1. When I signed off from ZOOMing with Bill, Diane, and Bridgit, my head was spinning a bit from having talked about so many different subjects and I found myself marveling at how we slide out of one subject into another, the next subject often seeming to have little to do with the former one. Today we talked about naturopathy and allopathy, Indian food, where and when we have Thanksgiving dinner, radiation treatment for cancer, eyelid surgery, books by David Lodge, record albums and turntables, the fractured bone in Bill's foot, Italian food and pizza, the poet Louise Gluck, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and more. Whew! Lots on our minds!
2. I had as slow and relaxing an afternoon as I've ever had after Zooming. I completed the Sunday NYTimes crossword puzzle and then, for fun, went back to February of 2023 and completed puzzles I hadn't worked on at that time. Debbie and I decided to each take care of ourselves for dinner and that pasta salad made from lentil pasta Debbie made Friday evening tasted even better this afternoon.
3. Debbie retired early tonight and I decided I'd return to the movie making of Hal Hartley this evening. I've watched what's known as his Long Island Trilogy and tonight I watched about an hour of Henry Fool, the first movie of his Henry Fool Trilogy.
That one hour was wild. Henry Fool is an ex-con and a pretend intellectual (played brilliantly by Thomas Jay Ryan) who rents a basement apartment in a broken home featuring a manic depressive mother, her disaffected daughter (played brilliantly by Parker Posey), and an asocial introvert (played brilliantly by James Urbaniak) who works as a garbage man and, under Henry Fool's guidance, starts to write poetry.
I'm about half way through the movie. The characters are broken people. Their Long Island world is without glamor, possibly without real purpose or meaning. I have no idea where the story is going, but as is always the case with Hal Hartley, it's a funny movie for anyone into dark comedy, and it's a story that teeters on the fine line between realism and absurdity, forever keeping a viewer like me off balance, not knowing what kind of violence, tenderness, insight, or con game might emerge next.
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