I'm a Woman (Peggy Lee)

From yesterday's Writer's Almanac:

It's the birthday of Maya Angelou, (books by this author) born Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri (1928), the author of six autobiographical volumes, including I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970). As a teenager, she and her mom and brother moved to San Francisco. There she became a streetcar conductor, the first black person and the first woman to be one there. She was only 16. A few months after graduating from high school, she gave birth to a son. Later, she married a Greek sailor named Tosh Angelos and began using a variation of his surname — Angelou — for her stage name at the Purple Onion cabaret in San Francisco, where she was a calypso dancer. She toured Europe as a dancer in a government-sponsored production of Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, and when she returned to the U.S., she settled in New York City, where she performed off-Broadway, sang at the Apollo Theater, and started going to meetings of the Harlem Writer's Guild. She met James Baldwin and Jules Feiffer, who thought that she should write about her life in the manner that she spoke, in the "same rhythmical cadences with which she mesmerized" her friends and others with whom she interacted. She did, in I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. The sixth volume of her autobiography, A Song Flung Up to Heaven, came out in 2002.

A multitude of TV appearances have me wishing to one day see/hear Ms. Angelou in person, as she has the most melodic voice, serene wisdom and inspirational manner - below is one of my favorite poems of hers, which seems to fully embody her spirit and self-confidence (and, in my new walking and nutrition program, I'm re-discovering my Phenomenal Womanhood as well... :-)

SONG: I'm a Woman by Peggy Lee

BOOK: The Collected Autobiographies of Maya Angelou by Maya Angelou

POEM: Phenomenal Woman by Maya Angelou

Pretty women wonder

where my secret lies.

I'm not cute or built to suit

a fashion model's size

But when I start to tell them,

They think I'm telling lies.

I say,

It's in the reach of my arms

The span of my hips,

The stride of my step,

The curl of my lips.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

I walk into a room

Just as cool as you please,

And to a man,

The fellows stand or

Fall down on their knees.

Then they swarm around me,

A hive of honey bees.

I say,

It's the fire in my eyes,

And the flash of my teeth,

The swing in my waist,

And the joy in my feet.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me.

They try so much

But they can't touch

My inner mystery.

When I try to show them

They say they still can't see.

I say,

It's the arch of my back,

The sun of my smile,

The ride of my breasts,

The grace of my style.

I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

Now you understand

Just why my head's not bowed.

I don't shout or jump about

Or have to talk real loud.

When you see me passing

It ought to make you proud.

I say,

It's in the click of my heels,

The bend of my hair,

the palm of my hand,

The need of my care.

'Cause I'm a woman

Phenomenally.

Phenomenal woman,

That's me.

QUOTE: "When we know better, we do better." ~ Maya Angelou

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

You're Aging Well (Dar Williams)

M wrote some wonderfully reinforcing ideas about beauty on her pin-up blog the other day, which of course got me thinking about my own interpretation as well as my self-image - ultimately, in my opinion, it distills down to "beauty is as beauty does"...

I have had years/weeks/moments in which I felt stunning... magnetic... indestructible... at what would not be considered my ideal weight/size - however, because I felt involved (with my family and friends/my community/the world), I wasn't thinking about any perceived inadequacies. I've realized I have a talent (actually more of a *need*) to contribute, share and widen the circle - when my blinders are on, my ego gets in the way and I tend to concentrate on the trivialities.

Which is not to say I still shouldn't care about how I look and becoming more healthy (through nutrition, exercise and rest) - when it becomes an obsession such that I'm not only *not* enjoying life but completely narrowing my focus, something is wrong. People appreciate my authentic smile, my gift of listening, my love of music - they're not likely to spend time critiqueing my hips, my hair, my nails.

Our bodies were designed to age: sagging breasts, graying hair and crinkling eyelids - if we've made the most of our time on the planet, we should also be able to track incremental wisdom, peace and compassion. The purpose of skeletons, muscle and skin is really only to keep our souls, hearts and minds safely surrounded - as long as we live with purpose, enthusiasm and good will, we will remain forever young in the ways that count... and aging well in aspects that matter.

SONG: You're Aging Well by Dar Williams

BOOK: I Feel Bad About My Neck and Other Thoughts on Being a Woman by Nora Ephron

POEM: Beauty by Tony Hoagland

When the medication she was taking
caused tiny vessels in her face to break,
leaving faint but permanent blue stitches in her cheeks,
my sister said she knew she would
never be beautiful again.

After all those years
of watching her reflection in the mirror,
sucking in her stomach and standing straight,
she said it was a relief,
being done with beauty,

but I could see her pause inside that moment
as the knowledge spread across her face
with a fine distress, sucking
the peach out of her lips,
making her cute nose seem, for the first time,
a little knobby.

I'm probably the only one in the whole world
who actually remembers the year in high school
she perfected the art
of being a dumb blond,

spending recess on the breezeway by the physics lab,
tossing her hair and laughing that canary trill
which was her specialty,

while some football player named Johnny
with a pained expression in his eyes
wrapped his thick finger over and over again
in the bedspring of one of those pale curls.

Or how she spent the next decade of her life
auditioning a series of tall men,
looking for just one with the kind
of attention span she could count on.

Then one day her time of prettiness
was over, done, finito,
and all those other beautiful women
in the magazines and on the streets
just kept on being beautiful
everywhere you looked,

walking in that kind of elegant, disinterested trance
in which you sense they always seem to have one hand
touching the secret place
that keeps their beauty safe,
inhaling and exhaling the perfume of it—

It was spring. Season when the young
buttercups and daisies climb up on the
mulched bodies of their forebears
to wave their flags in the parade.

My sister just stood still for thirty seconds,
amazed by what was happening,
then shrugged and tossed her shaggy head
as if she was throwing something out,

something she had carried a long ways,
but had no use for anymore,
now that it had no use for her.
That, too, was beautiful.

QUOTE: "The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched. They must be felt with the heart." ~ Helen Keller

Superhero (Ani DiFranco)

I'd prefer not to go into the significance of this song... but suffice it to say it has (or had) power over me, rather than the other way around - fear and helplessness, begone (ZAP, BAM, POW!).

Also wanted to add that years ago, it finally clicked that She-Ra is the feminization of hero - I love the concept... and use the term whenever I have the opportunity... :-)

SONG: Superhero by Ani DiFranco

BOOK: Fearless Women: Midlife Portraits by Nancy Alspaugh, Marilyn Kentz, and Mary Ann Halpin

POEM: by Jeannine Hall Gailey ~ Female Comic Book Superheroes

are always fighting evil in a thong,
pulsing techno soundtrack in the background
as their tiny ankles thwack

against the bulk of male thugs,
They have names like Buffy, Elektra, or Storm
but excel in code decryption, Egyptology, and pyrotechnics.

They pout when tortured, but always escape just in time,
still impeccable in lip gloss and pointy-toed boots,
to rescue male partners, love interests, or fathers.

Impossible chests burst out of tight leather jackets,
from which they extract the hidden scroll, antidote, or dagger,
tousled hair covering one eye.

They return to their day jobs as forensic pathologists,
wearing their hair up and donning dainty glasses.
Of all the goddesses, these pneumatic heroines most

resemble Artemis, with her miniskirts and crossbow,
or Freya, with her giant gray cats.
Each has seen this apocalypse before.

See her perfect three-point landing on top of that chariot,
riding the silver moon into the horizon,
city crumbling around her heels.

QUOTE: "When I dare to be powerful, to use my strength in the service of my vision, then it becomes less and less important whether I am afraid." ~ Audre Lord