Three Beautiful Things 09-20-2023: Walk to Yoke's, Garlic Lemon Wings, Hal Hartley's *Trust*

1. I enjoy going on walks the most when either I'm walking around a small lake or pond or when I have a destination and a reason for going to that destination. Today, I wanted to find out if Yoke's carries arborio rice. It's the rice used to make risotto. So I filled my water bottle,  put my backpack on, and walked to Yoke's and back. It was a successful stroll. Yoke's carries small boxes of arborio rice. I also wanted to buy a couple of heavier items, didn't feel like carrying them on my walk back home, so, a little later in the afternoon, I drove back to Yoke's and purchased a few items. 

It was a good walk. I hope to build on this, but, for now, racking up about 3500 steps feels about right.

2. Coincidentally, on the same day that Debbie was going to text me and ask me to fix chicken for dinner, I had taken chicken wings out to thaw. Debbie never got around to making her request and was very happy when she saw the package of wings in a bowl of water, thawing.

I cleaned the chicken pieces, dried them off, and heated a drizzle of oil in a pan and then added a pretty good sized chunk of butter. As the butter melted, I floured the chicken and when the butter finished melting, I added about four or five cloves of finely chopped garlic to the pan. I cooked the garlic for about a minute, squeezed some lemon with the butter and garlic, and then I fried the wings.

I also boiled a handful of Yukon golds which we ate with butter and sour cream. Chicken and potatoes for dinner. 

It worked! 

3. I resumed my private Hal Hartley film festival this evening after Debbie turned in. His second movie, Trust, just like The Unbelievable Truth, featured Adrienne Shelly, again as an unmoored angsty teen ager, Maria. Maria learns she is pregnant. The news triggers a fatal heart attack in her father and her mother, at least temporarily, throws her out of the house. Maria's story runs parallel to the story of Matthew, played by Martin Donovan, who lives with his father, a violent man, in a damaging relationship. 

Maria and Martin, both lost souls, both abused at home, meet by chance and the movie tells the story of their platonic relationship, how they navigate the brokenness of their lives, their aimlessness, and their budding devotion to one another. 

Right now, I can't quite pin down the point I'm about to make, but Trust made me think of Edward Albee's A Delicate Balance. Albee's play examines the existential angst of middle aged, more affluent suburbanites, not the young, working class Long Island small town characters of Trust, but Hal Hartley and Edward Albee both explore through carefully crafted dialogue the deep uncertainties, insecurities, and fears of their characters, both writers are keenly attuned to the the experiences of human misplacement, alienation, and longing for connection. 

The two Hal Hartley movies I've watched so far are darkly comic. They are quirky, philosophical. He's not interested in realism and, at the same time, the inward struggles his characters experience are very real and Hartley mines the shared human experience of feeling and being adrift, puzzled, and alienated, of the confusing and often futile desire to find meaning and purpose, human connection, and commonality.