Extracts from the Diary of Frida Kahlo
I was lying – flaccid – running – revelry / without story reason / great haste mirrorlike / cardboard doll (204)
My skirts with their lace flounces and the antique blouse I always wore (...) paint the absent portrait of only one person. (209)
I don’t know what my mocking dream thinks. The ink, the stain. the shape. the color (sic). I’m a bird. I’m everything. without any more confusion. All the bells. the rules. the lands. the big grove. the greatest tenderness. the immense tide. grabage. water jar, cardboard cards. dice digits duets vain hope of constructing the cloths, the kings. so silly.my nails. the thread and the hair. the bantering nerve I’m going with myself. (213)
Only one mountain can know the core of another mountain. (216)
The day, or the hour, or the minute that I lived would be mine and everyone else’s (242).
ourselves – / variety of the one / incapable of escap- / ing to the two – to the three – / to the usual – to return to the one . / Yet not the _ sum_ / (sometimes called God (...)) (250).
I have been sick for a year now. Seven operations on my spinal column. Doctor Farill saved me. He brought me back the joy of life. I am still in a wheelchair, and I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk again soon. I have a plaster corset even though it is a frightful nuisance, it helps my spine. I don’t feel any pain. Only this … bloody tiredness, and naturally, quite often despair. A despair which no words can describe. I’m still eager to live. I’ve started to paint again. (252)
The quiet life.. / giver of worlds.. / Wounded deer / Tehuanas / Lightning, grief suns / hidden rhythms (272)
Frida Kahlo. The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait. Trans,. Sarah M. Lowe. London: Bloomsbury, 1995.
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