I’ve quit forcing myself to be productive and regularly let my mind wonder. But I crave focus. So it’s 2am and I’m counting the slats in the blinds. There are 31. I looked at them to see if I could hold concentration through the entire count. I look at my picture of Frida Kahlo, staring back at me. She approves. She doesn’t always, her approval is rare and fleeting.
I think of her street car accident and how she lived her life in pain and turned it into beauty, art, wonder. Wrapped in an back brace that both tortured her artist’s soul and held her body together. Squeeze to tight and the pain is unimaginable. Too loose and the body falls apart. And her vulnerability her back brace her surgeries was her power and her pain in a time and place where death loomed at every corner and people living in the moment made peace with pain and ambiguity.
And as I finish this thought, I look for a thread to tie it together. I cannot I’m tired it’s fragile. Weak. I don’t feel coherent except to myself.
The structure of the blinds is the same design as her back brace, they are threaded together and suspended in time and space by a thin white string. And if it unravels, is cut or broken they crumble.
and my own life is a tangled ball and a string of thoughts which I seek to be understood but not unraveled. I want more than 31 slats..but there is a finite supply of days., I am at peace with ambiguity but I wonder if I cut the strings and set them free. Would they come crashing down when unraveling or just be glad to be free from constraints. Or would they stay suspended in time and space there’s actually a small probability of this.
You think you know what will happen but you never do. You never really know why you are in pain or what really causes it.The desire for coherence is societal only because we want to be off putting don’t want to be alone.
I don’t want to be alone or in pain, but these are the threads of an artist. The suspension bridge to origin, beginnings. There are 31 beginnings in the blinds and a wry smile on Frida’s face.
I'm, like Frida, approve. :)