Out of my diary of dinner parties I came across recently dropped a thank you note with this lush image by Frida Kahlo. It’s called “The Bride Who Gets Frightened of Seeing the Open Life”, (or as some have translated, “Life Opened” (“La novia que se espanta de ver la vida abierta“).
The postcard, which was sent in 1993, more than twenty years ago, curiously presaged a theme that would eventually become a big part of Improvised Life: how to antidote the many fears, taboos, “NO’s” we can feel about living richly, with full expression, whatever form an “open life” might take.
Kahlo embraced that practice head-on. Forced to wear plaster corsets most of her life to support her damaged spine, she painted them with powerful image and symbols, a defiant act of liberation and celebration.
