LaDonnaWitmer

Newborn

jude_hand_crop
Mood: Sweet
Drinking: Chai

There is a new person in the world. Small and innocent. His miniature feet are like velvet. His head smells of meadows and milk.

I am utterly in love.

My sister is a miracle worker, bringing such a perfect wee thing into being. I am so proud. So proud of her, and so in awe.

“You’re a woman now,” I said to her in the labor room. And we both laughed. But I was serious.

She has gone beyond. Someday, perhaps, I will follow. But until then, I’ll stand here in wonder that such a thing is possible. Nothing, and then life. Emptiness, and then a perfect small person.

It’s shaping up to be a wonderful Christmas.

Over the last few days, with the phone call that it was happening, it was happening Right Now! And then the trip to the hospital, the chaos of it all culminating in the arrival of new flesh and blood… It’s such an overwhelming experience. Over the last few days I kept thinking of a poem that I discovered in a poetry workshop earlier this year.

All I could remember was that it was written from the perspective of a newly born baby, and that I was deeply moved the first time I read it.

So I dug through my piles of poetry and found it there among the heap. It’s called “First Hour”, by American poet Sharon Olds, from her book The Unswept Room (2002)…

That hour, I was most myself. I had shrugged
my mother slowly off, I lay there
taking my first breaths, as if
the whir of the room was blowing me
like a bubble. All I had to do
was go out along the line of my gaze and back,
out and back, on gravity’s silk, the
pressure of the air a caress, smelling on my
self her creamy blood. The air
was softly touching my skin and tongue,
entering me and drawing forth the little
sighs I did not know as mine.
I was not afraid. I lay in the quiet
and looked, and did the wordless thought,
my mind getting its oxygen
direct, the rich mix by mouth.
I hated no-one. I gazed and gazed,
and everything was interesting, I was
free, not yet in love, I did not
belong to anyone, I had drunk
no milk yet, no-one had
my heart. I was not very human. I did not
know there was anyone else. I lay
like a god, for an hour, then they came for me,
and took me to my mother.

-Lo, who is celebrating the season of miracles.

Mistletoe and Miscellany

poinsetta Mood: List-Checking-Off-ish
Drinking: Daily Dose of Water

No matter how much you plan, how many vows you make, cookies you bake, lights you string, fa la la… No matter what, this season always gets to you with its busy-ness. With its sometimes sincere but often forced cheerfulness. Its overwhelming red and greenness. Its sugar overdoses and last minute gift panic.

I’m not panicking, though. I’m roadtripping.

Boy and I are packing the LeeLoo up and driving north to Portland to visit his sister, a few friends, and LeeLoo’s Internet Boyfriend, Henry D. Monster.

LeeLoo’s excited only because she saw some tasty treats and one of her babies go into a duffle bag, so she knows she’s going along. She has no idea what’s in store for her. She and the Monster have not yet met in real life, but now that they’re taking their relationship offline (i.e. out of me and Henry’s mom’s myspace photo exchanges and fake dog-messages and into the dogs’ actual lives), well, much cuteness and butt-sniffing shall be had! There will be photos. Count on it.

I’ve got other plans to avoid holiday panic — I’m boycotting the company Secret Santa thingie, for one.

Even better, my sister’s baby is due between Christmas and New Year’s, and even though he hasn’t even taken his first breath, he’s already got more presents than Boy does. I can’t stop buying adorable wee t-shirts that say stuff like “I do my own stunts.”

My parents’ plane touches down in CA soon, and since holidays with the entire Witmer family don’t happen often anymore, it’s quite exciting to think about the full house and long chats by the fire that we’ll soon be having. Actually, nervous energy getting spread around the maternity ward waiting room is probably more like it.

And in the midst of all the holidays and hullaballoo, I’ve still got some training to do. I’m up to 9 miles now, and my half marathon date creeps steadily closer. I’m still fundraising for Team in Training/The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society. You’ve got another week or so to sponsor me, if you want.

There are also a few poetry readings in the works for early next year. Dates to be determined. I’ll let you know when I know.

-Lo, who misses sword-sized icicles.

Enlightenment

light1
Mood: Moody
Drinking: Drinks

Enlightenment

In the deep darkness
this little light
casts shadows bigger
than the possibility of death.

Sometimes the gloom
is best left undisturbed.
Illumination only increases
the magnitude of nightmares.

This is why we lie to children.

We say “you can be anything
you want to be.” But we know
the actual possibilities
are so much less than infinite.

In the dark before dawn,
the little ones build delicious
desperate dreams, extravagant
gossamer schemes held together
by hope and whole milk.

There is always room
for beautiful delusions
when you cannot see
how fast the walls
are closing in.

We all break so easily
in love and darkness.
You spend 10 years
trying to kill yourself
only to realize that
what you really want
is to live.

The little light winks on
somewhere in the deep
and by its glow you finally see
just how far you have to go.

-Lo, who is going, going, gone.

Across the Sea

cinepoetry_screencap Mood: Cranking
Drinking: Diet Coke

Although our fame is quite modest and our fans are few, word of the cinépoetry work that Michelle and I have been doing has spread all the way across the sea.
To Cambridge, England.

We recently received an invitation from The Cinepoetry Society at Cambridge (who knew such a lovely thing existed!?) to submit a cinépoem for screening at a film event they’re hosting next spring.

Their event will consist entirely of cinépoetry, which is remarkable in and of itself. The Society has specifically requested (and we’ve obliged) a copy of Abattoir for their screening.

So, coming to Cambridge in March of 2008: heavy metal, blood spatter, and poetry!

If you visit The Cinepoetry Society’s online Screening Room, you can see several diverse examples of the genre, including interesting animated works from Billy Collins, a text-only version from Filipino poet Nick Carbo, and a fun piece from Kino, the “poet of sound and image”, to name just a few. Our own Alice & Abattoir are there, too.

I think this is what I love best about the internet… finding new art and inspiration that otherwise would exist only across some far away sea.

-Lo, who wants to hitch a ride to the Cambridge show.

Finally Awake

apresunreve_alice
Mood: Catatonic
Drinking: Water

You’ll be happy to know that you can now (or later) gather ’round the computer after consuming large quantities of holiday bird and sink into a peaceful, even catatonic state while you watch the newest cinépoem.

It’s better than football.

Unless, you know, you’re one of those freaks who actually likes watching football. But if you are, chances are you’re not reading this website. If you love football and read this website, well, you must be ambidextrous, too, you crazy fool.

Back to the point of the post: new cinépoetry.

Après un Rêve (After a Dream) is the 18th cinépoem to arrive on our scene. It was inspired by a couple of things… the poem itself was written shortly after I found out my sister was pregnant. The title is borrowed from a musical piece of the same name by composer Gabriel Fauré.

The Fauré piece is also the musical score for this cinépoem, and adds a great deal of melancholy ambience, helping to create the dreamlike state we were shooting for.

The look and feel cinépoem itself was inspired by a recent trip to Ireland. Boy and I decided to shoot a photographic cinépoem abroad, as we’ve done before in Paris and in Venice. This time, instead of letting the cinépoem loose throughout an entire city, we stayed within the lush green confines of St. Stephen’s Green, in Dublin’s fair city (where girls are so pretty).

We shot the series within an hour’s time, early one fine Friday morning. I’m sure the Dubliners thought we were very strange tourists, but they were polite enough not to mention it.

I’ve only recently discovered the other words to Après un Rêve (the musical version). Here is the translation based on a French text written by Romaine Bussine (1830-1899), which is apparently based on an Italian poem by an unknown Tuscan artist:

In a slumber which held your image spellbound
I dreamt of happiness, passionate mirage,
Your eyes were softer, your voice pure and sonorous,
You shone like a sky lit up by the dawn;

You called me and I left the earth

To run away with you towards the light,
The skies opened their clouds for us,
Unknown splendours, divine flashes glimpsed,

Alas! Alas! sad awakening from dreams
I call you, O night, give me back your lies,

Return, return radiant,
Return, O mysterious night.

They’re all beautiful, I think. The cinepoem, the music, the anonymous Italian. I love them all.

Go visit the waking dream here. Non-mac people can check out the YouTube version here.

-Lo, who dreamt last night of spaceships and sparrows.

Deadly Nightshade

bella
Mood: Satisfied
Drinking: Water

I’m letting the ink sink in.

Fresh from the gun, my newest tattoo is all crisp lines and delicate shades, standing out in bold relief until it heals and peels.

My 13th tattoo is an art noveau interpretation (drawn by the lovely Sarah and fine-tuned by the talented Rocio) of the Atropa belladonna plant, also known as deadly nightshade. It’s one of the most toxic plants in the western hemisphere. Children have been poisoned by eating as few as three of the shiny purple berries.

