The Diary of Frida Kahlo

Finally, I was able to get hold of it, having waited for it for almost three months - as there is just one copy in my local library.  The book feels heavy, I mean literally heavy, the paper is thick and the hard cover is really hard. It feels valuable. On opening it, I see a photo of Frida lying on her bed, wearing her famous Mexican clothes, a lot of jewellery on her ears, neck and fingers, and flowers in her carefully pinned hear.
 

The introduction to the diary is written by none other than the most famous Mexican writer - Carlos Fuentes. On the first page of the introduction he writes:

"I only saw Frida Kahlo once. But first, I heard her. I was at a concert in the Palacio de Bellas Artes...(...)..as Kahlo entered her box in the second tier of the theater, all of these splendors and distractions came to naught. The jangling of sumptuous jewelry drowned out the sounds of the orchestra, but something beyond mere noise forced us all to look upwards and discover the apparition that announced herself with an incredible throb of metallic rhythms and then exhibited the self that both the noise of the jewelry and the silent magnetism displayed. It was the entrance of an Aztec goddess....."

In the part titled 'Suffering: Murdered by Life', Carlos Fuentes writes:

"...is pain something that can be said at all? It is undescribable, writes Virginia Woolf. You can know the thoughts of Hamlet, but you cannot truly describe a headache. For pain destroys language. (...)  Frida Kahlo had a Dog called Pain, more than a Pain called Dog. I mean, she directly describes her own pain, it does not render her mute, her scream is articulate because it achieves a visible and emotional form. Frida Kahlo is one of the greatest speakers for pain in a century ....."

"Frida Kahlo, as no other artist of our tortured century, translated pain into art. She suffered thirty-two operations from the day of her accident to the day of her death. Her biography consists of twenty-nice years of pain. From 1944 on, she is forced to wear eight corsets. In 1953, her leg is amputated as gengrene sets in. She secretes through her wounded back, "smelling like a dead dog". She is hung naked, head down, from her feet, to strengthen her spinal column. She loses her fetuses in pools of blood. She is forever surrounded by clots, chloroform, bandages, needles, scalpels..."

Her complicated relationship with Diego Riviera described in section "Politics: A Bomb Wrapped in Ribbons":

"Frida and Diego: She admitted that she had suffered two accidents in her life, the streetcar accident and Diego Riviera. Of her love for the man there can be no doubt. He was unfaithful. She reproached him: How could he consort with women unworthy of him or inferior to her? He admitted it: "The more I loved her, the more I wanted to hurt her." She riposted with many lovers, both men and women. He tolerated the women who loved Frida, but not the men."

In section "Dressed for Paradise" I find:

"Necklaces, rings, white organdy headgear, flowery peasant blouses, garnet-colored shawls, long skirts, all of it covering the broken body. Yet dress was a form of humor, too, a great disguise, a theatrical, self-fascinated form of autoeroticism, but also a call to imagine the sufferering, naked body underneath and discover its secrets."

At the end of the introduction, I see this little sentence:

"She will never close her eyes. For as she says here, to each and every one of us, "I am writing to you with my eyes"."

 

And then, there follows a short essay by Sarah M.Lowe about Frida's diary. It is about how the diary is unique, how it was never meant for public, that it is full of sketches/pictures but yet it is not a real typical artist's sketchbook as she did not really transform the drawings from the diary into  paintings (with one exception), and about Frida's style and some interesting background information.
Here is an interesting extract from the essay:
"Her thousand-year Mexican heritage offered solace. By combining Communism with this conviction, Kahlo fashioned an ideal that was uncomplicated by the realities of the two regimes, for neither the bloodthirsty, class-divided aspects of the Aztecs, nor the authoritative, regimented practices of Stalin are considered. Kahlo distills and purifies her vision of her two faiths, honoring them as idealized powers that gave her strength, especially as she saw her life drawing to an end.
Kahlo kept this diary for the last ten years of her life, and it documents her physical decline. Dated pages are sporadic, and thus it is difficult to discern the chronology. But an awful progression - regression - is unmistakable, as Kahlo faces the loneliness and terror of her illness."

And then, there is another photo of Frida. This time she is standing. Earrings, neclaces, rings, and Frida lost in thought. Her face always so serious.

