Three Beautiful Things 12-18-2023: Christy Resumes Physical Therapy, I Now Have Luna's Ashes, Curry and Hal Hartley's *Fay Grim*

1. I resumed my duty as Christy's limo driver this morning and we rocketed out to Smelterville to the Fitness Center where she had a physical therapy session and I began today's workout session. Christy's session was awesome. Her knee and her ability to use her leg is progressing beautifully. She only needs her walker if she walks on sketchy terrain or if she's become fatigued. Otherwise, she has graduated to  using a cane now. I'll add that Christy got in and out of Carol's house without much trouble -- likewise, she did a good job getting in and out of her car. 

While Christy went through her paces, I got in a half an hour of exercise, drove Christy back to Carol and Paul's, and, in the afternoon, exercised for another half an hour and worked with some hand weights. 

2. Luna was on a kidney care diet, but Copper doesn't need to be. Today I bagged up the kidney care dry food that was in his feeder and replaced it with another kind of dry food and now he can eat a variety of canned wet food. 

While I was working out this morning, the veterinarian's office called me. Luna's ashes were ready to pick up, so I did that. Her ashes are in a handsome box with her name on the front. 

3. A while after I fixed Debbie and me a Panang Thai Curry dinner, which we enjoyed, Debbie went to bed early and I watched the second movie of Hal Hartley's Henry Fool Trilogy. It's called Fay Grim. This movie was a wild departure from the other movies I've watched of his, all of which were set in New York locales, whether Long Island, Manhattan, or Queens. This movie developed a convoluted, even dizzying international spy plot. I experienced it as a satirical movie, poking fun at spy movies -- often during the movie I wondered if Hartley had been inspired by the Mad Magazine feature "Spy vs Spy". 

But, like the other movies I've seen of Hartley's, this movie was about love, about fierce loyalty, about Fay Grim literally going to the ends of the earth in order to help out and possibly reunite with her long lost husband, Henry Fool. 

Maybe it was this undercurrent of devotion in Fay Grim, to both Henry and to her brother, Simon Grim,  and Parker Posey's intense performance as a woman who discovers more and more the depth of her commitment to those she loves that kept me riveted to this movie and helped me accept all of its implausible twists and turns and to see it as more than just a parody.

That this movie traveled from New York to Berlin to Istanbul was not at all what I expected and this very different Hal Hartley movie left me happy that I stuck with it, stayed up late to finish it, and fell asleep with its core affirmation devoted, not romantic, love on my mind.