Carole Maso - Beauty is Convulsive - The Passion of Frida Kahlo

Begging Dr. Eloesser for a fetus in formaldehyde. Because I wanted—

House for birds

Nest for love

The only thing I bought here were two old-fashioned dolls, very beautiful ones. One is blonde with blue eyes, the most wonderful eyes you can imagine. She is dressed as a bride…. Both are lovely, even with their heads a little bit loose. Perhaps that is what gives them so much tenderness and charm. For years I wanted to have a doll like that, because someone broke one that I had when I was a child, and I couldn’t find it again. So I am very happy having two now. I have a little bed in Mexico, which will be marvelous for the bigger one. Think of two nice Hungarian names to baptize them.

The women pray

Accident: 10 Our Fathers, 10 Hail Marys, 3 Glory Bes.

The limping lacerated Mexican saint

She watched other people’s children. Because it was not to be.

Pray for us sinners.

The useless petitions

3 Not to Be’s

black umbilicus

paint

an umbilical cord emerges from the placenta — the large red

vein paint

paint

even the moon is weeping

paint

heartbreak all the bleeding children

The doll asleep in the lacquered box.

¡Que venga: la bailarina! ¡La bailarina!

The dancing disembodied torso.

On the cracked earth — against mountains — an agitated Mexican sky, her prickly pears — states of ripeness, states of fecund — split, delicious, splotches of blood

O Mexico

She cradles a sugar skull and croons

Tonight I will get drunk

Child of my heart

Tomorrow is another day

And you will see that I am right….

And at the Salón México, Frida watching with pleasure the women dancing. The little flask of cognac she carried. Her coctelitos

fuck. love.

cradling a sugar skull—

drawn to the swirling she draws

Muertes en Relajo. Yes, the dead having a fling. Blood mutilation and sacrifice, give the dead a little life. The gringos are so glum!

dance, dance!

leaving a foot at the fetish altar.

She laughs

O you are broken

drinking tequila

One cigarette after another

A little song at the people’s altar: The revolution is harmony of form and of color and everything that exists and moves….

Frida and Diego would amuse themselves by drawing cadavres exquis or singing corridos. Although Diego couldn’t carry a tune, he loved to sing, and he took pleasure in listening to Frida, for she sang with great spirit and could handle the falsetto breaks in songs like “La Malagueña” beautifully.

O beauty Mexico convulsive

I am the flower, I am the feather, I am the drum and the mirror of the gods. I am the song. I rain flowers. I rain songs.

I am the flower. I weep songs. I weep paint.

the parrot Bonito outside drinking tequila and beer and squawking I can’t — I can’t get over this hangover ¡No se me pasa la cruda!

swearing

the alegría girl with glee

a little dog howling

the alegría girl on fire

Accident: dance! dance! A pair of red legs severed from their body and between them a pair of lips.

her theater of the ferocious and absurd

her love of the circus, boxing matches, movies, street theater

And she sings in the glade

I am a poor little deer that lives in the mountains.

Since I am not very tame, I don’t come down to drink water during the day.

At night little by little, I come to your arms, my love.

Accident:

Everybody tells me not to lose patience, but they don’t know what being bedridden for three months means to me … after having been a real street wanderer all my life. But what can one do? At least la pelona did not take me away.

Everywhere skeletons hanging from the ceilings and walls and furniture. Big skeletons clothed in popular dress and little skeletons in all corners of the bed

arrangements of jewels, glass balls, embroidered costumes, bells, feathers

and skeletons dancing

la pelona dancing

layers of petticoats the hems embroidered by Frida with ribald Mexican sayings

Her Tehuana dress

hair decorated bows clips combs bougainvillea blossoms

an embroidered blouse and long skirt with a ruffle of cotton on the hem

long necklaces of gold coins

elaborate headdresses with starched lace pleats

and jewelry — glass beads, pre-Colombian jade, colonial pendant earrings

the elaborate stage of you

She raises a ringed hand

I am only one cell of the complex revolutionary mechanism of the people for peace and of the new Soviet-Chinese-Czechoslovakian-Polish people who are bound by blood to my own person and to the indigenous peoples of Mexico. Amongst these large multitudes of Asiatic peoples there will always be my own faces — Mexican faces — of dark skin and beautiful form, limitless elegance, also the blacks will be liberated, they are so beautiful and so brave …

and she paints.

“The electric train with two cars approached the bus slowly. It hit the bus in the middle. Slowly the train pushed the bus. The bus had a strange elasticity. It bent more and more, but for a time it did not break. It was a bus with long benches on either side. I remember that at one moment my knees touched the knees of the person sitting opposite me, I was sitting next to Frida. When the bus reached its maximal flexibility it burst into a thousand pieces, and the train kept moving. It ran over many people.

“I remained under the train. Not Frida. But among the iron rods of the train, the handrail broke and went through Frida from one side to the other at the level of the pelvis. When I was able to stand up I got out from under the train. I had no lesions, only contusions. Naturally the first thing that I did was look for Frida.

“Something strange had happened. Frida was totally nude. The collision had unfastened her clothes. Someone in the bus, probably a house painter, had been carrying a packet of powdered gold. This package broke, and the gold fell all over the bleeding body of Frida. When people saw her they cried, ‘¡La bailarina, la bailarina!’ With the gold on her red, bloody body, they thought she was a dancer.”

… Upon your form, at my touch the cilia of flowers, the sounds of rivers respond. All the fruits were in the juice of your lips, the blood of the pomegranate…. of the mamey and pure pineapple. I pressed you against my breast and the prodigy of your form penetrated through all my blood through the tips of my fingers. Odor of essence of oak, of the memory of walnut, of the green breath of ash.

You are present, intangible and you are all the universe that I form in the space of my room. Your absence shoots forth trembling in the sound of the clock, in the pulse of the light; your breath through the mirror. From you to my hands I go over all your body, and I am with you a minute and I am with you a moment, and my blood is the miracle that travels in the veins of the air from my heart to yours.