 

Now, I move onto the actual diary which is the real photocopied thing. I mean, it is so colourful! Her handwriting. Her drawings. Personal diary, so artistic.

So beautiful.

The diary is very personal, only Frida could know what she meant. There are pages full of words and expressions only - somehow connected. Even though there is a translation into English and explanation at the back of the book - it is impossible to know their full meaning. There are letters intended for her friends and her beloved Diego. The Diary is written in Spanish of course but I have seen one page in german (since Frida's father was a german-hungarian, she could speak and write german).
It feels strange to be reading someone's personal diary that was never meant for anyone else but the person who was writing it.
I see a lot of sadness and pain, and a bit of humor and playfullness ... 
I have not finished it yet. I will keep on reading...

Couple of days later.
Just finished reading it. Some pages are really difficult to read as Frida's handwriting gets barely legible sometimes - she must have been in pain- so it is good to have a translation at the back of the book. I really enjoyed reading it.
Good bye Diary.

 

Our dogs

Here are some images of our dogs: Storm and Kai.
My partner took some of their photos and after having played with them using some kind of a cool graphic program converted them into sketch look-alike images. Aren't they just wonderful?

Storm and Kai in the park (posing for photos)

Kai in the dining room - looking a bit bored

Kai - just lying there

Storm - always so gorgeous

Storm - 'what?'

The Way (film 2010)

Last night, I watched 'The Way' for the first time. I was moved. I shed tears not once but a few times while watching it.

The film tells a story of Tom - an American eye doctor - who comes to France to collect the body of his almost forty-years old son who was killed in the Pyrenees while walking The Camino de Santiago (The Way of St. James). Tom has the body cremated, and decides to continue his son's pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela (walking 800km of The Way of St. James). He carries his son's ashes with him and keeps on spreading them (bit by bit) in various places on the way. He meets other people on the way, and even though he did not want it at all at first, he forms a bond of friendship with 3 other pilgrims that happen somehow to walk with him. The story moves at a slow pace but it is nevertheless beautiful. Tom seems to have come to peace with his son (whom he did not understand before), learnt a lot about himself on the way, and made wonderful friends. He is shown to continue travelling - just what his son wanted to do - he went to Morocco.

Quote: "you don't choose a life Dad. You live one" (Daniel, the son, to Tom). I love this quote.

Django Unchained (film 2012)

Loved it! Saw it today and loved it.

Lots of violence and blood though, but you would expect that from Tarantino. Set in the Southern part of States in 1858 - in the times of slavery - tells a story of a slave Django who gets freed by a bounty hunter (dr King Shultz) and gets trained as one himself. Having earned a lot of money as bounty hunters over the winter, they embark on a quest to free Django's wife (Broomhilda) from a cruel plantation owner Mr Candie. On the way, they see a lot of brutal treatment that slaves are subjected to. It is very sad to think that those acts of cruelty and exploitation of human beings were actually a norm in those times. While watching it, I was almost shaking with anger - as you do when you see such injustice. Yet, the story was made to look like and feel like an old fashioned Western movie. The main character is a hero, kills all the bad people and gets the girl.

I realise the film would not be everyone's cup of tea, but I will see it  again some time in the future.

Open Veins of Latin America - Eduardo Galeano

The full title of this book is: 'Open Veins of Latin America, Five Centuries of The Pillage of A Continent' with a foreword by Isabel Allende (also Latin American writer).

I have heard and read so much about this book. I was so excited, beginning of this week, to actually have it in my hands, I just had to start reading it immediately. It did not take me long.

People say that it is a must-read for anyone interested, even a bit, in the history of Americas. And I could not agree more.  In the book, the history of Latin America is analyzed  from the moment Europeans arrived and made it their colonies till now - I mean till the 70's as the book was published first in 1971 and then one chapter was added in 1978. Exploitation, dominance by Europeans and then by United States are described as well as the long term effects. The book is packed with so many facts and data that I must admit I could not understand all of it and sometimes just got the general idea.

I was warned that the book is very sad. And, yes, so it is. Bloodbaths, tortures, murders, slaughters, inhumane living conditions, injustice, slavery through out centuries - the Latin American history is just so full of it.

