I’ve tried to make the most of my weekend to get out and explore. yesterday was excellent. I woke up extremely unrested. You know at this point that I sleep like shit most nights. Nevertheless I got ready to face the day. The one thing about this apartment that bugs me a bit is the hot water. The water is boiling hot for 5 seconds, decently hot for 60 seconds, and then cold. With the chilly morning and evenings here, you really want hot water. But when you’ve slept for 4 hours and need to find a way to face the day anyway, I cold showing can help get you there.
I took a decrepit rental bike to centro coyoacan for breakfast. I did have to wander around, dazed and confused, before finally settling in and finding a restaurant — my name is J and that’s how I roll. Sometimes I just have to wander around, afraid and anxious, until an animal need like hunger or simple fatigue becomes too overwhelming to resist. but yes, eventually I managed to feed myself with a decent if overpriced breakfast.
Afterwards, I got to to make my long-awaiting visit to la casa de frida kahlo. I am not sure exactly what I was expecting. it isn’t so much an art gallery as a museum that commemorates the life of frida. there are a few of her works, but that really isn’t the focus of the museum. The focus is her childhood, with personal articles such as her clothes, her back brace, her report cards, letters from schools warning that she faces expulsion por rebeldia, and lot of wonderful photos of her. Her as a child, as a teenager, frida with her family. and, most strikingly, frida lying in bed, arms raised, painting on the canvas that her mother hung from the top of the bed.
the climax of the museum is frida’s bedroom. you can see for yourself the mirror facing the bed. the art and the colors she surrounded herself with. it is so easy to imagine her in repose, reclined in that bad grimacing against her many aches with a paintbrush in her hand. so much pain and so much beautiful art. I cried like a little kid in that room.
afterwards, my plan was to go to parque de chapultapec, so I trudged over the the coyacan metro station. the station where I got off ended up being right next to parque alemeda y el palacio de bellas artes, so I thought, hell, why not take a second to check out the area. By complete accident I saw that el museo de memoria y tolerancia was right there as well. Since that was on my list of places to go, I decided to hop in.
well, there is no “hopping in” to this museum. it is enormous. I believe I spent about 3 hours working my way through it, taking my timeinform. The majority of the mueseum is dedicated to the holoucaust, but there are also sections that deal with genocides in sudan, turkey, rwanda guatamala, and others. Overall, the mission of the museum is to preserve these stories, and allow us to puase and reflect on these events so that we can ensure they do not happen again.
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