Month: March 2011

SOMETHING PASSED

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

I used to often allow my then-restless-spirit to move
my room around. Each season, my soul really wanted
a new venue, and found one. I love calendars: each
month a new view as I pass by.

Here a poet has expressed a similar approach:

E Y E S

Vision without,
vision within,
both nurture me
as portals of beauty.

With the fire of passion,
I see the world anew.
With the crystal of clarity,
I see my purpose within.

I am on
a voyage of discovery,
discovering my eyes,
discovering my hands
as portals and bearers
of something passed
from the source
to the world.

Each time a thing of beauty passes through me,
I am startled and thrilled and filled with joy.
May I continue to honor the journey
and find ways to share the beauty
through acts of love and generosity.

What goes around comes around.
Blessed Be!

………….CATHY FARRELL, Nov. 19, 2009,
as shared in her art calendar for April, 2011

Later today we will officially welcome the season of
S P R I N G, the Equinox.

Hello, you are most welcome.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

MY SOUL, MY PEOPLE

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

The voices that I hear with a full heart are those of affirmation
rather than struggle. Langston Hughes had such a voice:

“I’ve known rivers:

I’ve known rivers ancient as the world and older than the flow
of human blood in human veins.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.

I bathed in the Euphrates when dawns were young.

I built my hut near the Congo and it lulled me to sleep.

I looked upon the Nile and raised the pyramids above it.

I heard the singing of the MIssissippi when Abe Lincoln went
down to New Orleans and I’ve seen its muddy bosom turn
all golden in the sunset.

I’ve known rivers:

Ancient, dusky rivers.

My soul has grown deep like the rivers.”

……….LANGSTON HUGHES

I was not part of that struggle; I was not aware until late in
life that these words were the words of my ancestors.
I can notice how deeply grateful I am to have been given
so much to live up to. No longer separate, one of many.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

MORNING THOUGHTS

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

Hello again. It’s been a while, and many group physical changes
have required being present in a tunnel-like way. And I have new
windows!
So, this morning
I have chosen a curious poem by Mary Oliver:

M O R N I N G

“Salt shining behind its glass cylinder.

Milk in a blue bowl. The yellow linoleum.

The cat stretching her black body from the pillow.

The way she makes her curvaceous response to the small,
kind gesture.

Then laps the bowl clean.

Then wants to go out into the world

where she leaps lightly and for no apparent reason
across the lawn,

then sits, perfectly still, in the grass.

I watch her a little while, thinking:

what more could I do with wild words?

I stand in the cold kitchen, bowing down to her.

I stand in the cold kitchen, everything wonderful around me.”

……………………..MARY OLIVER, 1991-1992

It took a second reading for me to see that here, too,
there are new windows. From one line to the next (the last),
a leap of awareness.

As easy as that.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette