REAL with Diane McDaniel

Passion is the bridge that takes you from pain to change

Frida Kahlo

Last week, I sat in Diane McDaniel's backyard studio and had a wonderful conversation for her really interesting podcast, REAL. I love that women everywhere are working and expressing themselves in novel ways, and I am honored to support those like Diane who are digging deep into life and helping to share stories.

Here's the link to the episode Elizabeth Aquino Who Am I Without All Of This  on a few different distributors. Listen to the other episodes as well because you'll find so much that is interesting, stimulating, alive and REAL.

• iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/real-with-diane-mcdaniel/id1218912570?mt=2#episodeGuid=https%3A%2F%2Frealcancer.blubrry.com%2F%3Fp%3D124

• Google Play: https://play.google.com/music/m/Dazwqyyyzu7yrfefb4j74i4djkq?t=Elizabeth_Aquino_Who_Am_I_Without_All_of_This_-_REAL_with_Diane_McDaniel-REAL_with_Diane_McDaniel

• Website: https://content.blubrry.com/realcancer/Elizabeth_Aquino_Who_Am_I_Without_All_of_This_.mp3

Gobsmacked

The ritual of placing the bottle of cannabis in a cup of warm water, Frida's eyes, the coconut oil relinquishing into the drawing up, just so, that tiny bit, 1.2 milliliters per syringe, not a murder (crows), a grist (bees), nor a rookery (albatross) or a bloat (rhinoceroses) but a group of them, nestled in a blue fertile cup, the Lone Ranger keeping guard.

I am gobsmacked by this liquid gold.

Saturday Collage with Frida, Van and Oxford Health

I found my Frida Kahlo Frocks and Socks magnetic set in one of the drawers whose contents I am purging this afternoon. I also found Sophie's original health insurance cards which provoked a storm of reminiscing in my head about the events of June, 1995 when she was diagnosed. I might title that chapter The HMO: Part One In The Odyssey of an Unwitting Healthcare System Traveler, A Tragedy.  

Cast my memory back there, Lord. Sometimes I'm overcome.***

















*** from Van Morrison's Brown-Eyed Girl, easily one of my favorite songs and a line that comes to me at least once a day, but in this case, does not refer to making love in the green grass behind the stadium.

Laugh Like the Buddha

We just got a new bottle of Charlotte's Web Hemp Oil, and we're back to using the cannabis in a coconut oil base. That seems to be easier on Sophie's stomach than the olive oil one, and it sure tastes better. The coconut oil solidifies easily, though, so we warm it up slightly in a cup of warm water before drawing it up in a syringe. The whole thing, the whole catastrophe, as Zorba says. Hence, Frida. I think it's appropriate, given Frida's revolutionary politics and sense of humor. I've been looking through her diary and read a bit in the introduction that resonated with me, particularly as I continue to read through the more than 110 comments on the National Geographic article that appeared last week. Some of the comments are interesting and intelligent, a few are even compassionate, and a very few demonstrate an understanding of the article and by extension my story, but most of them have veered off into the Land of the Absurd where Absolutists and People Who Take Themselves Entirely Too Seriously start shooting one another while SCIENCE and MAGICAL THINKING dart in and out, dodging the bullets. By about comment 50 or so, I left off feeling despair and started doing Zorba's dance. Go watch it if you need a refresher.

Teach me to dance, will you?

I was cheered reading that Frida's Diary was the best example of this ribald, punning, dynamic genius for humorous language that makes Kahlo such an endearing and, finally, happy figure, in spite of all suffering.

"Her voice, all who knew her tell us, was deep, rebellious, punctuated by caracajadas -- belly laughs -- and by leperadas -- four letter words."

Anyhoo. That's why I stuck Sophie's Charlotte's Web (that concoction of Supposedly Not Studied Enough But Been Around For Thousands of Years and Used for Medicinal Purposes in 600 B.C.E. Cannabis and Coconut Oil in the Frida Kahlo mug.

Sophie is doing well. Her teacher told me today that "Sophie's back." They've been able to do some productive work at school, and her overall mood is better.

Cross your fingers and toes.
Knock on wood three times.
Do your Zorba dance.
Laugh like the Buddha.
You know the drill.

Wink, #2

We shelter in ourselves an angel
whom we constantly shock.

Jean Cocteau

Those who restrain desire do so
because theirs is weak enough
to be restrained.

William Blake




At the doughnut shop, I waited in line to buy a sesame bagel, toasted, with cream cheese, bacon and tomato.

A woman in an arm brace, the kind used for carpal tunnel syndrome, sat at a small table with an autistic man. He ate a powdered donut with jelly oozing out, and she played with three figs on a napkin.

The young man in front of me had a tattoo on his arm that read I Do The Wrong Things For The Right Reasons.

I might begin a How We Do It post with these lines that I heard Lorrie Moore say that night I went to hear her read:

How can it be described? How can any of it be described?
The trip and the story of the trip are always two different things.

The Week of Culture -- Last Day

Helen Lundeberg, Self-Portrait, 1944

I know ya'll must think me a self-indulgent, high falutin' kind of gal who gallivants around the city doing all sorts of things while her husband and children toil at work and school.

Well, this week I was a self-indulgent, high falutin' kind of gal and satisfied nearly every impulse I have toward viewing art, hearing poetry, laughing my ass off and eating good food.

And I have no regrets.

Yesterday, I finally made it to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art's exhibit of American and Mexican female surrealists. The show is called Wonderland, and it's spectacular. I stood right up close to many of Frida Kahlo's most famous paintings, like this:

The Two Fridas, 1939

I saw it out of the corner of my eye when I was standing across the room, and I could hardly bear to walk over to it. When I did stand in front of it, though, it brought tears to my eyes. It's hard to see it in the above copy, but the Frida on the right holds a picture of Diego Rivera, her husband. The Frida on the left has cut the vessel that leads from that photo and through the two hearts.

I also saw this:

Self-Portrait with Thorn Necklace and Hummingbird, 1940

I learned that for the female artists, surrealism was a path toward the "marvelous," a surrealist concept about the disruption of identity and the disorientation of reality in pursuit of the revelatory. The art displayed was about fragmentation of identity, the oppression of patriarchal systems, sexuality, the body and motherhood or lack thereof. In addition to paintings, there were sculptures, photographs, installations and short films. I wandered through the exhibit for nearly two hours, thrilled to see and feel so much intelligence, emotion, beauty and rawness in one space.

This is the only photo that I took because I hate when people photograph in museums -- it looked like male anatomy, but on closer inspection was a kind of bone. I think. And I forgot to write down the artist, so I apologize for that, too.

One of my favorite paintings was by the artist Sylvia Fein, titled Lady with her Baby. I found it disconcerting -- the crossed arms of the mother and her seeming dis-attachment from the baby perched on top of her head. The green of her jacket was gorgeous.

Francesca Woodman's photos were disturbing and beautiful. She committed suicide at the age of 22 by jumping out of a window in New York City. I stood in front of this one for a long time:

It Must Be Time for Lunch Now, 1979

Despite the enormity of their work, many of the surrealist artists were overlooked and dismissed as irrelevant. However, many of them considered camouflage necessary, in order to create decoys and to keep secret their magic, alchemical explorations (from the collection's book Wonder, The Surrealist Adventures of Women Artists in Mexico and the United States).


Afterward, I wandered outside on Wilshire Blvd. where twenty or so food trucks were lined up, hawking their wares. This guy played some music, right there on the sidewalk:

I settled on Maine Lobster:

and ate this very simple, traditional lobster roll while listening to some ragtime in the California sunshine. At 3:00, I stood up, got back in my car and was back on duty, fortified.