Sunday, December 26, 2010

Dumb Dumbledore


Although the books did not move me, the Harry Potter films are compulsively watchable for me. A fragment of The Half-Blood Prince has the trio of Harry, Ron and Hermione all involved in various kinds of the romantic confusions you'd expect at their age. After witnessing Ron unconsciously --quite literally-- breaking it off with a girlfriend, Dumbledore* says, "Oh, to be young again and to feel love's sweet pangs!"

Dumb.

We have found out, extra-scripturally, from author JK Rowling that Dumbledore is gay. Apparently he had a single great love when young and it ended sadly. He never tried again.

I was talking with another friend of mine who is, like myself, well into middle age (!) and who had/has fallen in love this past year. And like myself, the connection, while warm, will not turn out to be what was hoped for. Pangs there are. Sweet they are not.

I have been aware, while writing my posts on not keeping Christmas hostage to memory and on using historical experience to adapt to reality, that these things, when personal and acute, are easier said than done.

*I regret that Richard Harris did not live to complete the series. He was a far more formidable masculine character than the one played by Michael Gambon.

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