fountain filled with hemoglobin

Rembrandt has a painting of Saskia (I think) wading into a stream and she's lifting her robe just like this. I've always loved this image and this is about the best that I can translate it into my own idiom at this time. Yes, the water is red, bloody. There are some wonderful cool violets that don't show up in this photo. I may have to shoot some details. In southern revivalist christianity we grow up in the cult of blood. We sing "his blood" "a fountain filled with blood" "power in the blood" et cetera. As a child I remember sitting in ill fitting clothes, in a sanctuary paneled in knotty pine, alongside my grand mother and grand father, myself drawing on the back of a pew envelope, as we broke up the turgid holiness of the prayers and loud exhortation of the sermon with hymns about blood. Somehow blood figured in why we were all dressed so much better than during the week. Somehow blood figured in why we were so stiff and formal, almost like we were afraid of ourselves. And blood figured in the sweat and the smell of sweat, sweat mingled with perfume and old spice. Blood and sweat and the acidity of our stomachs mingled in the air and rose as strange incense with our voices, through the heat of this compact frame structure, and later, as we stood on the sandy soil outside, it all lingered among the pines and oaks as the sun beat down on our heads. "This is holiness, " I told myself, at dinner with my grandparents after church "to sing about blood and then to take the long prayers and the screaming of the preacher away with us to this little catfish place out by the lake." And as I gnawed the fried cornmeal crust and skin off the bone, and ate the hush puppies, I was filled with holiness; I tasted holiness. And there on my plate the salty fries with the blood red ketchup greased upon the plate and napkin were soon reduced to crumbs and bone.