Countess Daria Chernyshova-Saltykova

Friday - always a joy in itself. I get to wear whatever I want to work, which for some reason always seems to change everything. Funny how fickle my attitude can be. All week I've been feeling a little down, a little low on much needed energy, a little introspective and introverted. I've been alone every evening... Friday, I'm awake. I'm free. After work I find myself continuing in my ever introversion and end up at an art exhibit. Seeking comfort from those who, though long gone, have portrayed the human condition so marvelously - marrying our similarities through the generations; a consolation to a weary soul comforted by the wearied. I entered the room peacefully and find myself surrounded by humans, the quizzical and portrayed. And with much needed classical music to keep my busy mind focused on my soul-refreshing, I popped in my earphones and started to walk through the paintings of earlier centuries. A portrait in specific, "Portrait of the Countess Daria Chernyshova-Saltykova by Francois-Hubert Drouais caught my eye and stopped me from my casual wandering. The Countess stares back at me. I couldn't stop watching her still figure. There was something so human about her, as if she was more than a painting but rather a woman caught in a frame by some spell. Her appearance is both young and old. White hair and rosie cheeks. The painting contains dark greys, and blues contrasting her perfect ivory skin and choking white pearls. Her deep blue eyes are piercing and seem to hold a secret. She's wise... very wise. Experience surrounds her like a wafting aura. Stories of sorrow, loss, love, life, death, joy and pain are told by her eyes. But she sits still, perfect, submissive. The appearance of a beautiful young naive woman dressed up in all the finery a reputable woman should adorn. Her meager smile and placid expression do not fool me. She's meant to portray a perfect innocence and ignorance. Masking her deep wisdom she plays her part, sits silently. I keep her gaze for awhile, half-expecting that she would pop right out of the painting and together we would discuss our common conceptions. But she remained picture perfect, still-posed.
I smiled back at her and eventually continued on. She knew I understood.

if

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

-Rudyard Kipling

i think this is very wise.
i'm trying to come up with a gender inclusive ending. any ideas? :)

The Monastery Orchard in Early Spring

God's cows are in the fields,
safely grazing. I can see them
through bare branches,
through the steady rain,
fir trees seem ashamed
and tired, bending under winter coats.

I, too, want to be light enough
for this day: throw off impediments,
push like a tulip
through a muddy smear of snow.

I want to take the rain to heart
and feel it move
like possibility, the idea
of change, through things
seen and unseen,
forces, principalities, powers.

Newton named the force that pulls the apple
and the moon with it,
toward the center of the earth.
Augustine found a desire as strong: to steal,
to possess, then throw away.
Encounter with fruit is dangerous:
the pear's womanly shape forever mocked him.

A man and a woman are talking.
Rain moves down and
branches lift up
to learn again
how to hold their fill of green
and blossom, and bear each fruit to glory,
letting it fall.

-Kathleen Norris