Virginia Breeze

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.

Similar Posts:

• The Painted Veil Continues
• Juno And Academy Award Nominations/ Nobody Talks Like Juno!
• Roaring Ruminations
• Oscar Reflections/ Moments Beyond Time/ Henryk Gorecki
• Thomas Boyd/ Photojournalist

Tags: art and exercise, edward norton, naomi watts, people, s. somerset maugham, the painted veil