Month: September 2008

EASY TO ALMOST MISS THIS

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

Funny thing happened on the way to waking up this morning.

I’d had coffee, was rapidly making notes on some curiously wonderful text I might use sometime when I saw a quote. It looked as if it were too many lines, but I gave it a whirl. Midway through, I stopped and went back to the first lines that I had hurried through to get to what I’d wanted to reach.

Because of the language, reverently used, I had wanted to go beyond that old reverence and get to the meat of the message, whatever that was.

See if you do the same:

“Thou didst create the night,
but I made the lamp.
Thou didst create clay,
but I made the cup.
Thou didst create the deserts,
mountains and forests,
I produced the orchards,
gardens and groves.
It is I who made the glass out
of stone,
And it is I who turn a poison
into an antidote.”

………….. SIR MUHAMMAD IQBAL

SOMETHING WENT ‘CLUNK’ WHEN I GOT TO THE LAST LINE. FINALLY.

And, it’s wordless. I’m glad I endured that old “Thou” bit,
that last line honors the use of the gifts.

with love, Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

STARTERS

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

How about this one for starters:

“Today isn’t just any other day, you know.”

…………LEWIS CARROLL

I CUT MY BABY TEETH ON THE WRITING OF LEWIS CARROLL.

So, all I have to do is hear his words, like above, and I hear his smile.
There’s a world of love and fun in that simple line…. and memory.
At 5:44 a.m. I find myself smiling and know this is not going to be
just an ordinary day. Well, it’s Saturday, that helps.

I awoke the other day to an email from a friend that spoke of
an adventure he’d allowed himself out of the blue, and out of
a passion for Turner’s painting.

Without second thoughts he’d left work midafternoon on Friday
a week ago, challenged traffic to the city to the Metropolitan
Museum of Art on 5th Ave. and caught the closing days of that
exhibit, and THEN, had the great good sense to share this.

I read it on a Monday morning when I was nursing some chronic
pain, grumpy and just about awake.

You will not believe what happened! Totally unexpectedly, all pain
fell from my body, and I was so full of delight and ease that this
reprieve lasted for two days. A time of real serenity and activity.
Just from reading that email.

If that can happen, and it did happen and lasted long enough
to think about it seriously, what does that say about pain?
Where did the pain go?
Why has chronic pain persisted no matter how many new cells my body
naturally produces ?

You may have an explanation. I may try for an explanation, and I do.
My naturopathic physician spoke of a ‘pain body’. WOW… what a concept.
What a surprise to even think that way.

I am now empowered to do a drawing of that particular ‘pain body’ that
survives no matter how many new cells appear. It will take a few days to
clear the time to do that, and I’ll let you know how it turns out, what might
show up.

So, until then, let today not just be any other day.

with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

HARVESTING

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

This year in the Spring, Sandy and Cliff’s daughters transformed the poolside,
creating pathways, beds, great colorful holders that over the summer trailed
tomatoes, zucchini, peppers, vegetables with ancient names, flowers and
gourds to pick up the sunlight.

It’s been a while since I’ve been there, but I’ve enjoyed the fruits of that
garden and see with how much delight Greta and Carol brought to this
use of space, to see how much larger it seems from when it was only
lounging chairs and towels drying.

Just last Monday we had the Autumnal Equinox, our planet poised at a
halfway point again. The sun has ‘gone south’ as it shines through my
large windows here at home, still powerful but from another angle.

I want to take time to remember this time:

“HARVESTING

The second planting of pole beans is ready to be picked.

The beans hang long and sweet in clusters on the vine.

Like lanterns, the tomatoes glow red. Right under my eyes the
zucchini is growing another inch.

Deep purple eggplants are heavy and plump. The vegetable garden
is full, full, full.”

The poet says:

“Whether witnessed,
received, used, or wasted,
the joy of fruiting
hums even in the tiniest autumn berry.

Join the joy!
You are invited.”

……………GUNILLA NORRIS, from her book, A Mystic Garden,
Working with Soil, Attending to Soul.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Maybe’s May Be

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

I’ve always thought if I could think something up, it could actually be
a possibility. It could be freeing something to show up in the world
just by saying “maybe” around it.

Here’s what one poet said about “maybe’s”:

“MAYBE

Maybe we dance from this elegant place
discarding our vulnerable bodies
like old work-clothes at the end of the day.

Maybe essence enters the air, flying
like monarchs, in migration, passed roses
and rivers older than wood wizards.

Maybe meaning and magic stand up from
the landscape like summer lightening,
and for one holy moment

all questions have answers, all journeys a home,
all living the roundness and warmth
of a stone clutched tight in the hand.

Or maybe, like four-year-olds we
drop everything and simply run forward,
dazzled again! ”

……………….ROBERTA de KAY, who created a series of poems
as she was recovering from cancer. Taken from the book Poetic
Medicine, the Healing Art of Poem-making, in a chapter called
“When God Sighs”.
………………………………………….

Our sighs, like God’s sigh’s, release into the air the limits we have
been living within, without realizing we have made them up. I am
willing to be dazzled again and again, even if in running forward I
stumble and bruise my knees, again and again.

I hear ‘maybe’ like a hunting horn in the forest and I can follow
its clear call. Just maybe it IS what’s real. And so it is.

with love,
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Good Intentions Notwithstanding

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

Here’s this poem, by a poet from India, translated into English by another poet from India:

” I DO NOT INTEND TO WRITE A POEM

I do not intend to write a poem right now.
I am off to the office, after a meal, in a hurry.
By bus if I get one, or slowly on foot,
Holding tight to my coat and trousers,
Now loose.

(4 stanzas later):

As I climb the house steps, I turn around to see
The red of daily toils dying in the sky;
A couple of dim stars just risen,
Motionless birds in the nests above.
What have I accomplished today?
What acts of heroism?
The endless task of yoking yesterday
To today, finding answers to tomorrow’s challenges?
This is the way we go round and round in circles.
The world’s labor finds its rhythm in meters
Emerging from blank verse, treading softly
In the freedom of free verse.”

………………….CHENNAVEERA KANAVI,
translated from the Kannada by G.S.Amur

I liked the questions the poet was asking himself, and thought that might be enough.
However, I went back one stanza and saw it was too beautiful to just pass by:

” The evening approaches, I straighten my back
And float towards light and air, in the open.
Cows returning home, chewing their cuds;
Songs from transistor radios hanging
From young shoulders;
Sweat on the forehead of women crushed
By loads of firewood, shadows descending from the hills;
A line of sliver birds drifting in the mid-sky
Floating with unforgettable memories.
On the playgrounds it is all cricket.”

………………………………………………

………….. all of that before he went into his interior litany. Surely these are questions that
have been asked many times before. The wonder is that these lines are now so lean
and tender. Unconfined metaphor now. All the old rules of India’s intellectual creative privilege
removed. I find this poem a challenge I can pick up at any time, so universal are these
evening thoughts.
This is what happens when I choose a poem after mid-day!

with love, Mom/Mimi/Toni