If you’re a Burton fan, you’ll recognize it as the plant that Sally uses in The Nightmare Before Christmas to poison Doctor Finklestein and make her escape.

But the plant’s poisonous nature is not really the reason I’m going to wear it on my arm forever.

“Belladonna” is Italian for “beautiful woman”. Drop the first three letters and you have my name — which means “the woman” in Italian.

I got the first part of this tattoo — a single belladonna flower and leaf — when I visited Italy for the first time in 2005. Boy and I got (non-matching) tattoos in a little shop near the Vatican. The tattoo artist’s name was Materazzi Maurizio. He had papered the walls of his small shop with posters of homoerotic Roman centurions, and he spoke only two or three words of English, which was about as many as I spoke in Italian.

We managed to get our tattoos without mishap, and the belladonna flower on my right arm has been a favorite ever since.

But in recent months it’s started to look lonely to me, and I thought that letting more belladonna twine up my arm would be a great way to celebrate my birthday.

To me, the belladonna tattoo signifies a time of coming into my own, of settling into my skin and embracing the woman that I’ve become, thorns and all. I like the duality of the beautiful woman/deadly nightshade nature of the word. There does always seem to be a bit of poison in the beauty.

Bella donna. She’s who I’m learning to be.

-Lo, who isn’t afraid of the needle.

This, That and the Other

seventy6
Mood: Spaced
Drinking: Tea

Wicker Kid is writing again. I couldn’t be more delighted. Go read his latest, and you’ll be delighted too.

The Swell Season is in town, and Boy and I and a bunch of our friends are going to go see Glen and Marketa in person tonight. I’m tingling with anticipation. I expect it to be beautiful. After Once, how could it not!?

This weekend, in addition to being a birthday weekend for yours truly, is also Poppy Jasper Film Festival weekend down in Morgan Hill, CA.

Slippery Shiny Feathery Things, the same cinepoem collection that won the Best of Festival Arts award at Berkeley, is screening at Poppy Jasper on November 10 at 9pm and November 11 at 3pm.

Check the schedule if you’re in the area and want to stop by the festival for some big screen action.

That’s all for now, but it’s quite enough to keep you busy, yes?

-Lo, who’s ready for some fresh ink.

The Peanut Proclamation

jobelly2 Mood: Chipper
Drinking: Diet Dr. Pepper

I’m going to be an aunt soon.

My sister is gorgeously, beautifully pregnant with an ever-growing bump that we’ve been calling “Peanut”.

He’s a first for the Witmer clan. First grandchild for my parents, first baby for my sister, and the first time I’ve ever been so close to a pregnancy.

Friends have popped out wee progenies here and there over the years, and I’ve been there at baby showers and first birthdays. But I’ve never been so involved before.

Last weekend I attended a birthing class with my sister, and was quickly overwhelmed by just how much I do not know about this whole process.

You’d think, being in possession of a womb myself, that I would be a little better informed. But I’m also a member of the Unused Uterus Club at work (where myself and my fellow Unused Uterians are surrounded by women who’ve already gone where we few, thus far, fear to tread.)

I think my mother was afraid I’d be either terrified or grossed out by the class (and the incredibly crisp, unedited videos) and make my Unused Uterus Club Membership permanent.

But just the opposite happened. My dad attributes my stoic stomach to growing up on a farm and watching hundreds of newborn creatures — puppies, kittens, lambs, goats, etc. — make their somewhat slimy but no less miraculous way into the world. I’m sure that’s part of it.

But the avalanche of new information was ultimately what won me over… learning about the four stages of labor and the way the body readies itself for what is to come. I had no idea, and now I’m utterly fascinated.

I’ve always thought of pregnancy as nine months of waiting for the torture of childbirth. Yes, a miraculous new life is growing inside of you, but at some point it’s going to need to come out, and the coming out part is going to hurt.

But the pain is just part of the process, I think. And I know I’m saying this from a safe and painless vantage point — unused uterus and all. But after the birthing class and talking to my sister and thinking about the millions of women who’ve already been there, well. I think the actual act of parenting is much more daunting than the few hours of birthing.

I’ll get the inside story in a few months from my sister herself, as she crosses over to a place I’ve never been.

