LaDonnaWitmer

Smells Like Children

kids2 Mood: Measured
Drinking: Diet Coke in a Can

Last weekend, Boy and I played host to some old friends and their two little rugrats. (It’s an affectionate term, Internet!)

I guess the LeeLoo should get some credit for playing host, too. She was so very polite whilst being covered in shredded bits of Kleenex by small shrieking tots.

I think the game was “TeePee the Dog with the Smallest Bits of Tissue Possible While Giggling Hysterically at Extremely High-Pitched Levels.” She did very well, just laying there and taking it like a champ. But then she does love to lick on baby toes, so I guess the trade-off was more than adequate for her.

We had lots of fun with homemade pizza a walk to the park and small bowls of messy gelato for all. I even dug out a dusty box of coloring books and crayons from the depths of the garage. One of our small guests has a great liking for drawing dinosaurs. He also will only eat crackers and grapes.

The habits of childhood are mystifying to me. I remember having a strong aversion to liver and onions (which has followed me into adulthood), but I don’t remember much about my own toddler-sized likes and dislikes.

After all the sippy cups and ziploc baggies of crackers were stowed away and our guests had tucked themselves back into their minivan and headed east again, Boy looked at me in the blessed silence and said,
“You know, if we have some of our own, they’re not going to go away at the end of the day.”

I flopped down on the couch next to the dog and picked a bit of half-chewed tissue from her ear.
“Yeah,” I sighed.
“I know.”

It’s a topic that’s been beaten to death recently, what with another approaching birthday heralding another year in the Unused Uterus Club, as well as the way one of my very best friend’s little belly is starting to pooch out in an adorably pregnant way.

Boy’s mom wants to know, my Grandma wants to know, people I don’t even know at all want to know, “WHEN ARE YOU GUYS GOING TO START A FAMILY?”

There are so many things I want to say to that question, not the least of which is,
“None of your business!”
And also, “We already ARE a family.”
And then, “I really haven’t the faintest idea.”

At first, there were so many things we wanted to do. And we’ve done a lot of them in the last seven years. But the thing I’m beginning to realize is that you never, ever, finish your To Do List.

Visit one exotic land and you’ll discover six more that you just have to see. Finish one book and you’ll want to write two more. Settle into a little house and you’ll soon need a bigger one. The list will just go on and on, forever.

Meanwhile, in the background, behind all the hustle and everyday bustle, a clock will wind up and start ticking, at first so softly that you can’t even hear it. But the years start to spin by faster and faster and pretty soon the goddamn ticking sound is all that you can hear.

And by “you”, I mean me. Because I’m standing up here with my head cocked to the left like Captain Hook on watch for the crocodile, but Boy can’t hear a thing.

I guess if you’re lacking in ovarian capacity, a biological clock is beside the point.

So there I was on a bright Sunday afternoon, slow roasting in the sun at a playground, feeling like a barren intruder among all those self-confident breeders, a colorless island amidst a river of primary colors, watching the roommate of my bar-hopping days wrangle her children like a seasoned veteran, like a real mommy, like a woman.

And the clock was beating in time to my banging pulse.

Suddenly I was afraid.

They say you’re never really ready for it. I believe it. If I’ve learned anything in this life, it’s that you’re never really ready for anything. Not even when you’ve read all the books and done all your homework. You’re never prepared for the real thing. You’ve just gotta jump in and kick and splash and cough and swim.

One of these days, one of these days
I’m jumping in.

Until then, I’ll just let my li’l sister tell me how deep and cold the water is…

-Lo, who wants to know if she’s Auntie to a boy or a girl. What are you, Peanut?!

Gotta Get It

sarahgetsbook
Mood: Kick-ass-ey
Drinking: Tea from the ‘Bucks

She’s got hers.
———————–>

What are you waiting for?

That’s right, I’m talkin’ to you. I know you’ve been thinking about ordering up your very own copy of The Secrets of Falling but you were waiting for summer or sundown or Christmas in July.

And to you, I say, “What better time than now?”

All you’ve gotta do is run right over to the ordering page and click on the button and bing! bang! zoom! Your book will be waiting, all shiny and smelling of fresh ink, in your mailbox. Pages and pages of yet-unread words… sounds like a magical afternoon to me. But then, I’m biased toward words to begin with.

If you’re one of those folks who’s a bit scared of modern technology and internet shopping and hackers and slackers and such, well, just pop on over to the Says You page and tell me how you’d rather pay for your book…check in the mail, money order in the envelope, quarters in a sock, fair trade for fellow artists, whatever. I’m negotiable.