In the foreword, Isabel Allende says: "He has more first-hand knowledge of Latin America than anybody else I can think of, and uses it to tell the world of the dreams and disillusions, the hopes and the failures of its people. He is an adventurer with a talent for writing, a compassionate heart, and a soft sense of humor....Galeano denounces exploitation with uncompromising ferocity, yet this book is almost poetic in its description of solidarity and human capacity for survival in the midst of the worst kind of despoliation". 

She also said: "Like all his countrymen, Eduardo (the author) wanted to be a soccer player. He aslo wanted to be a saint, but as it turned out he ended up committing most of the deadly sins, as he once confessed 'I have never killed anybody, it is true, but it is because I lacked the courage or the time, not because I lacked the desire.'"

After reading this book, I think I can understand why he felt this way. It is also true for Che Guevara's reasoning - I can just see it so much better.

Not long after publishing 'The Open Veins..' , the author had to go into exhile, and his book was banned not only in his country - Uruguay - but also in Brasil, Argentina and Chile by the military goverments of the countries at the time.

In his other book, 'Days and Nights of Love and War (1983), he wrote: "...we are what we do, especially what we do to change what we are..." - well, he definetely did something to change others' views on Latin America.

In the introduction ('The Open Veins..'), Eduardo Galeano says:

"Along the way we have even lost the right to call ourselves Americans, (...). For the world today, America is just the United States; the region we inhabit is a sub-America, a second-class America of nebulous identity. Latin America is the region of open veins. Everything, from the discovery until our times, has always been transmuted into European - or later United States - capital, and as such has accumulated in distant centers of power. Everything: the soil, its fruits and its mineral-rich depths, the people and their capacity to work and to consume, natural resources and human resources."

"The human murder by poverty in Latin America is secret; every year, without making a sound, three Hiroshima bombs explode over communities that have become accustomed to suffering with clenched teeth. This systematic violence is not apparent but is real and constantly increasing: its holocausts are not made known in the sensational press but in Food and Agricultural Organization statistics."

From Part I -  Mankind's poverty as a consequence of the wealth of the land:

"In 1912 President William H.Taft declared: 'The day is not far distant when three Stars and Stripes at three equidistant points will mark our territory: one at the North Pole, another at the Panama Canal, and the third at the South Pole. The whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally'."

From Part II - Development is a voyage with more shipwrecks than navigators:

"Brazil, the biggest coffee producer, does not have the right to compete by exporting its own soluble coffee...(...) only has the right to supply the raw material to enrich foreign factories."

From Part III - Seven years after:

"That reality and those books show that underdevelopment in Latin America is a cosequence of development elsewhere, that we Latin Americans are poor because the ground we tread is rich, and that places privileged by nature have been cursed by history."

"Slave ships no longer ply the ocean. Today the slavers operate from ministries of labor."

 

 

 

The Matrix (film 1999)/ Parallel Worlds - Michio Kaku

Last night,  I watched 'The Matrix' on TV -  for the second time in my life (so far). I remember that when I watched it for the first time (when it was realesed 14 years ago or some time after that)  I was not impressed. Somehow it did not appeal to me, and it seemed just silly. I do not think I even concentrated on it much (do not remember whether it was in a cinema or a video at home). And as I didn't think much of it then, I never intended to watch the sequels 'The Matrix Reloaded' and 'The Matrix Revolutions'.

Well, over the years my views and interests obviously have changed. I have watched quite a number of different scientific series about the Universe/space and physics, as well as read a few books regarding space, science, quantum physics etc. They are all intended for general public, hence,  made easier to understand by individuals like myself (with a very limited knowledge of maths and sciences).

I must say this time round, I fairly enjoyed the film, and I am going to get hold of the sequels. In the film, humanity is mentally living in a simulation world called 'The Matrix', while in fact they never actually move from one place, their bodies being attached to tubes, providing energy = acting as batteries to intelligent machines. Humans are completely unaware of the situation, and live their entire lives within the program (The Matrix). The main character, Neo, gets awaken, gets disconnected from the tubes and set free. He is made aware of the situation and joins the rebellion against the machines.  There are a lot of references to 'Alice in Wonderland' (Alice, in my opinion, is a fenomenal story), suggesting the questions: What is real? What is reality and what a dream?

