Frida Kahlo, Paris, France letter to Nickolas Muray, New York, N.Y., 1939 Feb. 16

My adorable Nick. Mi Niño,

I am writing you on my bed in the American Hospital, yesterday it was the first day I didn't have fever and they aloud me to eat a little, so I feel better. Two weeks ago I was so ill that they brought me here in an ambulance because I couldn't even walk. You know that I don't know why or how I got coli-bracilus on the kidneys thru the intestines, and I had such an inflamation and pain that I thought I was going to die. They took several eXrays of the kidneys and it seems that they are infected with those damn colibacilus. Now I am better and next monday I will be out of this rotten hospital. I can't go to the hotel, because I would be all alone, so the wife of Marcel Duchamp invited me to stay with her for a week while I recover a little. Your telegram arrived this morning and I cried very much –of happiness, and because I miss you with all my heart and my blood. Your letter, my sweet, came yesterday, it is so beautiful, so tender, that I have no words to tell you what a joy it gave me. I adore you my love, believe me, like I never loved anyone-only Diego will be in my heart as close as you-always. I haven't tell Diego a word about all this trouble of being ill – because he will worry so much – and I think in few days I will be allright again, so it isn't worthwhile to alarm him.
Don't you think so?

Besides this damn sickness I had the lousiest luck since I arrived. In first place the question of the exibition is all a damn mess. Until I came the paintings were still in the custum house, because the s. of a b. of Breton didn't take the trouble to get them out. The photographs which you sent ages ago, he never received. So he says- the gallery was not arranged for the exibit at all and Breton has no gallery of his own long ago. So I had to wait days and days just like an idiot till I met Marcel Duchamp (a marvelous painter) who is the only one who has his feet on the earth, among all this bunch of coocoo lunatic son of bitches of the surrealists. He immediately got my paintings out and tried to find a gallery. Finally there was a gallery called "Pierre Colle" which accepted the damn exibition. Now Breton wants to exibit together with my paintings, 14 portraits of the XIX century (Mexicans) about 32 photographs of Alvarez Bravo, and lots of popular objects which he bought on the markets of Mexico – all this junk, can you beat that? For the 15th of March the gallery supose to be ready. But…. The 14 oils of the XIX Century must be restored and the damn restoration takes a whole month. I had to lend to Brenton 200 bucks (Dlls) for the restoration because he doesn't have a penny. (I sent a cable to Diego telling him the situation and telling that I lended to Breton that money – he was furious, but now is done and I have nothing to do about it) I still have money to stay here till the beginning of March so I don't have to worry so much.

Well, after things were more or less settled as I told you, few days ago Breton told me that the associated of Pierre Colle, an old bastard and son of a bitch, saw my paintings and found that only two were possible to be shown, because the rest are too "shocking" fir the public!! I could of kill that guy and eat it afterwards, but I am so sick and tired of the whole affair that I have decided to send everything to hell, scram from this rotten Paris before I get nuts myself. You have no idea the kind of bitches these people are. They make me vomit. They are so damn "intelectual" and rotten that I can't stand them any more. It is really too much for my character- I rather sit and sell tortillas, than to have any thing to do with those "Artistic" bitches of Paris. They sit for hours on the "cafés" warming their precious behinds, and talk without stopping about "culture" "art" "revolution" and so on and so forth, thinking themselves the gods of the world, dreaming the most fantastic nonsense, and poisoning the air with theories and theories that never come true. Next morning they don't have anything to eat in their house because none of them work and they live as parasites of the bunch of rich bitches who admire their "genius" of "Artists", Shit and only shit is what they are. I never seen Diego or you wasting their time on stupid gossip and "intelectual" discussions. That is why you are real men and not lousy "artists"- Gee weez! It was worthwhile to come here only to see why Europe is rottening, why all this people - good for nothing - are the cause of all the Hitlers and Mussolinis. I bet you my life I will hate this place and its people as long as I live. There is something so false and unreal about them that they: drive me nuts.

I am hoping to get well soon and scram from here. My ticket will last for a long time but I already have acommodations for the "Isle de France" on the 8 of March. I hope I can take this boat. In any case I won't stay here longer than the 15th of March. To hell with the exhibition in London. To hell with everything concerning Breton and all this lousy place. I want to go back to you. I miss every movement of your being, your voice, your eyes, your hands, your beautiful mouth, your laugh so clear and honest. YOU. I love you my Nick. I am so happy to think I love you – to think you wait for me – you love me.

