Virginia Is For Families

Winter on the James River and other times and places. It keeps expanding and changing so it may be worthwhile to check back. Click to enlarge and for a slide show

B and I continue to read The Painted Veil.   Kitty and Walter have gone into an area of China that is ripe with cholera and Walter succumbs to it.  He dies.

Kitty has fallen in love with him somewhere along the line and so she weeps.  She has moved from being a young, immature and very superficial but beautiful woman to someone who sees beneath the surface.  She penetrates  the painted veil and finds a truly brave man  who has sacrificed himself in an effort to find a cure for an epidemic.

Next time we sit down together we will find out what happens to her.  I, of course, have seen the movie and know what happens to her if the movie and the book remain true to one another.

She survives.  Walter dies.  And her lover, Charles, never amounts to anything.

Here’s a recap of what happened earlier.  She was getting “old” and she married Walter because he loved her and he was a doctor.  Then she was attracted to Charles and had an affair with him after they arrived in China.   Walter found out about it  and offered her an ultimatum.   He would divorce her straightaway or she could come with him into the cholera infested regions and pretend she was his wife.

She went to Charles feeling certain that he would leave his wife and marry her in a heartbeat.

But here is where the idealistic little dear discovered a portion of reality .  Charles was really very happy with his wife and she was essentially a source of entertainment.  This is what is often referred to these days as a “wake-up call”.

Walter really loved Kitty.  And in the end she discovered that she loved him too.
I often hear people complaining that they don’t have “real” love in their lives.  They are looking for someone with whom they can share  real love.

Kitty discovered the difference between a romantic infatuation and real love during her time in China.   Initially she was convinced by the former.  But as time rolled on she gains  a bit of wisdom and learns  what it is to be truly loved. . .

And to love someone in return.  She was  capable of learning a lesson.

Bless her little heart.

It’s Monday Morning and the sun is shining.  The Oscars are in the history books or at least on Youtube for another year.   I was happy to see Monique receive the Best Supporting Actress award.   She gave an awe inspiring performance in Precious.   Sandra Bullock won Best Actress and she really did a fantastic job as well.    Christoph Waltz won Best Supporting Actor for playing a Nazi in a way we have not seen before now.   Maybe Hogan’s Heroes was the starting point for his portrayal.   I don’t know.  But he went way beyond the cartoon character of Colonel Klink.

I didn’t see Jeff Bridges play the worn out country singer so I can’t really comment on his performance.  My favorite JB film will always be the movie Fearless.   The story is one that takes me to a place you may recognize if you read some of the poetry here.  And the music is the very original work of  Henryk Gorecki.   It also takes me to that place.   Right around minute 16 of part one is a good launching pad for “spiritual flight” in my opinion.  Want to  try it out?

Learn to fly. . .

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Play Symphony No. 3  Symphony of Sorrowful Songs  I

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I really must say that the show  was entertaining this year in a way that it often is not.  Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin were very funny as they made sure that nobody took themselves too seriously.   It should be an evening about art not politics and it was a success  in this regard although a film about Iraq won many of the major awards including Best Film.

You can argue whether it won because of its artistic merit including the performances of the actors or because it was about the war and our sons and daughters risking life and limb in that awful place.  Or perhaps we can say it was both of these things that brought the voters here.  In any case a record was set for the film with the lowest gross receipts winning Best Film.   That should change now.

More people will see the film.  Could that be a motivation?  Almost everyone has already seen Avatar.  Maybe the movie public needs more than fantasy at this point in time.  There’s some heavy thinking going on. . .

It’s Friday and the weather guy is promising us a nice weekend.  The temperature should reach the low 60’s in fact.   That’s pretty amazing considering where we were just a few weeks ago.

The Academy Awards will be happening and we need to see at least one more nominated movie before Sunday night.   But for us it’s not all about nominated movies.  Recently I discovered  The Painted Veil on cable and was enthralled by the beauty of this  film.  Now B and I are reading W. Somerset Maugham’s  original story published in 1925.  And  there were two previous movie adaptations  we plan to watch.

Finally we will return to the recent film starring Edward Norton and Naomi Watts.   B hasn’t seen it yet.  She  seems to be entertained by the book as we read to each other (25 pages or so each day).

We have been doing this and then going for a walk together.

Not a long walk.  It’s more important for us to take a daily walk then to try and walk two miles at this point.   It’s better to walk down the street and back EVERY day then to go on a hike and then return home in pain with the semi-conscious determination to avoid this discomfort again.

We can go further than down the street now.  And we hope to go a lot further in the future.  We also hope to discover some really wonderful links between the two universes of book and film.  It changes your perception of what is happening on screen when you have the written history of the work in your mind.

Art and exercise both bring us together as a couple.  The Painted Veil is a love story with a very different premise that allows us to experience joy and suffering as we read and watch .   When we walk we experience physical pain as well as moments of  physical and mental well-being.  This also prepares us for longer periods of walking as we explore museums or historic locations.

Or we take time to walk in beautiful gardens full of exotic plants and vibrant colors.

It’s fairly easy for me to merge these two worlds in such circumstances.  As we walk in a garden I turn to B and imagine Naomi’s character  in a lush landscape somewhere south of  Shanghai.   I worry about her and hope she will begin to appreciate what nature has to offer.   I remember Edward’s fate and hope it is not my own.

And I sing Somerset Maugham’s  pleasurable,  fluid prose in my head when it comes time to  write something about all of this.

We want the various parts of our lives to work together as a whole.  And as a couple we want the same thing.

But, more than this, we want to be part of life in a significant way.   Art and exercise both offer opportunities to do this and they shall remain at the top of the list when it comes time for us to decide what we will do today.