Month: January 2012

THE WEATHER

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

I live in southern New England, below the Merritt Parkway.
I could even say I live at the shore with a view of the
whole United States to my right… and a view of the rest
of the globe over the boundless ocean at the edge of my
left shoulder… to Nantucket and beyond.

Here, we had a very early sudden snow at the end of
October, with occasional ‘weather’ since. Right now, we’re
in a lull of bare trees, chill winds, dark afternoons. Not so
the rest of New England! Many inches of snow, even the
bears in the backyards, looking for forage.

Now, this morning, I have chosen a poem perhaps born of
this time of year, and it’s set me thinking:

“L A N D S C A P E

Isn’t it plain the sheets of moss, except that
they have no tongues, could lecture
all day if they wanted about

spiritual patience? Isn’t it clear
the black oaks along the path are standing
as though they were the most fragile of flowers?

Every morning I walk like this around
the pond, thinking: if the doors of my heart
ever close, I am as good as dead.

Every morning, so far, I’m alive. And now
the crows break off from the rest of the darkness
and burst up into the sky — as though

all night they had thought of what they would like
their lives to be, and imagined
their strong, thick wings.”

………………MARY OLIVER,
from her book, Dream Work, 1986

Aha! It could be like that, couldn’t it? I could imagine
what I would like my life to be, so strongly that it
turns out to be just like that.

It’s even quite probable that that’s exactly what’s
happening.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

THE POWER OF QUIET TIME

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

I love silence. I come to a stop of doing, of planning,
and suddenly all is still. You know that place. Lately,
I have altered the tempo of my doing, and found that
it’s like all the parts of a chorale, it fits the melody with
the softness of a glove.

However, since December, ’11, I had an episode of
almost a month of a weakening virus that laid me low!
On January 3rd I was helped through this time by the
offer of a daily meditation from What I Know To Be True (WIKTBT).

It was free! Not a lot to do except sign up and it was
delivered each day to my inbox. WIKTBT is a book which will be out within a month
or two, and the authors, Lisa Jacoby & Caroline Temple,
had offered this meditation of 21 days as an introduction
to that book.

I did the whole 21 days, it fit in easily, whether early in
the morning or later after all the day’s activity. I had a
sense of the presence of others, as I listened, alone here.
Being ill, that was very reassuring. I was not lonely.

The 21 days were completed yesterday. During that time
I painted 5 Inner Portraits, was active in the community of
this place where I live, shopped, had dates, spent much
time on the computer, and read tons of books. However,
hovering in the background as I got well, was a feeling of
not being safe. Mid-way in this time, I asked my family to
conference with me on this feeling.

Also, there were days when I had to suddenly stop, cancel
all plans and just go inside. And, each day I tuned in to the
free meditation of WIKTBT. It had become an easy anchor
for me, 15 to 20 minutes each day. I gradually became aware
that a process was going on that I could no longer ignore.

The trumpets should ring out about here! Caroline’s soft
voice and measured, quiet sharing, the music almost im-
perceptible, had led me to a place inside where I knew it was
time to stop driving my car, to allow others to accompany
me out in the world, and to honor my soul’s need to relax,
let go into a new part of my life.

So, that’s it, dears. My granddaughter who had given me the
car a few years back, now has it again. I will never have to
shovel the snow off and move the car so the town can plow
the parking lot! I am quite free. WOW.

These “dailies” will now be a bit more daily. This coming
Saturday I will be at a Day Retreat with the author’s of WIKTBT.
I am so grateful for the part coming back to daily meditating
has had in my life.
Do check out WIKTBT, and see what that’s
all about.

Poetry again soon.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

" I come to a stop of doing, of planning, and suddenly all is still."

YEARNING

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

On a single page of poetry:

“it was a clean escape
into oceans of silver beads

it was a muddled day
like pictures
green through morning clouds,
and with steeples
and cypress trees
wrapped around your wrist

you walked with me

you walked with me”

………………KYLIE JOHNSON,
from her book, Count Me the Stars

The ‘yearning’ could be for that which is
just beyond reach, taking us (me) briefly
into a world without walls, a present of
timeless blips of perception.