Well, to a point.

Anyway, the point is: Go Get Yours!

-Lo, who may even throw in a fun little prize, old-school Cracker Jack-style.

Yellow

tree Mood: Industrious
Drinking: Green Tea

even the dust here
is weary and
bored
covering the brown men
in their roadside shacks
with a visible layer of
despair.

dreams get smaller
in dinuba. children
hope for chicken nuggets
and plastic birthday
gifts. everyone goes to church
and WalMart on Sundays
to worship
in the air-conditioned aisles
of capitalism and canned ham.
the 24-hour supercenter
fills an entire field
where the transplanted
landscape palms
look dehydrated
and uncomfortable.
across the street, all the
stores stay closed, the windows
shuttered with yellow dust.

the air smells
of ennui and
nectarines. it is four
hours from home and
a wide world away where
all the bumper stickers
are redwhite and
conservative and the only time
brown and white ever mingle
is when money changes hands.

on the side of the road
I pay a brown man two
dollars for a box of bruised
purple plums. I plan
to say gracias instead
of thankyou but it seems
so condescending. when
the moment comes
I panic.
I keep my head down
and mutter merci
which helps no-one. I feel
exceptionally pale and
unaccountably guilty.
there’s nothing left to do but
drive away.

-Lo, who really is exceptionally pale.

Nobody Special

night_notredame Mood: Withdrawn
Drinking: The Usual Tea

I’ve been thinking a lot this week about the nature of celebrity. (And no, this isn’t a post about Paris. I refuse to waste any energy on such a waste of soul.)

My conclusions are simple and baldly unoriginal… I don’t want celebrity to ever happen to me.

Not that I have no ambition, no desire to make a dent. I do. I just want to retain enough anonymity that papparazzo and gossip bloggers never know where I live. I want to remain boring enough that nobody ever cares what I wear to the grocery store. I want to keep a low profile so that the crazies would have to bend down to notice me.

(Although, lately? Crazies score 1 to my big fat zero.) It’s mystifying to me how you can accidentally attract the attention of an unstable person and then, no matter how hard you try to shrink into the shadows, no matter how much logic and reason you have on your side, no matter how preposterously insane the rants start to get, no matter whether you choose silence or rational conversation, you cannot get the crazy to look somewhere else, to stare at some other shiny object. You cannot make it go away.

True, I could pack up my website and run and hide. But that would be letting the terrorists win, or something. No, I’m not going anywhere. I’m not going to be scared into submission by one small and lonely bully. I’m going to carry on with the usual, inbox aside.

But if I, with my small and quite modest fan club, if I am so powerless to stop such pedestrian harassment, if I just have to put up with it and pretend it doesn’t exist, how much worse must it be for the actual fame-ridden? To everyday pull on the famous facade. The bleached perma-smile. The public persona. To get used to the lack of personal space. The random Joe from Pokomo assuming he actually knows who you are. The constant press of flesh. The terrible things that get written and whispered about you that aren’t anywhere close to true.

And in the midst of it all, even behind their high walls and moneyed mansions, the fortunate & celebrated can’t really defend themselves against the false perceptions and the fictional pull quotes. People will always believe whatever they want to believe, truth and actuality be damned. (I’m even guilty of it myself. Notice the way I started this post with a snide little Hilton aside.)

It’s horrible… I don’t even want to think about living a life like that. They can keep the wealth and the privilege and the notoriety. I don’t need my face to be billboard-sized. I don’t need the whole world (or even a whole town) to know my name.

When my sister and I were small and got into the usual sibling spat, I liked to try to shut her down with brilliant retorts such as: “Mind your own beeswax!”

It’s what I feel like yelling out into the ether now, though it would do me no good. “Mind your own! Leave me and mine alone!”

-Lo, who really adores peace and the lovely quiet that comes with it.

Doggone

hairyeyeball Mood: Dirty
Drinking: Daquiri

Two dogs too many.

That’s what I have.

For the past 2 weeks, I’ve been dogsitting McKinna, my sister’s extremely huge, panda-headed hound. (The one on the right.)

She’s very sweet and adorable, as you can see. But, and I know I’ve said this before — it bears repeating — DUMB AS A BOX OF VERY DULL ROCKS.

