker the night, the sunrise sooner will arrive".
"I never paint dreams or nightmares, I just paint my own reality"
Frida in her eternal bed with her back broken





























It is naive to believe pain will never cross our path. I read once:"Thinking life will be just with us because we are good people it is like thinking a bull wont attack us just because it is vegetarian"jajaaja... I love it! It is just like cold water on the face. And as the perfect job, perfect mate and perfect life dont exist, we better learn to live the non perfect life with its frustrations and rising again with joy everyday to live it at its fullest; counting our blessings and ignoring the rest. 

Is it suffering that bad? It is not nice for sure but it is also a fundamental part of us as human beings, something inherent to our human nature. It is a renovation process through purification to become a better Self. "It is our soul cracking, but cracking because it is in expansion and growth"-I read once. And if we dont grow, we stagnate and that also hurts...jajaja at the end there is no exit, we will feel somehow the pain.  
You might be wondering what the hell bit me with all these suffering in the middle of a happy and sunny sumer? Well...Frida Kahlo's Exhibit on Spring 2011 at the Brownsville Museum of Fine Art. http://www.brownsvillemfa.org/Index.aspx

It really shook me. This iconic mexican woman who represents the feminism and the rebelliousness in the middle of a macho culture who got to shade sometimes to an artist with monster size influence and personality as his husband Diego Rivera; and was able to print her pain and suffering on and explosion of magnificent art and on the self exploitation of her gifts and talents overcoming any difficult and circumstance, specially in health.
More about Frida's interesting life, highly recommended to read: http://www.pbs.org/weta/fridakahlo/life/index.html
Frida in the middle of an endless storm that we call her life; with just a bit of clear skies from now and then...she grabbed the bull by the horns and instead of waiting to be attacked she attacked first with all the force on her soul. I dont believe she was as strong as she looked. You can tell by the way she would cry for Diego and by her eternal wish of being a mother or by the way she would ask to everyone for some affection or love. After all, who is just pure steel? It was I think just her strategy to keep up. 


Facing pain on this way doesnt take strenght; It takes decision, will and hoping in God (even though she would consider herself atheist and politically voluble)  
It takes courage to face pain even though that implies to look at yourself in the mirror, speak to your own reflection looking at your eyes and say: "With me, Te chingaste (you're fucked up pain!), because you can't beat me. I decide to be happy on this moment using the best of me, even as I am. Tomorrow...I will leave that for who can really take care of that, God exists to solve that for me." 

Now many of us can get to this point, but the extra mile that Frida decides to walk it is to take everything that tried to crash her and transform it and purify it to spill it back into to the world on a personal venting and honoring her mexican roots as an unforgettable artist on a competitive time. Wow! Me encanta Frida Kahlo! (I admire Frida Kahlo!) Surrounded all the time by poets, philosophers and painters. Always true to herself, stubborn to show woman can do what they please too and at the same time eternally in love of her complicated soul mate! 



If you have a chance of visiting one of her exhibits or to meet her place: Dont Miss It! http://www.museofridakahlo.org.mx/Eluniversointimo.html you will be amazed with her work and sensitivity. I even recommend you to read some paragraphs of any of the letters she would write to her friends, lovers and to her beloved Diego Rivera. (All of them interesting people as herself) 
 There you will find more of the tender, true and free spirit she was as if you were reading her journal. Through them you will realize the beautiful soul she had and understand her characteristic ugliness -she was not- showing a mustache, unibrow and mexican tehuana dresses instead of the latest parisian fashion just to make another statement of not being under any rules, not even vanity. She wouldnt be defined into a sterotype, death first. Always true to herself. 
Foto tomada de la pagina de "La Casa Azul"
Enjoy her work and If you think you can learn something from her tragic and eloquent life..please..Be my guest! 


Feet what do I want you for...if I have wings to fly..?


Frida in pain, recovering from one of her many abortions.

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