Monday, October 12, 2009

Columbus Day

And it's the real Columbus Day too, not a convenient three-day-weekend government mandated holiday. So thanks, Chris, for bumping into America and giving us someplace new to live with all the other rebels and malcontents.

October 12--Frida Kahlo, Self-Portrait with Velvet Dress. She was only sixteen when she painted it, Emmaline thought as she stared at the painting. The skin of the subject looked like porcelain and Emmaline could see the determination, the passion in Frida Kahlo's steady gaze. The dark storm and the waves rolling behind her symbolize the despair, the dark vision of many a sixteen year old girl as she relinquishes the safety of girlhood for the fierce joys of being a woman. A talent like that would have been both a pleasure and a curse to a young woman in Mexican aristocracy. How had the young Frida broken out of the staid and proper society to work to fulfill her destiny? He the older Rivera been her ticket to freedom? Was their marriage a shelter that provided her the luxury of freedom? Emmaline hoped it had. She admired the strength of Frida Kahlo's vision and envied her great artistic gift. But she also would have plucked or waxed that uni-brow in a New York minute. That just drove Emmaline nuts.

Happy Monday!
--Barbara

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