The good thing is that she’s too thick to know how strong she is, so she flops around like a tiny puppy, knocking over anything (or anyone) in her way, and then gets her feelings really hurt when you tell her to knock it off. If her wee brain was a bit larger and she knew that she’s got the muscles of the Incredible Hulk, well, I’d be in a world of hurtin’. There’d be no listening when I tell her to “Leave! Me! Alone!”

She’d just be all, “Oh, yeah, tiny lady? WHO’S GONNA MAKE ME?!” And then she’d want to arm wrassle and when I’d try to run away, she’d pin me to the rug with her four ginormous puppy paws (the size of Christmas hams, they are) and lick my face right off.

Her mum and pop are coming back tomorrow, and I’m sure the Loon and I will miss balancing our tea cups on top of her outlandishly large noggin and saying things like, “Pffft! She’s sooooo immature!” (I just know that’s what LeeLoo’s thinking when she sits demurely on the couch watching all the shenanigans. She’s very adept at the eye roll and put-upon sigh.)

I, for one, will not miss the roughhousing, though. McKinna is a man’s dog, and I am clearly not man enough for her. She’s gonna go home and tell all her friends that her aunt is “so boring” and “a total stick in the mud” and “like, such a crabby beyotch! I hate going to her house.”

At least she’s learned a new trick. Now in addition to “sit” and “high five”, my large fur niece will return home knowing exactly how to “fuck off!”

-Lo, who really does love that damn dog.

Reading Accomplished

reading3 Mood: Well Done
Drinking: Sweet Tea

Thanks to everybody who came out for the reading last night, especially those of you who had to stand in the back because of the lack of chairs. I hope we made it worthwhile.

I didn’t know any of the other poets who read, but it’s always fun to hear other people’s work.

I’m still recovering from the bug that has whupped my ass for the past 8 days, and midway through my reading, I realized I sounded like Nasal Hazel, all twangy and honky. For those of you who haven’t heard me read before — I usually sound quite a bit less like a stuffed goose.

Things at home are beginning to settle down after the vacation/sicktime upheaval. Although there is an extra 4-legged beastie in the house, and she just might be 4 legs too many.

My sister and peeps are on vacation, and since they kindly babysat the Loon while Boy and I were away, it’s our turn to sit for McKinna, the giant-headed christmas-ham-pawed panda-faced freakshow of a creature that my sister calls Dog.

McKinna is sweet as pie but dumb as a stick and I think I’m going to be happy to see her backside leaving through the front door this weekend. Two dogs make life more interesting than I need it to be right now. I’m ready to get back to status quo.

Speaking of normal and getting it back, Shel and I are FINALLY getting around editing Abattoir this week. We’ve been more than a little bit busy with other things, but I know you’ve all been waiting a good long time for a new cinepoem, and I promise you’ll have one soon.

Then after Abattoir comes Kiss & Fly and then Apres un Reve, and we’ll soon be shooting even more. Back to normal, indeed…

-Lo, who thinks that naptime should be normal. Every day.

Getting a Read On

overlandbook
Mood: Medicine-head
Drinking: Medicine-stuff

Vacation is over and onward comes reality.

My lovely new head cold prevents me from having any thoughts that could be construed as intelligent, so I’ll save the holiday reminiscing for later, when the kleenexes are all used up.

Here’s the new news that you need to know:
I’ll be reading from The Secrets of Falling this Sunday, June 17th, at The Great Overland Book Company at 9th and Judah in San Francisco. The reading is produced by the Writing Salon and includes 8 other local poets.

The reading starts at 7:15pm and ends at 9pm. I’ll be the first one to read after the break, so I’ll probably take the mic around 8 p.m. But if you live in SF, come out and support all the other poets, too. It’s sure to be an evening full of good words.

-Lo, who is realizing that vacations are just as exhausting as real life.

Enjoy the Silence

dream2 Mood: Checked Out
Drinking: Always Tea

Now that it’s over, it feels like a dream.

All those weeks, those months of working so hard. Late nights. Early mornings. Endless lists of things to do. And then just like that, finished.

Not that there’s nothing left to do. There are books to place in stores, poetry readings with my name on the list, websites to reconfigure, there are plenty of things to do. But nothing like the lists I was juggling just two weeks ago.

Because for now, for now I am on vacation. I am checked out. I am not answering the phone. I am refusing to check email regularly. Starting tomorrow, if you order a book, it will take a couple of weeks to get there. Starting tomorrow, if you leave me a voicemail, it might be awhile before I call you back. Starting tomorrow, I’ll be off with my passport in my pocket. Starting tomorrow, Boy and I are going to be blissed out.

