Frida has been with me lately. Wherever I go, she welcomes me. As a book of her letters to Diego Rivera, as a kitchen towel with her self-portrait print, as a key pendant with her eyebrows, as her watermelon painting hung on the kitchen wall of my friend’s apartment, as a picture on a pedestrian’s cotton bag, as a print on the mug behind a store’s vitrage, and now also on my Couchsurfing host’s fridge magnet in Batumi. She is everywhere. She is there for me. She stepped forward as an answer to my call for friendship with the Goddess Ishtar.
Goddess Ishtar was venerated by the people of one of my ancestral lines. Connecting with Her and getting to know Her is a way to get to know my people. Ishtar was a blessing.
I called for LOVE to overtake my being. As I walked through the city streets full of homeless people with outstretched hands – and murmured my mantra – Love, overtake me, please. As I walked the streets full of fat pigeons mutated through the Mcdonald’s waste – Mantra – Love, overtake me, please. As I walked the streets, needles picking my heart, wounds from lives far beyond my persona, re-activating – Mantra – Love, overtake me, please. As I walked the streets, full of sisters in competition with each other – Mantra – Love, overtake me, please.
This time I stayed for three weeks in Hanover. During these three weeks, I had placed Frida beside my bed. I would say good night to her and she would greet me every morning. The book was a compilation of her letters to Diego. I didn’t get it. Why did she write Diego that needy letters? Whereas her stern-looking, fierce expression states such strength and autonomy, and encourages the feminist dream: not needing the other sex. Friducha, you are much wiser, though, aren’t you? Goddess-wise, Ishtar-wise. Neediness is not a weakness, you say.
Life is messy. A holy mess. I walk the chaotic streets of Batumi. Having arrived on Saturday in Georgia. The streets are filled with gaps, cracks, cement, dirt, hurt, stray dogs, drunken people, and poison. I walk my homeland’s cement-covered lap and I keep calling for love. Goddess Ishtar, eat me up in Love. Frida, be with me. Let’s see bosom-driven intentions between the messy street’s poisonous gaps and let’s paint colored visions on the cracked high-building walls.
The politics are poor here, and the economics birth poverty. Poetry is dirty here and the air is moldy. Love is simple here and the voices are loud. We can always follow love, even when our bellies ache. Or so say Frida and the Goddess of LOVE. Or so I want to believe. I’d rather that be true.
Follow LOVE, dear ones,
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