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.

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.