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| photo credit: Cait Malilay |
Nov 2024 (from the unpublished drafts)
"Love in the Time of Cholera." I've had this book for about 4 years now. It was sitting on my shelf unread until last Spring. I annotated the heck out of it, yet I still have yet to complete it. Here I find myself, over a year later, and still haven't returned to it. After a little over 200 pages in, I stopped because, well, I felt that the plot was just moving way too slow and the story was getting a little too repetitive.
In sum, it's basically about a guy named Florentino Aziza, who is a hopeless romantic that becomes intoxicated by the beauty of Fermina Daza. He was only 18 years old. He becomes so obsessed with her, follows her, and despite her choosing a far wealthier man who is a doctor over him, he reserves her heart for her over a span of 50 years. However, that isn't to say that he hadn't had his fair share of love affairs (622 to be precise).
The first time I heard about "Love in the Time of Cholera," was from the 2001 film, "Serendipity" starring John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale. In New York, a man and a woman meet at a department store during the holiday rush over a pair of black gloves. Jonathan believes in love at first sight and chases Sara, but feeling in her gut that the timing just isn't quite right she insists on leaving it up to destiny to decide whether they'll find each other again. She buys a random book, "Love in the Time of Cholera," from a street vendor and writes her phone number inside. She tells him that she'll sell it to a used bookstore and if he happens to find it, they're meant to be.
10 years later, they're both hitting a big milestone in life, they're engaged. Yet, they begin seeing these signs from the universe that they may be making a mistake, that perhaps the one was a stranger they encountered once in the past.
Though I do not have the edition from the movie —I have a regular paperback version that I purchased from The Strand Bookstore—, I do have to say that I admire the cover, especially the parrot.
On the contrary to freedom
Flash forward two seasons later to the last hot Autumn day in New York of 2023, I saw a bird in the middle of Manhattan West. A bright greenish yellowish parakeet to be precise. It was a very odd sight to say the least.
You've got this bright greenish yellow bird that's so tiny that vastly contrasts with these tall metallic man-made structures: skyscrapers. It must have gotten loose from some affluent person's apartment window. It couldn't fly because its wings were clipped. Ironic how a living creature born with wings has its freedom clipped.
"The purpose of clipping a bird’s wings is not to prevent flight completely, but to ensure the bird is unable to achieve or sustain upward flight, preventing escape, unwanted roaming, and exposure to dangerous situations," according to VCA. Clearly, it didn't help with this bird. It in fact did the opposite.
I and a handful of others that were mesmerized by this odd sight, witnessed the little parakeet attempting to fly away with failed attempts. A preventative action that was meant to keep the bird safe, wing clipping, had indeed prevented the bird from flying back home safely to refuge in its cage.
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