Friday, March 23, 2012

anansi boys





Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman


While living in London, Fat Charlie learns that his father had died. He travels back to Florida for the funeral, and he learns that his father is a god, he has a brother who has inherited all the god-like magic, and he could call on this brother by telling a spider. Right. Impossible.


Except that Fat Charlie, while a little bit drunk, does tell a spider that he wishes to see his brother. And he arrives, a witty, charming man who called himself Spider.


Spider proceeds to wreck Fat Charlie's life. He installed himself in a spare room in Fat Charlie's house, a room that was just a closet, but when you opened the door you'd see that he has a waterfall right outside his window, a jacuzzi, and a fierce sound system. He got Fat Charlie into some trouble at work, and the police were involved. Worst of all, he made Fat Charlie's fiancee believe that he was Fat Charlie, and succeeded in sleeping with her.


Of course Fat Charlie was angry. He went back to Florida and got help in getting rid of Spider, which means he had to deal with the gods himself. He had to mess with a little magic himself.


Tangled in it all was Fat Charlie's former employer, who was a crook and a murderer. He fled to St. Andrews, an island famous for having no extradition treaties and lots of ways to hide money. That is where they would all resolve the problems. And let's not forget the little love stories. You'll have Rosie, Fat Charlie's fiancee, and Daisy, the policewoman, and it's nice to see who ended up with whom.


Anansi is one of the most important characters of West African and Caribbean folklore. He is witty, and funny, and a trickster. He is a spider. All the stories belonged to him. There was mention of him in another Neil Gaiman novel, American Gods. And this story about his sons is slightly whimsical, slightly scary (there's a part where hundreds of birds come out of a woman's mouth), and totally enchanting.


moving up!






My daughter Chloe is three years old. She attends the toddler class in a little school near our place. Back in June last year, we opted for the monthly tuition option because we were not sure if she would last. After a tear-drenched couple of months, she started liking it, stuck to it for the remainder of the year, and last week was her moving-up ceremony. We were proud.



The outfit for the event was ready by January, courtesy of a beautiful godmother. We prayed it would still fit her by March. The practice for the song and dance numbers took a couple of weeks, and although the nanny announced that the kid was cooperating, we were not reassured. Chloe has a history of throwing tantrums in supermarket parking lots just because she was not able to watch Tekken being played in Tom's World.



I bought the correct tights and leotards on my lunch break. I hunted high and low for the correct hair ribbons, which, according to the nanny, should be black-and-white, preferably polka dots, to match her dress. They were expensive, but they were correct.



The event was on Sunday afternoon. In the morning Chloe decided she did not like her white shoes; would not, in fact, be convinced she should wear them. So two hours before the event, the whole family headed out to a nearby department store, where we found new shoes that she wanted to wear.

We got her dressed in the pretty dress. It was also decided that she would not wear the black-and-white hair ribbons after all, and would have her hair up in a bun, with a little hat accessory pinned to it.


We got to the venue in time, where she clung to me. I was wearing five-inch-heels. She weighed twenty kilos. We got through the processional, and she would not sit with the other toddlers by herself. I ended up sitting with the toddlers, the largest person in the front row, with her on my lap.

And there our adventure began.


She went up to receive her certificate of completion, but only in her stockings. She had kicked off her brand-new shoes. She did not want to receive her medal for being picture-smart. I missed the definition for 'picture-smart' because I was chasing her all over the stage. We came down with the medal draped on my arm.


The song number came. She did not want to sing, so she was carried to the stage by the teacher. She then proceeded to wail, while the other toddlers waited for the music to start. When the song started, though, she started to do the actions... while standing in the teacher's embrace. We clapped long and hard when that was over.

After a while, the Chicken Dance came. The mothers rushed about, changing the kids into their tights and leotards and red skirts. Chloe had to be held down by her father, while we struggled to fit her into the costume. We tied red ribbons on her arms, and she went up to the stage. She was in front.


We held our breath.


Chloe ripped off the ribbons, and when the music started, she started to pick her nose. As all the toddlers started gyrating and flapping their arms, she just stood there, picking her nose. She picked her nose until the music ended.


The audience was hysterical. There were about twelve kids on the stage and about sixty assorted relatives cheering, most of them with cameras. My husband was red in the face. By the following day the pictures were all over Facebook.


But we clapped, and cheered, and were proud. That was her moment. If she decided to celebrate it by mining for boogers, so be it.


The school administrator ended the two-hour ceremony by congratulating the parents, and thanking the teachers, and praising the children for a year well done.



We had planned to celebrate by going to Jollibee, but we headed home. We were exhausted.



We got inside the front door, and Chloe started strutting the Chicken Dance.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

american gods


American Gods by Neil Gaiman


It's a fascinating book. You get stories within stories. And Shadow is such an interesting character – a not-quite-crook fresh out of jail, getting out to find his beloved wife dead, getting involved with mysterious beings. Then his dead wife starts going around rescuing him from trouble, and she wants to be alive again.

Somewhere in the middle of the story, Shadow’s employer, the powerful Mr. Wednesday, takes him to this very obscure small town, Lakeside, where he was supposed to keep his head down and stay out of trouble. And Lakeside is a very pretty town, with a library and a general store, a raffle based on the time an old wreck of a car will sink when the lake thaws, and a police chief who does not issue tickets but scares the daylights out of speeding drivers. It’s a town that protects its own, welcomes a stranger and helps him get settled, and continues being its pretty self as it has done for a hundred years. You’d love to stay in Lakeside, whether your ancestors were there when the town was built, or you just arrived last weekend.

I think some of us have our own Lakeside. It’s the place where you dream of returning to when you’re done being the high-profile career woman. It’s the place you wish you could have raised your children, so that they could experience playing in the rain the way you did when you were a child. It’s the place where the stores don’t have signboards, but all the old women know where you could get the best pancit, the most intricate carving for your sideboard, the man who could do silkscreen printing. It's the place where children walk to school, and you're not afraid of child molesters. It’s the place where the marketplace comes alive only every Wednesday.

Lakeside would be the little town you left fifteen, twenty years ago because life was so slow there, and nothing really happened except the dances on Halloween and New Year’s Eve, and the town mayor came from a long line of men with the same surnames. You left it because the city held so much promise, and so much light and glitter, and when you came home for a visit you were treated like a minor celebrity because you dressed so fine, you spoke with a different accent, and you ‘had it made out there.’ In the small town everyone went around on foot, chatting, and you could walk all the streets of the whole town in about two hours. In the city you took your car to pick up some bread.

If you visited your Lakeside, you’d believe as you did when you were a child. You were careful about the unseen beings, the dwarfs and the tikbalang and the kapre that were so real when dusk came. You’d see some of the folks offering some rice and boiled egg in the morning. The sick children would be brought to the local doctor, but the local healer would be consulted too, to know which being got offended when the father cut down the mango tree. And when you left Lakeside, you’d leave the beings behind. The city has no place for them.

What if they came with you? What if they wanted to carve an existence in the city?