Frikowskis, Fugazis, and Other Motherfuckahs

 In my Facebook "memories," sometimes a blessing, sometimes a curse, the following passage, widely attributed to Frida Kahlo, came up today:

The saga of this supposed Kahlo quotation is hilarious, given how earnestly and avidly it is recycled, and repeatedly attributed to her, and how aching and passionate the sentiment is. But it's fake Kahlo. It's very real Estafanía Mitre. Mitre, it turns out, is a young poet who wrote the above (or a version of it, originally in Spanish), and versions of it started appearing on Twitter around May 2014. I wonder how she feels about seeing her roughly translated piece go viral and get attributed to Kahlo. 

Here's one of the early posts, in Spanish, from the above article:

Mereces un amor que te quiera despeinada, con todo y las razones que te levantan de prisa, con todo y los demonios que no te dejan dormir. Mereces un amor que te haga sentir segura, que pueda comerse al mundo si camina de tu mano, que sienta que tus abrazos van perfectos con su piel. Mereces un amor que quiera bailar contigo, que visite el paraíso cada que mira tus ojos, y que no se aburra nunca de leer tus expresiones. Mereces un amor que te escuche cuando cantas, que te apoye en tus ridículos, que respete que eres libre, que te acompañe en tu vuelo, que no le asuste caer. Mereces un amor que se lleve las mentiras, que te traiga la ilusión, el café y la poesía.

— Estefanía Mitre (via soledadurbana)

The auto-translate from Bing Translator is kind of hilarious:

"You deserve a love that wants you to be toused, with everything and the reasons that lift you in a hurry, with everything and the demons that won't let you sleep. You deserve a love that makes you feel safe, that can be eaten in the world if you walk hand in hand, that feels that your hugs go perfect with your skin. You deserve a love that wants to dance with you, that visits paradise every time you look at your eyes, and that never gets bored of reading your expressions. You deserve a love that listens to you when you sing, that supports you in your ridiculous, that respects that you are free, that accompanies you on your flight, that does not frighten you to fall. You deserve a love that takes away lies, brings you illusion, coffee and poetry.

— Estefanía Mitre (via soledadurbana)"

Don't we all deserve a love that supports us in our ridiculous? Don't we want to be toused? A great big motherfuckin' love that can be eaten in the world if you walk hand in hand? Interestingly (whoa adverb boy), whoever translated Mitre's original into English substituted "hope" for "illusion," and how telling is that shit?

Anyway, I posted the quotation (with the Frida Kahlo attribution, and then was called on it by a FB friend, and edited to indicate the truth), and it led to a thought provoking exchange with a friend of mine. Their point of view, paraphrased, was basically "okay, that's great, but it's unrealistic, and maybe we need to lower our expectations." I appreciated hearing that, and I had included the following prelude to the quotation anyway:

"do you deserve this (the universal second person intended here, not *you* personally necessarily)? maybe you have created this with another. If you don't have this, is it because you don't deserve it? Don't want it? Or did you have it for five minutes, five months, five years, one second? Or have you not ever nor do you now have this because the universe is unjust and life is a dark comedy? Or is it because, if we got what we deserved, we'd be in serious trouble? Or if we got what we deserved, we'd take it for granted, and let fear and small mindedness ruin it? Or is it stupid in general to want anything at all from other human beings, who do not even know how to wipe their asses?"

That last question was a joke reflecting back on another Facebook post, regarding people who wipe their asses sitting on the toilet and people who wipe standing up, which, of course, led to an epic number of comments. This is the kind of thing Facebook is best at, really. Well, this and Rumi, and fugazi Frida. 

Anyway, my friend's realism verging on cynicism (there should be a word for that) got me thinking. Put me in touch with how hardened and bitter "a part" of me has been, "on and off," for almost two years now. Like the darker screeds of Bukowski, especially in his embittered, railing against capitalist nonsense and the way it hollows people out, mode. I mentioned as much to my friend and she said I was right, and I said I didn't want to be right. I want to be Frida, not Bukowski. She suggested maybe the truth is, we are all Frikowskis. This, I can maybe find a way to live with. 

like, part crow. part rainbow. All romantics meet the same fate someday anyway, so why not?

This small stretch of October days from 10/5 to 10/9 is the third solar return to one of the best, most unforgettable small stretches of days of my life, so I was already bouncing back and forth around all of this yesterday. I had already been remembering the marking of time, until I was reminded (yet again, by Facebook "memories," and a picture of freshly shined shoes at the Phoenix airport). Wisely or unwisely, this led me to a great many stunningly vivid and lovely memories, all tumbling out of a very few days, seemingly impossible that this series of experiences could have occurred in so short a time, and be so numinous and poignant and indelible. It was not a "bad" experience to plunge into vivid recollection, but it was deeply disorienting, and existentially bewildering, and achingly both sad and oddly edifying.  

The truth is, until some of these experiences, I had not known in blood and guts and bone what I had been missing. 

I recently had a dream where an old man who looked a lot like Jung was writing me a permission slip of some kind, which in itself is odd. He said, "I am only writing this out for you because you meant every word you said. If you had been lying, you would not get my note." When I woke up, I knew what he had meant. It's true. I did, in fact, mean every last word I said. That, in itself, may well be a first for me. As I have mentioned before, people are capable of literally saying goddamned anything at all, any time, for any or no reason. "Holding people to their word" is like trying to hold mercury in one's hands, and just as toxic. 

A fake Frida quotation, the idea that maybe "deserve" is an ill chosen word, the idea that maybe the way through is to be a Frikowski, and the idea that there's no quick or easy way to deal with memory itself. A tangle of a Wednesday morning. Experiencing something unfold in the present and discovering that it is *better* than romanticism, better than illusion, better than imagination, is astonishing enough. It leads one to the center of a labyrinth where, in spite of pragmatism, one begins to suspect that one actually deserves *more* than all of that. But one won't get it, or won't have it, or, at the very least, definitely will not keep it. 

It's a little bit like when I first went to Glacier National Park a couple summers ago. Just an analogy. But one sees photos, and thinks, wow. Or one gets told by people who have been there. "You have to go. It'll be beautiful." But what happened to me when I drove up there from the flatlands of Shelby, Montana, and actually experienced all of it, would not have been possible to predict. The Mitre piece is written by someone who has been there. At least, it seems that way. There's all different ways to stand in relation to it. But if you've been there, you know. 

Talk about being supported in your ridiculous.