Being as if Frida

Frida Kahlo once said, “I paint myself because I am the subject I know best.”

What if I “knew” myself the way Frida did?

What would it take to know myself this way?

My body.

What if?

I knew my body–

The way Frida knew her face?

first add heat

what’s coming out is dry

like a hot pan without any oil

it doesn’t sizzle–only heat

the gas is on high and nothin’s cookin’

and yet, there’s something to be said

for heating the pan before you fry

the egg

it cooks better

turn up the heat, add butter

i’m breaking eggs

one at a time

one at a time

Learning to express, sometimes it takes effort!

It takes all I have to put pen to paper, fingers to key board.

To stamp out these symbols to make syllables to make sounds

forming a series of subsequent sentences, spewing out of this

less-than-perfect mind.

I attempt to make sense of this unpredictable life.

I force myself to whittle words, to put thoughts on paper

because if I keep them inside they may burst my innards

and I’ll find myself walking down the street–a split second later

blown apart, filled with shards of introspective-shrapnel from my

less-then perfect mind.

Agony comes from discipline, yet there’s something to be said for doing despite.

How sweet the rewards when nose is lifted from the grindstone and I see

just how much of a fraud I’ve been, telling myself lies about the glory of war.

I’m afraid of failure, same as you, and my less-than-perfect mind will be the first

to jump to false conclusion.

Providing I haven’t pushed too hard and alienated those to whom I owe my life,

I’ll be kicking til I’m 90 and dancing into the next one.

I’m not sure I wanna come back to this Earth before it’s deconstruction

I don’t like pain.

If it were up to me, my less-then-perfect mind would know when to shut the fuck up and give me some peace and quite! 

That’s the joke, the game, the hokey-pokey.

ART comes from those times of deep self-loathing, when the creator keeps going

to spite death and laughs in the face of fear.

If it really were up to us, we’d stop at our first skinned knee, because we knew we’d never make it, our less-then-perfect minds churning out incongruencies.

Perhaps what we think of as struggle is merely life, happening.

My toes curl around the hard edge of the chair in from of me and I will my fingers to keep going and my mind to stay focused.

This body is meant to be expressive, this life is meant to be expressed!

And my less-than-perfect mind asks, why do you wear beige? 

What does it mean to be Committed?

commitment |kəˈmitmənt|

noun

1 the act of committing or the state of being committed.

• dedication; application

• a pledge or undertaking

• an act of pledging or setting aside something

Thesaurus

commitment

noun

1 the pressure of commitments responsibility, engagement, arrangement.

2 her commitment to her students dedication, devotion, allegiance, loyalty, faithfulness, fidelity.

3 he made a commitment vow, promise, pledge, oath; pact, deal.