That reminds me a lot of the famous 'Butterfly Dream' of a chinese phylosopher (Chuang Tzu). Chuang Tzu once had a dream, in which he was a butterfly, and when he awoke he was Chuang Tzu again, so then he started wondering whether he was a human dreaming that he was a butterfly or a butterfly dreaming that he was a human. Something along those lines anyway.

Also,  Plato's 'allegory of the cave' where the prisoners, who (their whole lives) see only shadows on the wall (shadows of the real word), would grow to believe that the shadows are the reality.

What is reality? What is truly real? - Who could possibly answer this question for sure?

In the book 'Parallel Worlds', which I read about 2 years ago, Michio Kaku - a leading world scientist -  touches a lot of subjects that are absolutely mind blowing. He introduces the reader into the idea of parallel universes (in one of the theories parallel universes are different realities in which everytime a person makes a decision a new universe is created with the opposite decision being taken), quantum physics (where pretty much anything is possible),  types of civilizations that might be able to harness the energy of the sun and stars or even galaxies, travel through warmholes and use blackholes, and not only live on other planets in distant worlds but also move to other dimentions,  and much more. According to quantum physics: observation determines existence, therefore, nothing really exists until it is observed by someone. Like I said - science of alternative universes, and science of the very small (so called quantum physics) are truly mind blowing.  It is really an awesome book, in my opinion, and I am going to read it again at some point. The reason why this book comes to my mind, in reference to the above film, is because 'The Matrix' is used as an example of living in a simulated reality.
I have also read  Stephen Hawking & Leonard Mlodinow  'The Grand Design' in which the authors touch the same subjects and try to answer 'the ultimate questions of life'. In the book, there are chapters titled: 'What is Reality?, 'Alternative Histories', 'Choosing Our Universe' that talk about what reality is, and if we really have free will. I have read the book a while back therefore will need to read it again to reflect on it a bit more. Luckily, I have both S.Hawking's and M.Kaku's books on my book shelf so can re-visit them any time.

Anyway, going back to 'The Matrix' and Michio Kaku, here is an extract of an interview with Michio Kaku, that I found on KurzweilAl.net (2003):

"Is there any possibility, similar to the premise of The Matrix, that we are living in a simulation?Well, philosophically speaking, it’s always possible that the universe is a dream, and it’s always possible that our conversation with our friends is a by-product of the pickle that we had last night that upset our stomach. However, science is based upon reproducible evidence. When we go to sleep and we wake up the next day, we usually wind up in the same universe. It is reproducible. No matter how we try to avoid certain unpleasant situations, they come back to us. That is reproducible. So reality, as we commonly believe it to exist, is a reproducible experiment, it’s a reproducible sensation. Therefore in principle, you could never rule out the fact that the world could be a dream, but the fact of the matter is, the universe as it exists is a reproducible universe.  Now, in the Matrix, a computer simulation was run so that virtual reality became reproducible. Every time you woke up, you woke up in that same virtual reality. That technology, of course, does not violate the laws of physics. There’s nothing in relativity or the quantum theory that says that the Matrix is not possible. However, the amount of computer power necessary to drive the universe and the technology necessary for a neural implant is centuries to millennia beyond anything that we can conceive of, and therefore this is something for an advanced Type I or II civilization."

Che (2008 film) / Benicio del Toro

 

Just finished watching 'Che' - both parts: 'The Argentinian' and 'Guerilla' - with Benicio del Toro as Che. The first part of the film is based on Che's diaries about Cuban Revolution. It starts pretty much from the moment of landing in Cuba and finishes when the revolutionaries succesfully take over Cuba and Che is on his way to Havana. The second part is based on Che's diaries from Bolivia. Both parts concentrate on Che - guerilla, just that (with a post-revolution interview with Che and some of his speeches in the United Nations in part 1). Having read his biography I know there is just so much of his story missing in between the two parts - his international political involvement and his work in post-revolution Cuba, as well as his campaign in Congo, and much more. Nevertheless, the film is quite powerful. It feels like a documentary. Slow - it is not buiding up like all those action films. Yet, powerful. I felt like crying at the end.

Benicio del Toro is great in here, as he always is.