I have two brothers, Fei and Bak. Fei was born one year after me and Bak, nine years after him. (Nope, there was no planning on my parents' part.) Bak tells me that I trust Fei more than I trust him - he's right - and I tell him, "What to do? I've known your brother longer." I've known him longer: He has been there at all the New Years that I remember.
When we were kids, New Year was a time for coin-shaped chocolates, White Rabbit Creamy Candies and our grandmother’s "yam shrimps" (fried ribbons of yam and ginger, a savoury Cantonese snack we never learned to love). On the first night of the year, seven of us - our parents, uncle, aunt, cousin and us - squeezed into our uncle's car to go to our grandaunt and granduncle's one-room home in Tiong Bahru; the adults would talk among themselves as the kids squatted on the floor and snacked; our grandaunt and granduncle would hand each of us a lai si of $1.10. ($1.10 for cheut yan tau dei: The dollar denoted people that we, the coin, were to rise head and shoulders above.)
After they passed away, we were a little lost. We didn't know where to go when the first night of the year came round. So we turned to calling on Jackie Chan – at the movies, that is. His First Strike - he skis in Ukraine! swims with sharks in Australia! speaks Cantonese and no one dubs him! - was one of the fun ones. But soon my parents started saying, "Jackie Chan's losing it."
Now my uncle, aunt and cousin just come round for chitchat and dinner (this year's special was my mother's pun choi, basically a big buffet in a basin which would turn into the loveliest, slurpiest leftovers the next day). But before that, in the morning, my brothers and I pay our uncle and aunt a call at their home in Bukit Timah. Then we walk to the temple round the corner - spouting silly rubbish all the way as Fei and I tease Bak and half-tell him tales of New Years past - to pay our respects to our late grandparents. This time that the three of us spend together is my favourite New Year tradition for now.
Saturday, February 11, 2006
Friday, January 20, 2006
Purple roses
If ever my consciousness does converse with my subconsciousness, here is how their heart-to-heart might go.
Mr Con: We were there at all her kisses, right, which weren’t that terrific, right?
Ms Sub: More or less, yah.
Mr Con: Then how come you know things I don’t know? How did you come up with that kiss in last night’s dream?
Ms Sub: I improvised lah.
Mr Con: Don’t bluff. What about that –
Me: Eh, eh, eh. Shaddup leh.
So…I was with Viggo in my dream. It was a sweet dream, oh, it was sweet. I’m not about to kiss and tell – well, not more than what Mr Con and Ms Sub have told – but shall we say I woke up with an idiotic smile which would not go away, not even when I got to the office.
Maybe, just maybe, this, this waking life, is a dream and when I wake up, Viggo will be there again.
No…I didn’t believe that, not even when I was typing it. As beautiful as the butterfly dream is, I don’t think Zhuangzi means for us to think there is more to our dreams than we think. I think he means for us to think there is less to our waking lives than we think. I think I should stop thinking and go back to bed.
Good night, all, sweet dreams.
Mr Con: We were there at all her kisses, right, which weren’t that terrific, right?
Ms Sub: More or less, yah.
Mr Con: Then how come you know things I don’t know? How did you come up with that kiss in last night’s dream?
Ms Sub: I improvised lah.
Mr Con: Don’t bluff. What about that –
Me: Eh, eh, eh. Shaddup leh.
So…I was with Viggo in my dream. It was a sweet dream, oh, it was sweet. I’m not about to kiss and tell – well, not more than what Mr Con and Ms Sub have told – but shall we say I woke up with an idiotic smile which would not go away, not even when I got to the office.
Maybe, just maybe, this, this waking life, is a dream and when I wake up, Viggo will be there again.
No…I didn’t believe that, not even when I was typing it. As beautiful as the butterfly dream is, I don’t think Zhuangzi means for us to think there is more to our dreams than we think. I think he means for us to think there is less to our waking lives than we think. I think I should stop thinking and go back to bed.
Good night, all, sweet dreams.
Saturday, January 14, 2006
In search of a lost self
I used to know this 17-year-old girl who wrote these intelligent, eloquent essays in under two hours. I used to be that girl. That girl has now devolved into me, this woman who wonders how she could have said all these things she meant to say about tear-jerking telethons in an editing-proof watertight essay – four days after it was published in a very rubbish version.