All our lives, I’ve gone first. First to drive, to date, to drink. First to get a bicycle, and then a horse. First to break curfew, first to leave home. And now, finally, she gets to take the lead.

I know she’ll be amazing.

And I? I’ll be an aunt!

-Lo, who has big plans for Peanut’s punk rock t-shirt collection.

Hallowhatever

emily_cat
Mood: Blah
Drinking: Bleah

I usually love Halloween.

Last year I wore two costumes, one for day, one for night. (I tend to overcompensate for a costume-less childhood: Growing up on a farm meant minimal trick-or-treating.)

This year, I put just the barest minimum of effort into my transformation.

At first, I wasn’t even going to bother. But then I looked around and thought, “What’s out there that already looks like me?”

One look in the mirror at my never-ending bangs and I had the answer: Emily the Strange. Just add a dress and some Mary Janes and presto sort-of-chango: Costume.

Emily is always surrounded by her cat posse, though (Miles, Sabbath, NeeChee and Mystery), so I recruited LeeLoo to the cause with a black cat costume for dogs. She’ll tolerate it, as long as the costume-wearing is quickly followed by the ingestion of cheese.

So, contrary to my early ambivalence, I woke up yesterday morning all bouncy and full of Halloween cheer. Cheer that was slowly siphoned away by the absolutely gloomy and incredibly apathetic day.

What’s up, San Francisco? We can’t get dressed up anymore just because the Man put the kibosh on the Castro Halloween tradition? Now we all have to go to work as everyday overworked employees? We can’t mix up the humdrum with a little dress-up fun? We think we’re too old to be spooktacular?

My friend K (who was Ugly Betty for the day) and I shared a morose lunch, looking out the window at all the far-too-normal passersby. For the entire hour we sat at the Utah eating our BLTs, not one costume walked by. Even on a normal day in San Francisco, you usually get more than that!

And then the ultimate deflation: Nobody at work even noticed that I was in costume. Joke’s on me, I guess… that was my original ironic intent, but it totally backfired. Either that, or nobody at my workplace pays any attention to fictional counterculture characters that start off all badass and underground and then end up turning into an overexposed Hot Topic sellout.

Boo.

I don’t know what the funk is all about… perhaps it’s because November just snuck up far too quickly this year. Perhaps it’s because my birthday (and the accompanying acknowledgement of encroaching middle age) is now truly inevitable. Perhaps it’s just because I’m overdue for a haircut.

Or maybe I was just possessed by the true spirit of Emily: “Wish you weren’t here!”

Whatever it is, it’s time to move on. I’m ready for you now, November. Bring on the birthday…

-Lo, who prefers treats unless the tricks are done by ponies.

Borrowed Horses

fantasia1 Mood: Tasty
Drinking: Canned

Someone in a poetry group I belong to recently shared a poem by Cecilia Woloch.

I’ve never ready any of Cecilia’s work before, but this one is very lovely, and reminds me a lot of my own memories of bareback rides through woods with my sister.

So I thought I’d borrow it and share it here, because it’s exactly the kind of poem that should be out there in the world, garnering all kinds of accolades and adoration…

(A technical note: A “pantoum” is a form of poetry similar to the villanelle. You can find the definition here, if you’re interested.)

Bareback Pantoum
by Cecilia Woloch

One night, bareback and young, we rode through the woods
and the woods were on fire —
two borrowed horses, two local boys
whose waists we clung to, my sister and I

and the woods were on fire —
the pounding of hooves and the smell of smoke and the sharp sweat of boys
whose waists we clung to, my sister and I,
as we rode toward flame with the sky in our mouths —

the pounding of hooves and the smell of smoke and the sharp sweat of boys
and the heart saying: mine
as we rode toward flame with the sky in our mouths —

the trees turning gold, then crimson, white

and the heart saying: mine
of the wild, bright world;
the trees turning gold, then crimson, white
as they burned in the darkness, and we were girls

of the wild, bright world
of the woods near our house — we could turn, see the lights
as they burned in the darkness, and we were girls
so we rode just to ride

through the woods near our house — we could turn, see the lights
and the horses would carry us, carry us home
so we rode just to ride,
my sister and I, just to be close to that danger, desire

and the horses would carry us, carry us home
— two borrowed horses, two local boys,
my sister and I — just to be close to that danger, desire —
one night, bareback and young, we rode through the woods

-Lo, who can feel the hoofbeats pounding beneath the lines.