No picture today.
I thought I would post a few incites I have been having regarding making a deck based on the life of Frida Kahlo.
I started research something over a year ago, mostly looking, reading, watching and taking notes. Trying to sort through the mountains of media which appears to grow in size daily.
I found nothing which particularly surprised or shocked me. I made a friend along the way and we formed a long distant bond which extended into a trusting agreement that she would write a book to compliment the deck and my deck would in turn compliment her book. So each have their own personality, rather than depend entirely upon eachother.
This is wonderful and as I so much love a challenge and appear to need a giant mountain to conquer, (Capricorn Sun, Aquarius rising, moon in Pisces).
Now it gets a bit personal. Around October, long term issues I have had with anaemia came to a head and I was forced to take ever more radical steps to level it out. I would call myself a high functioning hypochondriac- ie medical anxiety, it is classed as an OCD. In my case, totally fine for ages then bang, something happens and forced into the Doctor's surgery, the more often I am there I begin to lose the mental upper-hand and panic begins.
Last week I had surgery to try and fix the problem in a somewhat radical, basic way. Now I am okay, but here is where I get to the Frida part. The contact and decisions which must be made regarding medical interventions in one's health are extremely worrying. Being in the hands of changing strangers and trusting them not to do you more damage when all they seem to be able to do is fix a symptom on a given day, is a burden. As I have been in the doldrums of shock, pain, fear, guilt and shame one definitely gets after having only a minor procedure, the aftermath has me almost tangibly empathathizing with Frida's entire life.
We admire her strength, her radical life and her great- against the odds-love for Diego. In reality surely she was just muddling along, staggering from one distraction to another as she coped with physical and mental anguish, which was only bareable for short lucid periods. Her painting always cathartic, always an escape. Her obsessive love for Diego, really the deep need of a wounded child-woman who longs to be engulfed by this huge protective man, that she may trust him to sooth her and to never be truly detered by the ravishes of her depressive nature.
Though my own current situation does not even come close, I do feel a bit Frida right now and it is not a good place to be. Not reverential towards her, I never have been, just so sad, teary even, that her life was as it was and how short it was. Likely wanting to, yet never able to pursue a spiritual path, let alone attain an enlightened state. It seem that she survived until she didn't.
Her story is interesting, sometimes fantastical, but the closer I draw myself to her the more I feel almost repelled by her humanity- in the way that magnets repel and attract. Right now I feel if I get too close I will match her further. It is very uncomfortable. Frida's energy is not strong and empowering, rather, the opposite infused with anger, futility yet never sibmission or acceptance.
It is a strange position. I am not at all detered and likely it is my own detritus further enburdening Frida, but I am wary to spend a couple of years in her energy.
I am adding at the end, this is not the whole story or the whole of this complex, talented, bright-minded woman, but certainly to be included in my deck.