Frida Kahlo - Mexico City, Mexico

The highlight of Thursday for me was our visit to the Frida Kahlo Museum.

Frida.

Or...

Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon.

Born in 1907. 

Mexico City. 

Died in 1954. 

Mexico City. 

Spent the in-between 47 years painting surrealist self-portraits. 

Or, what others called surrealism, anyway. 

Frida was known to say, "I never paint dreams or nightmares. I paint my own reality." 

(unfortunately, Frida's realty more or less resembled the nightmares of most people)

... rushing in and out of hospitals... 

Thirty-five times. 

... donning corsets designed to keep her spine aligned and long skirts to hide how polio withered her right leg when she was six...

Dealing with residual pain from that one time when she was riding a bus that got hit by a trolley car. 

Broken spinal column. 

Broken collarbone.

Broken ribs. 

Fractured right leg. 

Broken pelvis. 

Stabbed

through the uterus

with an iron handrail. 

Dislocated, 

CRUSHED

Right foot. 

(which eventually needed to be amputated, leading to Kahlo's famous quote, "Feet, what do I need you for when I have wings?")

It wasn't altogether a very good day in the life of Magdalena Carmen Frieda Kahlo y Calderon. 

Frida painted herself. She painted her pain from her bed. She painted her sadness about not being able to conceive children from her wheelchair. Then back again. 

"I paint myself because I am so often alone and because I am the subject I know best." 

She married Diego Rivera when she was 1929. 

But irritable artists can make fabulous bedfellows, but marriage can be a strain. Both parties engaged in several extramarital relationships, but their partnership was ended in 1939 when Kahlo discovered that Rivera had gone so far as to have an affair with her younger sister. 

Bad move. 

However, artists are quite often tortured and forgiving (especially if forgiveness opens the door for more torture), so Diego and Frida remarried the next year. 

And had a tumultuous relationship until Frida passed away in 1954.   

Diego wrote in his autobiography that he didn't realize until it was too late that the most wonderful part of his life had been his love for Frida.

Oh, snap.

Hate it when that happens.

Diego could have apologized to Frida and expressed his love over an ofrenda during a Dia de los Muertos, but Frida didn't seem keen on coming back at all. Ofrenda or no ofrenda.

"I hope the exit is joyful -- and I hope never to return." - Frida

Jonas and I switched cameras for the day. This and the following photos are his.
The house Diego and Frida shared in Mexico City. 

Their garden

We walked around the Coyoacan borough of Mexico City after we'd finished exploring Frida's blue house. Chio had told us that Coyoacan was where all the hippies and artists live.

"That place. I want to spend time there."

It didn't disappoint.

A bubblegum tree? 

A craft market

During the course of our stay, Chio has spent many minutes (verging on hours) describing to Jonas and me the glories of Yucatan food.

So we stopped at a Yucatan restaurant and tried some.

It was glorious.

We chanced upon a food market

We headed back early to avoid the five million people who board the metro at the same time.

And went to the bookstore. Where I read another hundred pages of my book and relished my cappuccino.

Jonas and Chio went to watch Mexican football at Hooters that evening. Part of me wanted to go for the cultural experience (Mexican football in Hooters?), but the part of me that needed to stay in a quiet living room on a comfortable couch and process some of the upcoming changes in my vagabond life won.

My life is changing.

Monday.

I'm gearing up to build a community in Puerto Escondido. To bid farewell to goodnight tacos, foamy cappuccinos and tipsy acro yoga. To welcome in a period of morning meditation followed by hatha yoga followed by a cleansing breakfast smoothie followed by a few hours of work.

I feel ready. And I definitely feel like this is what I'm supposed to be doing. But the idea of being in one place for five months is frightening to me. Why? 

So while Jonas and Chio cheered to Mexican football, I pondered my fears on the couch.