It will last just long enough, and then I’ll be back. I’l be back and I’ll tell you all about the reading at Great Overland Books on June 17th and the bookstores in Santa Cruz and the publishing company in Vermont and the Australian DJ who is, right this moment, doing unspeakable things with vox and trax and other mysterious x’s. I’ll tell you all about it.

But for the next little while, I’ll be living the dream…

-Lo, who bought a new plaid umbrella especially for this occasion.

About Last Night

partygirls

Mood: Done!
Drinking: Celebratory Iced Tea

Party? Check!

Thanks to everybody who came out to The Secrets of Falling Book Release Party last night… you made it a roaring success. Thanks for buying books and prints and for helping Kathy and I celebrate in so much style!

If you missed it, we missed you, and you missed out on the party of the year. BUT! You can still get the book online, in person, or in bookstores soon.

I can’t thank everyone who was there, because there were too many of you (which is in and of itself a wonderful thing!). It really meant a lot to both Kathy and I that you came.

I do have to give special mention and big hugs to the following kick-ass people:
Kimberley – the amazing girl who helped us set up all day and made sure the gallery was sparkling
Sarah – for moral support, from dawn to dusk, and for extremely talented twinkle-light wrapping-upping
Bridget – for expert assistance in picture hanging and gallery design and end-of-the night pancakes
Johanna – for making strawberries look even sweeter than they are and wielding a wickedly-awesome serge stitch
Jason – for smooth wine-pouring skilz and protective police action
Michelle – for video camera documentation, unending smiles, and late-night cleanup help
Chris – for Bruce back-up, gallery appreciation, and heavy box lifting
Dave – for scandalously sexy moves on the dance floor
Lani – for being the best and hottest cash box lady there ever was
Melissa – for a smooth and suave print-selling operation
Carly – for coming and smiling and wearing a cute-ass skirt
Patti – for traveling all the way from Chicago and bringing her sharpie
Jocelyn – for the amazingly adorable party favors, and for wearing that hot Madonna outfit
and most of all,
Bruce – for being the best man, always and all the time. for being my back-up. for being so tech-savvy. for running the lights and the sound and the cinepoems and the show.
and
Kathy – because NONE of this would have happened without her.

-Lo, who will be sleeping for a few days now.

Tomorrow, Tomorrow

girls_forblog Mood: Tired
Drinking: Tea

The time has come to party.

Tomorrow (Thursday), is the big shebang for The Secrets of Falling… Wine, women, song, possibly an interpretive dance from our friend Melissa. (But only if we spin some “Billy Jean”.)

Seriously, folks, it’s a big deal.

The fabulous miss Kathy Azada and I have been working on our book for over a year, and it feels like we’ve been planning our party for about that long, too, but that would be crazy.

We’re exhausted. We’re exuberant. We’re tired. We’re terribly excited. We’re both little bundles of sleep-deprived joy. (Perhaps that’s why I’m rambling so?)

Onward to the point! To all of my fellow San Franciscans and outlying Bay Areans, we’ll be so happy to see you tomorrow at Space 180 (from 6-9pm). We’ll be so thrilled to unveil our book. And show off all of Kathy’s artwork. And introduce you to all the other people who made this book happen.

For all our further-away internet friends, we promise that the book itself is almost as good as the party.

I’ve wanted to follow up Shedding the Angel Skin with a second book for years now, and Secrets is well worth the wait, even for me.

The theme of the book is the double-edged nature of hope. How impossible it is to live without hope, but how painful it is, how slippery it is, to hang on to hope. Secrets is built around a four-part poem titled “Spei Captiva Sum,” which means “I am a prisoner of hope.” (I have it tattooed on my right wrist as an ever-present reminder.)

Many of the 53 poems in Secrets were written for or about or around two of my very dear friends, who have both been on their own separate journeys to hell and back over the last three years.

I almost lost both of them, at different times. Watching them struggle and fall and climb back up and fall again — watching them, and struggling with them, and hoping against hope that they would get back up again — it inspired many of the words now printed on pages for others to read and maybe even take comfort in.

I think it matters, it makes a difference to know that in the midst of your bleakness, in the depths of your darkness, hope still flickers somewhere. Hope can be yours, once again.

I’ll be reading a few of my favorites from Secrets tomorrow, around 7 p.m. So be sure to stop by — new friends, old friends, internet friends and strangers. …It’s only a day away!

-Lo, who still knows all the words.