The Truth of a Woman (Kristina Olsen)

My friend M posted this YouTube link to her website not too long ago... and I've since received it from other friends as well - I found the film collage brilliantly creative... and, combined with today's song and poem, perfectly suited. Enjoy!

SONG: The Truth of a Woman by Kristina Olsen

BOOK: Painting Women: Cosmetics, Canvases, and Early Modern Culture by Patricia Phillippy

POEM: Red Berries by Jane Hirshfield

Again the pyrocanthus berries redden in rain,
as if return were return.

It is not.

The familiar is not the thing it reminds of.
Today's yes is different from yesterday's yes.
Even no's adamance alters.

From painting to painting,
century to century,
the tipped-over copper pot spills out different light;
the cut-open beeves,
their caged and muscled display,
are on one canvas radiant, pure; obscene on another.

In the end it is simple enough-

The woman of this morning's mirror
was a stranger
to the woman of last night's;
the passionate dreams of the one who slept
flit empty and thin
from the one who awakens.

One woman washes her face,
another picks up the boar-bristle hairbrush,
a third steps out of her slippers.
That each will die in the same bed means nothing to them.

Our one breath follows another like spotted horses, no two alike

Black manes and white manes, they gallop.
Piebald and skewbald, eyes flashing sorrow, they too will pass.

QUOTE: "Art is the only thing you cannot punch a button for. You must do it the old-fashioned way. Stay up and really burn the midnight oil. There are no compromises." ~ Leontyne Price