Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Scouting the City

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       A soft spot to sit.


            Elegant feet.


  Sweepers always on view. No garbage.



   Our electric taxi. 6.1 km./kilowatt hour 


Cuidad Mexico CD is a huge company with taxis, tour buses and bicycles throughout the city for rent.


  A swinging basket for your baby.


       In Oaxaca hot chocolate was prepared by beating chocolate 
       into hot milk. Here you mix it yourself.


      Enormous sculpture.



     Lots of fruit for sale.


  Sidewalk sweepers always on the move.


On the door of a women's washroom.


           On the men's.


Frida Kahlo. Her Passion. Her Pain.


  Entrance to La Casa Azul, The Blue House, the birth and death place of Frida Kahlo.


    We waited two hours in line to get in. Bob is centre front wearing a white cap.


The family we talked with in line for two hours. He is a political cartoonist. They are
from the state of Sinaloa, noted for its violence. They said you're careful to associate with the right people.


     Kahlo and Rivera lived here for around 25 years.



         In the courtyard.


          Kahlo's braces.

Bob and I were very moved by the exhibition of her clothes and various braces, only discovered in a room next to the upstairs bathroom in 2004, 50 years after she had died. We've seen exhibitions of her paintings, seen the movie with Selma Hayek and read her life story. But in her home we saw a documentary of interviews with her biographer, a former art classmate and an orthopedic surgeon who described her constant pain as 10/10.

But despite her pain she lived a life of intense passion, passion for her art, for her husband Diego Rivera, and for her many lovers both male and female and of course enormous passion for life. Her pain came not from polio she contracted at age six leaving her right leg shorter and thinner than the left -- but from a horrible bus and trolley car accident when she was 18. 

Her injuries were incredible: a broken spinal column, a broken collarbone, broken ribs, a broken pelvis (in three places), eleven fractures in her right leg, a crushed and dislocated right foot, and a dislocated shoulder. Also, an iron handrail pierced her abdomen and her uterus. She had three miscarriages and between 22 and 35 operations.


    She wore special shoes.





 Kahlo is wearing the dress in the middle in the photo below.



     As a young teenager.


           Headpiece.


         Her right shoe.


              Her lipstick.



  She camouflaged her deformities.



        Kahlo's easel.




         Her bed. We didn't see a double bed.

Nighttime in the city.






   Almost a full moon just after the spring equinox.


              Las Bellas Artes.


      Making Creme Brulé


    Entering our building last night.

         More to follow ;)






































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