Love Among the Elderly

As the title suggests, my imagination has been entirely occupied with Indiana Jones 4 and Love in the Time of Cholera. The conjunction led to the story of the frat boy who could only have sex* if he and his paramour du jour were listening to the Indiana Jones themesong. This disability provoked a certain amount of mockery among the shallower of the sorority girls, but eventually...well, actually, the reason that I'm not turning this into a full story is that I don't really want to think about it long enough to complete the plot. Anyhow, it sprang forth fully formed from my splitting headache in the middle of a conversation about Indiana Jones with a person who absolutely could not be told what I was laughing at, but I succeeded in switching the laughter for a choking sneeze and my reputation for spiritual elegance was maintained.

I went to the Indiana Jones movie wanting to spend a little time away from the house on my day off and hoping vaguely that it would be better than the Star Wars prequel (which my dad took us to see at the discount theater, and which I thought was not worth his dollar, though it was fun to go out with them.) My requirements were met and I had a lovely evening. The movie dealt with the protagonists' aging in a fairly classy way. Otherwise, my main critique was that Shia LeBoeuf sounds like a black woman, not a white man.

Cholera does not get off so easily. The supposedly happy realistic marriage is not very nice. It confuses the little every day services of love with love itself. There's nothing great about cooking meals for someone unless you love him. The act itself is certainly not love! The same goes for all domestic acts, whether done with a casual acquaintance, paid professional, or spouse. The author halfway understands this, remarking that the heroine had become a glorified servant, but then saying that this was love. The main character (of the triangle part) is a kind of elderly Basil Seal (but somewhat more solvent), initially sweet in a geeky kind of way but by the end of the book he's raped and seduced his way into so much tragedy that really the only appropriate finale would have to be violent and bloody. "He clasped her to his withered chest and wheezed sweet nothings into her ear. Suddenly, the last manatee leapt on board, clenching a conquistador's sword between her teeth. She decapitated everyone on board, then lay down to nurse her young amid the flaming wreckage of the riverboat framed by the treeless banks." Yes. What actually happens: no.

I have more to say on Gabriel García Márquez and the word love, but will save it for another post.

* I like to maintain the tone of the blog, but I'm afraid I just can't write "make love" here, as it is so far from being true. Further, Guy Crouchback has forced me to write "sex" instead of "gender", and bunthorne writes "sex" whenever he means "six" and he's even more of a prude than I am.