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

My hands are sunk in oranges.

She remembers when her mouth — pressed to the ear — to the hum of the paint and the blood:

don’t kiss anyone else

magenta, dark green, yellow

And she watches him. Hair on fire, hair on firepaint not my sister liar wild she paints not my sister wayward: live not you too Cristina

liar

wild life on fire

And she watches him betray her with her sister.

(red covers the page)

Running through the glade, the deer is pierced by

9 arrows

And she opens herself like a fruit to every man

And the women too. Oh yes you are beautiful and Diego

would approve

My fingertips touch your blood. She draws.

These are the vows you take.

votive: vision

the stitches do not close over

Crimson

Crimson

Crimson

Crimson like the blood that runs

when they kill a deer.

Pierced by 9 Cristinas why

And she paints — the dark paw draped over the shoulder, the small black eyes — there, there, tenderly, there now so tenderly the way color — the way color has always — the way paint the way— Eyes in the hands and a sense of touch in the eyes.

Diego

Kiss me love me a little longer — standing in front of this bit of miracle — this little piece of paradise, honesty, beauty, bliss, lucidity, she paints:

two butterflies in the braid, two flowers laid over the leaf green (sadness, science, the whole of Germany is this color ) and the encroaching foliage — the eyebrows a hummingbird and around the neck — delicate drops of blood — the hummingbird hanging from thorns — on the shoulders the black monkey, the black cat, and the butterflies will be white and the flowers will be white, a little free and the white of the blouse — the crimson mouth — and the eyes are certain — and the eyes — both dead and alive — see far—

And it comes to her

And it comes to her in awe.

I cannot love Diego for what he is not.

“… Diego still loses all the letters that reach his hands, and he leaves his papers everywhere … he gets very cross when one calls him for a meal, he pays compliments to all the pretty girls, and sometimes he makes an ant eye with some of the city girls who arrive unexpectedly, on the pretext of ’showing them’ his frescoes, he takes them for a day or two … to see the different landscapes…. for a change he no longer fights as he did before with the people who bother him when he is working, his fountain pens go dry, his clock stops and every fifteen days it has to be sent to be fixed, he keeps wearing those huge miner’s shoes (he has used the same ones for three years). He gets furious when he loses the keys of the car, and usually they appear in his own pocket, he never exercises and never sunbathes: he writes articles for newspapers that generally cause a terrific uproar, he defends the IV International with cloak and sword, and he is delighted that Trotsky is here….

These are more or less the main details.

… As you can observe, I have been painting — which is a lot to say, since I have spent my life loving Diego and being a good-for- nothing with respect to work, but now I continue loving Diego, and what’s more I have begun painting monkeys seriously.

… You can tell Boit that I am behaving very well in the sense that I do not drink as much cognac, tequila, etc. I consider this one more step forward toward the liberation of the … oppressed classes. I drank to drown my pain, but the damned pain learned how to swim….

And she closes her eyes onto a bed of nails, and she dies back a little and she watches an armada 11 ships 500 men 32 crossbows, and she watches from the distance the little conquistador Hemán Cortés grow slowly monstrous in her sight. The new Spain.

A comet with three heads hangs over the land.

A temple burns to the ground—

The Heart of the One World breaking open

magenta kisses

The new Spain they say.

The new Spain they say O Mexico!

La Uorona weeping for her dead children

La Malinche, La Chingada, the violated one—

She weeps.

All the violated ones.

See the tubes of fire, magical six-legged beasts O see

A world of betrayal, blood and ruin

As confirmed by the Aztec prophecy

And in her black pupil she holds her ancient world:

Aztec, Toltec, Mayan, Olmec — at her fetish altar

And she goes further — to the Chichimeca, dog people originated from the Place of Cranes — at her fetish altar — and then further — and she bites down

Fifty thousand years before. Until the end of the fourth ice age the indigenous people came across the Bering Strait. Venga, she smiles and waves.

Through the Demerol now she greets Tezcatlipoca, have a drink, the god of evil, embodiment of darkness, the smoking mirror. And Quetzalcoatl, his benevolent reflection, spirit bird, redeemer, winged eternity of wind, precious twin. Do you have a light? She holds the double burning bird in her mirrored eye. Dark and light. 2 Fridas, one who is whole and one who is broken. Not the leg.

She watches Quetzalcoatl on his doomed path now. Drinking deeply from the cup, who has tasted such sweetness? until he loses all memory, then self, then—

and when his lovely sister enters

and when his lovely sister enters the bedchamber

he succumbs and succumbs and succumbs again.

Ashamed he knows he cannot stay and builds a raft of snakes. Goodbye. She hears him say in the Year of One Reed I shall return one day.

Each year the solar calendar leaves five empty days. Days of waiting. Days in vain. The Toltecs wait. The Aztecs wait. Thousands of years are passing without a sign of him. Frida laughs. Look, now, on the horizon, is it you, can it really be you returned? It’s you she cackles drugged and babbling. In a year of One Reed: 1519.

Lord Quetzalcoatl, Moctezuma bows to him. Beloved one. How long we’ve waited. But it is the one deranged by gold-lust who takes his hand.

Carrying tubes of fire, the six-legged beast comes, carrying smallpox, sorrow.

Cortés.

And where there were once villages of mud and clay, flying buttresses. At the heart of the One World all the temples, pyramids destroyed. She closes her eyes to the ruins still.

Now flying buttresses.

The arrogance of their touch.

The Spanish army had so overloaded their horses with gold and treasure that hundreds were drowned as they crossed Lake Texcoco.

The arrogance of their touch — Ferdinand, Isabella, Santa Anna, Cortes. Blood and blood and greed and ruin.

And the French.

My dog people: heart, heart. The hundred lamentations. Father Hildago dreaming liberation …

All the tyrants loss and blood and sorrow. Cinco de Mayo. Napoleon. Porfirio Diaz.

And Frida, “daughter of la raza, ” sings a revolution song.

Drinking tequila like a real mariachi. 1913.

Tonight I will get drunk

Child of my heart

Tomorrow is another day

And you will see that I am right.

The sun clanging.

She breathes on the glass. She draws an O

She dreams, and dies a little

Mexico!

… No words can describe Diego’s immense tenderness toward the things that possess beauty, his affection for beings who do not have anything to do with the current classless society, or his respect for those oppressed by it. He especially cares about the Indians to whom he is linked by blood; he loves them dearly because of their elegance, beauty and for being the living flower of the cultural tradition of America. He loves children, all animals — especially bold Mexican dogs — birds, plants and rocks. He loves all beings without being docile or neutral. He is very affectionate but he never gives himself completely; for this reason, and because he hardly has time to dedicate to personal relations, they call him ungrateful. He is respectful and refined.…