I particularly love the steeples and cypress
trees. These, like slender arms reaching
up… and up….

then letting out the breath and feeling glad.
………………………………………………………….

I have recently completed the free 21-Day
Retreat of meditations by email, given by
Caroline Temple and Lisa Jacoby from their
upcoming book, “What I Know To Be True”.

I found that each day’s beginning was made
more available if I started my day with the
meditation of that day in the order in which
they were given.

Blips of experience, the set of meditations
is available on Facebook.

Be well.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

LISTENING

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

There is a book called ‘Poetic Medicine” that carries
the words that heal because someone has taken the
time/trouble to find a place in the fog to say, “here’s
a way”.

As I take the time to find my way out of a recent
winter ailment, I have reached for softer ways to be
aware of what my body and soul are trying to share
with me. Two poets have suggested a way:

“Listening creates holy silence.
Listening is like the rain.”

….. Rachel Naomi Remen

and:

“Listen.
The new grass stands
upon a podium of dirt,
promising Earth her spring.
Listen, and you will hear
everything promising something:
The planets their fidelity
to Sun, Moon her loyal tending
to the tides.
Listen, and on a still night
you will hear your own breath
make a shy but certain promise to Life,
listen well, and Life will
promise herself to you
like an eager bride.”

…… Noel Beitler

It is easy to stop and listen at about two-thirty
a.m. in the morning, hearing the creak of the
chair as I turn to the dark window to catch a
glimpse of wind in the branches of the trees in
the lighted parking lot. I am grateful for this
healing poetry.

I pass it on to you, just in case.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

A PEN IN HAND

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

We dream, awake, and almost instantly, the thread of
that dreaming vanishes. I reach – it’s just beyond touch.
It’s still evening of January 12, and my Rumi Daybook
on page 12, has an apt musing:

“Though a thousand snares catch our feet,
when You are with us there is no difficulty.
Every night you free our spirits from the body’s snare,
and clear the tablets of the mind.
Every night spirits are set free from this cage.
no longer ruled by rules or long stories.

At night prisoners have no sense of imprisonment,
at night governors are unconscious of their power.
There is no sorrow, no thought of gain or loss,
no tales of this person or another.
Even without sleep this how the gnostic is.
As God said, ‘you would think they were awake,
while they slept’.

Have no doubt : there are those who are asleep,
day and night, to the affairs of this world,
yet moving like a pen in the hand of God.”

…….. as translated by Kabir and Camille Helminski

There seems to be another sense of interdimensional
experience in dreaming. I am freed from the limitation
of age and roam the halls without effort. Yet there is
present much confrontation, and mountains to scale,
as well.

I am grateful for the cleared tablets of the mind. What a
delightful concept: moving like a pen in the hand of God.
To be so moved is to know there is only the dance and
the freedom to feel, and so feeling, to be the dancing.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette

Photo by Dylan Strazar

ILLNESS AS A JOURNEY

Posted on by Antoinette Martignoni

It’s January, 2012. l cannot sleep, so I’ve gotten up
again, and wandered over here to the computer to
share some time with you. So many times I’ve found
Mary Oliver to have the right words to ease me into
a clearer place, a curious passage, and she has not
failed me this very, very early morning:

T H E J O U R N E Y

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice —-
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do —
determined to save
the only life you could save.”

………..MARY OLIVER, New & Selected Poems,
1992.

I have heard that many others have had some
form of breathing illness during the weeks ending
2011 and the start of 2012. To you who have had
this experience, hasn’t it seemed like a journey
from which you have not so much arrived as a
renewal of the experience of what it feels like to
be alive?

It is good to be alive again. There is still so much
of January ahead, and I’m grateful that the weather
has held off ‘winter’ during this awakening time.

Sweet dreams.

with love …
Mom/Mimi/Toni/Antoinette