My darling give many kisses to Mam on my name, I never forget her. Kiss also Aria and Lea. For you my heart full of tenderness and caring. One special kiss on your neck your give my love to Mary Skear if you see her and to Ruzzy

xochite.-

Russian proverb

Besplatniy sir biyvaet tol'ko v mishelovke: "Free cheese can be found only in a mousetrap."

Dolly Parton

Find out who you are, and do it on purpose.

Joan Didion, Notes on the South

As it happens I was taught to cook by someone from Louisiana, where an avid preoccupation with recipes and food among men was not unfamiliar to me. We lived together for some years, and I think we most fully understood each other when once I tried to kill him with a kitchen knife.

Susan Sontag

The likelihood that your acts of resistance cannot stop the injustice does not exempt you from acting in what you sincerely and reflectively hold to be the best interests of your community.

"The Change"

To truly cherish the things that are important to you, 

you must first discard those that have outlived their purpose.

—Marie Kondo, The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up

So this is how you change a life

A little more than half way through.

I must be grateful not for my socks

But to my socks. They work so hard

At carrying me.

And really don’t we all deserve

To be rolled, then gently stood up straight?

From when I was a girl in pilly polyester tights

Choking on my turtleneck

I reached just like they tell you to do

For the stars within reason. But now

I’m half of the time on my knees

Collecting Lego, each one a snowflake.

Not like the Lego of my youth that was all bricks

Three colors like the French flag.

Like the movies I saw Rouge Blanc and Bleu

That called me: Make a movie like this where

the light moves across the frame

across the frame and across the face of a beautiful woman

and that is enough! I wanted to.

Half the time on my knees.

Oh, Karl Ove Knausgaard! Come sit by me and tell me how

You can change a diaper but my representation

Counciled me, cautioned me,

Never say family. Family means missing

Deadlines and unavailable for shooting.

You didn’t have to tell me that: I knew. Till I turned forty

And spread my legs for a syringe and a quiet bald man.

He knocked me up in under a minute

After all those years of hoping no one would.

In under a minute

I returned to the arms of the man I love. All hair.

Emerging from the cupboard with the Barely Legal magazines

He swore he didn’t touch.

Twice we did this.

Twice.

For the king’s family.

Take them from me, don’t take them.

I would die without them.

Declutter my soul! Marie Kondo, I implore you!

I am unavailable for shooting!

I am too full of lyrics and resentment

I am too full of slogans and bad habits

Too full of small exclusions

Too full of wild assumptions

Of scrambled eggs and Power Rangers

Too, too full of parking tickets.

Are these hot flashes sparks of joy?

Move the fan to where it blows on me Marie

And oh Marie

These socks have carried us down the street

Down to the freeway and the front door’s standing open.

Joanna Klink, "New Year"

We woke to the darkness before our eyes,

unable to take the measure of the loss.

Who are they. What are we. What have we

   abandoned to arrive with such violence at this hour.

In answer we drew back, covered our ears

with our hands to the heedless victory, or vowed,

   as I did, into the changed air, never to consent.

Annie Dillard

How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.

Uruguayan psychoanalyst Marcelo Vinar, quoted by Nancy Caro Hollander in Uprooted Minds: Surviving the Politics of Terror in the Americas

The process of political change and the capacity to subjectively absorb and understand this change operate at distinctly different rates. . . . It's as if I continued to believe in democracy when I was living in a country that was already totalitarian. I believe that it is characteristic of the period of transition between democracy and dictatorship that people function by denying reality.

Elizabeth Bishop, "The Art of Losing"

The art of losing isn't hard to master; 

so many things seem filled with the intent 

to be lost that their loss is no disaster. 

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster 

of lost door keys, the hour badly spent. 

The art of losing isn't hard to master. 

Then practice losing farther, losing faster: 

places, and names, and where it was you meant 

to travel. None of these will bring disaster. 

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or 

next-to-last, of three loved houses went. 

The art of losing isn't hard to master. 

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster, 

some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent. 

I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster. 

—Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture 

I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident 

the art of losing's not too hard to master 

though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

Wendell Barry

When despair grows in me and I wake in the night at the least sound in fear of what my life and my children's lives may be, I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief. I come into the presence of still water. And I feel above me the day-blind stars waiting for their light. For a time I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

Toni Morrison

Like failure, chaos contains information that can lead to knowledge — even wisdom. Like art.

Psalm 10, translated by Daniel Berrigan, 1921-2016

Lord, why stand on the sidelines
Silent as the mouth of the dead, the maw of the grave
O living One, why?
…
Lord, they call you blind man. Call their bluff.

Jim Harrison

There are no old myths, only new people.

Ursula K. LeGuin, "The Election, Lao Tzu, a Cup of Water"

Studying peace means in the first place unlearning the vocabulary of war, and that's very difficult indeed. Isn't it right to fight against injustice? Isn't that what Selma and Standing Rock are — brave battles for justice?

I think not. Brave yes; battles no. Refusing to engage an aggressor on his terms, standing ground, holding firm, is not aggression — though the aggressive opponent will always declare that it is. Refusing to meet violence with violence is a powerful, positive act.

But that is paradoxical. It's hard to see how not doing something can be more positive than doing something. When all the words we have to use are negative — inaction, nonviolence, refusal, resistance, evasion — it's hard to see and keep in mind that the outcome of these so-called negatives is positive, while the outcome of the apparently positive act of making war is negative.

We confuse self-defense, the reaction to aggression, with aggression itself. Self-defense is a necessary and morally defensible reaction.

But defending a cause without fighting, without attacking, without aggression, is not a reaction. It is an action. It is an expression of power. It takes control.

Ella Wheeler Wilcox, "Protest"

To sin by silence when we should protest 
makes cowards out of men. The human race 
Has climbed on protest. Had no voice been raised 
Against injustice, ignorance and lust, 
The inquisition yet would serve the law. 
And guillotines decide our least disputes. 
The few who dare must speak and speak again, 
To right the wrongs of many.

Wislawa Szymborska: The Turn of the Century

It was supposed to be better than the others, our 20th century, 
But it won't have time to prove it. 
Its years are numbered, 
its step unsteady, 
its breath short. 

Already too much has happened 
that was not supposed to happen. 
What was to come about 
has not. 

Spring was to be on its way, 
and happiness, among other things. 

Fear was to leave the mountains and valleys. 
The truth was supposed to finish before the lie. 

Certain misfortunes 
were never to happen again 
such as war and hunger and so forth. 

These were to be respected: 
the defenselessness of the defenseless, 
trust and the like. 

Whoever wanted to enjoy the world 
faces an impossible task. 

Stupidity is not funny. 
Wisdom isn't jolly. 

Hope 
Is no longer the same young girl 
et cetera. Alas. 

God was at last to believe in man: 
good and strong, 
but good and strong 
are still two different people. 

How to live -- someone asked me this in a letter, 
someone I had wanted 
to ask that very thing. 

Again and as always, 
and as seen above 
there are no questions more urgent 
than the naive ones. 
 

Trevor Noah

When I was learning how to box, that was the number one thing my trainer taught me. He said, 'You can't get angry at every single time I hit you because that's why you're here. You're going to get hit. Acknowledge that you're going to get hit and now focus on how you're going to fight properly.' And living through the times is exactly the right way to put it because I have seen a slice of this only on a different continent

Jennifer Pahlka, founder Code for America

It's supposed to be hard. We are in this together. It is up to us.

Theodore Roosevelt

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

W.H. Auden - In Memory of W. B. Yeats

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;

Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye.

Follow, poet, follow right
To the bottom of the night,
With your unconstraining voice
Still persuade us to rejoice.

Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1902

Our movement is belated, and like all things too long postponed, now gets on everybody's nerves. 

Dorothy Parker, "Sanctuary"

My land is bare of chattering folk;
The clouds are low along the ridges,
And sweet's the air with curly smoke
From all my burning bridges.

Aeschylus, Agamemnon

Even in our sleep, pain which cannot forget falls drop by drop upon the heart until, in our own despair, against our will, comes wisdom through the awful grace of God.