Sunday, October 19, 2014

my heart it longs for something new


I'm taking a course that requires me to watch Before Sunset, the second in that talk-y, romantic Richard Linklater/Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy trilogy.

So I dutifully watched it, then watched Before Midnight, because I hadn't seen it yet. Then I watched a few Youtube scenes from Before Sunrise, the first film, and that's when I re-watched this scene, where Celine find's a Kath Bloom album in a Vienna record store, and she and Jesse cozy into a listening booth and listen to this amazing song.



Since then I've learned basically all that the Internet holds about Kath Bloom: a total forgotten gem who had a fairly short career in the early eighties, after which she mostly focused on child-raising, was re-discovered by Linklater and featured in the film in the mid-nineties, she released a new recording in 1999 and has been recording and touring periodically ever since. These songs are just so simple and lovely.

I don't know what is happening in this video, or why, really, but this SONG. So pared down, so achy.



In 2009, there was a tribute to her songs made called Loving Takes This Course (that title.) and it includes this cover by Scout Niblett, which is on repeat forever.



Kath Bloom, everyone. Kath Bloom.

Tuesday, May 06, 2014

it is spring


It is spring. It is spring now, and I accept that. I believe it, really and truly, despite the fact that it was only 5 degrees above freezing on Sunday.

Still, we went to the donkey sanctuary. My love loves him some donkeys, so we went on his birthday. A donkey sanctuary is a place for sad donkeys, and we listened and nodded as volunteers told their stories, and we walked under low cloud with a cold wind, and we drove home listening to the end of the basketball game. We lost in the last few seconds.

Jasper wakes in the morning, nurses, rolls off the bed, slides down the stairs, eats a few bites of banana and slips his pajama-footed feet into his rubber boots. I try to keep up, begging him to wait and to put on a hat and eventually I end up outside at dawn, wearing my winter coat over pajamas, listening to the birds.

I am reading Love Medicine before bed, and I am experiencing nostalgia for the present. I am jealous of myself because I know this will be my only opportunity to read this book for the first time. I try to savour it, but I find myself racing on. I go to bed every night with a headache from holding my breath.

It is spring, and I know it because the first of the seeds I've planted are starting to uncurl into twin leaflets. We'll have salad someday soon.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

the door

"The door of life and the door of death are the same door, and when you lose the knowledge of how to be born, you lose the knowledge of how to die."


Katsi Cook, Haudenosaunee midwife

Tuesday, March 18, 2014

waiting for Moody Road

Late last winter, with the comfortable prison of breastfeeding adding to the usual feeling confinement that comes with this time of year, I was incredibly grateful to stumble upon another world in Kelly McMasters' essays from her rural bookshop, published on the Paris Review blog.

They were monthly dispatches describing the local goings-on, the current season, and how business was. They were also far deeper and wider than all of that: the trauma of a car accident; the New York City left behind; pregnancy and death.

When the summer came, and the dispatches stopped coming, I was truly disappointed. I'd be pen-pals with this little bookshop in Pennsylvania for life.

I think these pieces read best in the season they were written for, so get on over and read about March, or Waiting for Redbird.

Then check out their amazing online shop

Friday, February 28, 2014

this was happened upon

The work of a writer is to create order out of chaos.  Always, the chaos keeps slipping back in.  Underneath the created order the fantastic diversity and madness of life goes on, expanding and changing and insisting upon itself.  Still, each piece contains the whole.  Tell one story truly and with clarity and you have done all anyone is required to do.
Ellen Gilchrist

Thursday, February 27, 2014

you can feel the sun

It must be light.

I feel energized and confident and am happily biting off just a bit more than I can chew. Or more accurately, trying to scrawl out a few more words than I really have time for.

Baby boy and I are alone this week while D. ventures far and wide across this country's west, and in spite of chaos and water-play and banana bread baking and the croup and subsequent quarantine, I am managing to meet my deadlines and reply to emails and generally feel like I'm contributing.

So I think it must be that brighter, longer, stronger sunlight coming through. It's working wonders.


Edited to add: okay, it's either the sun, or the Pixies. We are still young. THERE ARE NEW PIXIES SONGS TO LOVE.



Wednesday, February 12, 2014

today's menu

lake of the woods, ontario

Reading: Books and Islands in Ojibwe Country by Louise Erdrich, on Shari's kobo

Drinking: Traditional Medicinal's Ginger Tea, my third cup of herbal tea today.

Thinking: I read this book in one sitting, yesterday afternoon, and it has quickly inserted itself onto the worn bookshelf of my mind, between some like-minded others: books like Teaching a Stone to Talk and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. It's a wonderful travel log deep into ancestral territory accompanied by a nursing eighteen month-old toddler. Given the ever-presence of my own nursling, it's been just the trip I needed to take.

It is a bright, cold day in February and as I drive along slushy streets to pick up and drop off and drive through and errand-run, I find myself for moments drifting through sun-lit bays in Northern Ontario. It is a warm and safe and healthy place to be.  


Thanks to R. MacArthur for the inspired format that got this post written.

Thursday, February 06, 2014

This winter's rabbit.

rabbit tracks in the snow

Last summer's rabbit (the one that ate all of my kale, my broccoli, my cauliflower, chewed luscious greens into tiny, hard stems; the one that I suspected was coming under the neighbour's fence and which I might have even thrown a pebble at to scare away — had one been handy), the very same rabbit, has been leaving tell-tale tracks in the overnight snow.

This morning, it appeared, coming through the drifts between the houses, and stopped at the bush with the red berries. I put down the dish I was washing and called my son and held him in my arms while we watched the bunny.