On the Edge

 

trying to watch her step

Pure Joy

In the kitchen window:

a garden of howls and barks

They cry for pleasure

for the simple reason that they can

Once they tried to synchronize

to send up a collective sign of joy

But having resisted organization

or leadership for so long

they soon drifted back 

to spontaneous cacophony

Waiting

waiting for his shift to end

the affair to begin

just wants to be her friend

but he can't win

it's just not in the cards

Soul Music

At night, while others sleep

she lies awake, listens

for the tap, tap, tap of a bush

against the windows

the low throaty whistle of the wind

in the bougainvillaea

and drifts into lucid dreams

where her hands caress the djembe

making music for the soul

soft and gentle and hopeful

In a Tangle

Just spent the last week, fretting, fussing, cursing, scheming, doing everything I could think of to get my computer to work online, including several trips to Staples, threatening to buy a new computer, and using other people's computers. 

Today, after spending 4 hours with a technician and about $500 for new hardware (a more powerful antenna, modem and router) I am once again online. For now! Hopefully I can think of something to say!

Where Do I Begin

I'm stuck, in the middle, between wanting to say something and say nothing. And wondering what, and why, and if it's of any importance, to anyone, anywhere. And clueless about how to find the answer. And really clear that the answer, if not the question, is there, somewhere.

The Way It Was: 1954

Never to be forgotten.

The Way I Like to Think of Her

 

Kahlo’s evocative Roots (1943), an oil-on-metal self-portrait with the artist’s reclining body sending out leafy green branches as well as roots reaching into a barren earth, is considered to be one of her least anguished and most beautiful self-portraits. It sold for $5,616,000 at Sotheby’s New York, May 2006.

Still Life

 

Still Life with Parrot and Fruit, 1951

After enduring seven operations the previous year, Kahlo is confined to a wheelchair with full time nursing care. She continues painting.

Self-Portrait 1940

Kahlo painted Self-Portrait with Cropped Hair shortly after she finally divorced Diego Rivera for his many dalliances with other women. She had painted many self-portraits, often showing herself with flowing hair and wearing traditional Mexican dresses. Now, in renunciation of Rivera, she painted herself short haired and in a man's shirt, shoes, and oversized suit. In December, she remarries Diego.

The Suicide of Dorothy Hale

"The Suicide of Dorothy Hale" commissioned in 1939 by "Vanity Fair" publisher Clare Booth Luce

Expecting a stylized memorial portrait, Luce is shocked by Frida's graphic depiction of the suicide of their mutual friend and seriously consideres destroying the portrait.

First and Last

Diego Rivera: not her first lover, but her only true love. They married in 1929. Her work as an artist languished until the late 30s. 

September 17, 1925: The Bus

 

A bus would change Frida's life forever. Hit by a trolley, it shattered into a thousand pieces.

"The crash bounced us forward and a handrail pierced me the way a sword pierces a bull," Frida wrote later. She would spend the rest of her life in and out of hospitals.

Frida

Dear Frida

I think of your work and 

your life every day. 

July 6, 1907-July 13-1954

Backwards and Forwards

“What a strange thing is memory, and hope; one looks backward, the other forward.” Grandma Moses

I start the day hoping to create order in my tiny space. Then from the front yard I hear a mockingbird wailing away and I’m off searching for that little iron skillet, the one I remember granddaddy using to fry an egg for my breakfast.

Beauty, Order, and Purpose

Life with a new beginning~Art by ranni 

 Please check out 

http://www.myspace.com/artistsforautism

Some days I see beauty everywhere. Some days I put great energy into creating order. Some days I search mightily for purpose behind everyday actions. 

The challenge of finding all three in each day, each hour, each minute, each second is elusive. But I do not give up.

Some Days

Reclining Nude by Vlaminck

Some days I just want to lie down on a soft blue quilt and stare at a vase of flowers while my mind drifts back and forth between the past and the future, trying to figure out which one I would most like to change. 

Looking for Makeup

Just one of those days.