NO Respect for AGE

Barbara Streisand's first Instagram snap is dishonest. In disappointment and outrage I cannot look into her otherwise magical and introspective beauty she has had most of her life. The photographer erased her lines, the things that distinguish her face, add intelligence to her poise, and creates the depth of beauty she earned in her lifetime. You look at this photograph and you don't see the singer. You see someone's thought process, and detachment. What lacks within is shown in the art of plastic surgery, and photography and fashion. 

What kind of young adults will the next generation have growing up with distortions and illusions of the natural world they know little of by touch and experience? What we create that deceives the basic tenets of our mysterious lives on this planet occurred with technology of thought too lazy to plunge deep into existence. 

Barbara Hershey in Boxcar Bertha created a memorable character. Plain and honest in her portrayal in the time period of this story Barbara Hershey caught an essence lost to time within her acting. Natural living as well as natural beauty changes as life is lived. The essential part of beauty and aging is age. Today's women engulfed in fear miss this. The natural process of maturity marred by insistence upon acceptance has created some ugly faces others are too afraid to admit are ugly. When science meets women to solve problems or unravel riddles of feminine mystique it is always tainted by the history of and between white men and white women, and it is an ugly history. 

Looking into the older beauty of Rozie at home caught my mind into thinking about the possibilities of longevity when evidence of age sensuously merges with beauty of face and the elegance of lines and slopes over a body that has seen time, known itself, birthed, been rejected, renewed, rediscovered, and treasured and adored. Adoration, and being cherished add luster polishing the eyes along with the things we value as our life's work and precious value. You don't need fame to be wonderful. And photographers don't need to tell someone else's story to convey ours. That is a testimony that reflects better into the scope, or range of complexity in the human weaving of independence, interdependence and dependency. This weaving can intellectually tell as well as our bodies, our eyes, and most significantly our spirit who we are and who we aren't. 

We are those spiritual beings stories were told around night fires later to be written about as legends, and creation stories. Without conscious memory of how that was our bodies carrying our memories cover the bones that hold the deep and ancient stories our blood knows. Of the two primal energies God created the female's story of blood. Her blood and restorative properties remembers and reaches into the deep Earth. 

Men spill blood. Women release blood. If we can't hear blood stories we can't hear the necessity of learning to listen as a man to our women's blood and water, and our women will not be able to hear their blood telling them of the deeper things Mary felt carrying Jesus, or Isis felt in her time, what stirred within White Buffalo Calf Woman performing her duties, or what Esther knew that kept her allegiance with her mother-in-law, or what made Hillary Clinton stay with her husband, and Harriet Tubman kill to people to get North to freedom. 

These are mysteries. Respect them with your eye and with your heart. Live them. They are in you. 

- Gregory E. Woods, Keeper of Stories

12.22.14 

Earth's layers