Where was that girl when I needed her?
Where was that girl when I needed her?
Wednesday, January 11, 2006
Saturday
Some days are more equal than other days. A couple Saturdays ago, the baby brother turned 19; I was told that I would be talking to Takeshi Kaneshiro, then, after a few happy hours, I was told I would not be; in a blithe burst of spontaneity, the whole family went KTV-ing - but the night ended on a less happy note when I was slow with my credit card, my uncle beat me to the bill and my father was silently unhappy. (And I knew, I just knew.)
I remember that Saturday. I also remember that as the day my new little neighbour paid a call on us for the first time. Little Ms T is two. She's a smart girl. She's not a girl who will agree to kai kai with you because you buy her candy. She's a girl who says no. But in a big change of heart that day, she was paying us a visit, playing on our computer and squealing at the wonders of the sliding small black thing that we call a mouse.
When I told her that she had to go home as I had to go out, she said she would kai kai with me. Hand in hand, we walked to our lift lobby, and as she walked her adorable two-year-old's wobbly walk, always leaning against me trustingly, I remembered another little girl.
I realised that once upon a time, I had been a fool wishing to be loved by a little girl more than she would love her own mother, while wishing her father would love me more than he loved his own little girl. I realised I had been ridiculous. And I had to realise it before I could put it behind me...
I remember that Saturday. I also remember that as the day my new little neighbour paid a call on us for the first time. Little Ms T is two. She's a smart girl. She's not a girl who will agree to kai kai with you because you buy her candy. She's a girl who says no. But in a big change of heart that day, she was paying us a visit, playing on our computer and squealing at the wonders of the sliding small black thing that we call a mouse.
When I told her that she had to go home as I had to go out, she said she would kai kai with me. Hand in hand, we walked to our lift lobby, and as she walked her adorable two-year-old's wobbly walk, always leaning against me trustingly, I remembered another little girl.
I realised that once upon a time, I had been a fool wishing to be loved by a little girl more than she would love her own mother, while wishing her father would love me more than he loved his own little girl. I realised I had been ridiculous. And I had to realise it before I could put it behind me...
Saturday, January 07, 2006
Postscripts
Postscript One
I am doing the most mundane of things - peeling a long label off a plastic box in the kitchen - when from the far side of my consciousness, a film floats back to me.
Far Side Of The Moon...it's a lovely French Canadian film about a loser academic trying to get his thesis on the cosmos read, dealing with his mother's recent death and trying not to kill his only other loved one: his younger brother, an annoying weatherman. A fluid film, it can flow from a childhood memory about a day at the laundry - straight to space. One moment our eyes are on a boy who is watching a washing machine, the next moment we are on the other side of the machine door, and the next moment the round machine door morphs into the round window of a rocket and we are adrift. It's by Robert Lepage, who not only directs and portrays both brothers - it was his auntie-like face which bobbed, without warning, to the surface of my memory today, which is not as scary as it might sound, seriously - but also directed it when it was his one-man play!
Yep...because I didn't know Lepage the film director was the same man as Lepage the stage director. I loved his first film, The Confessional, and I knew Ms O loved his plays and I didn't know it was the same man. I just didn't. Not until I heard he would be here in June last year with his play, The Busker's Opera. Then he was here, in my country, and I was there, at his play, and he was on stage for a Q & A and I asked him a question!
But I digress. What I mean to say is, with Far Side Of The Moon, I have six and three-thirds fave films...
Postscript Two
There I am at Kaiju Shakedown, my fave Asian film blog of the moment, and what have we here?
Chen Kaige has given a quote on his own film, The Promise, that goes, "I think the way I did The Promise is very interesting - I told myself that the first thing to consider is not the story, not the characters, but the imagination. Yes, you have some real material from life, but you have to eat it up and make it yours to express. Adults eventually lose their imagination about everything. Only children can have a great imagination about everything, because they have a whole future. You can say you are old if three things around you start to occupy your mind: one is that you start to love money; second, you're afraid of death; third, you don't have any imagination." (Kaiju Shakedown, Monsters and Critics.)
Maybe, just maybe, what we have is an instance of yan gao shou di, when the eye is high and the hand is low i.e. when there is too much imagination but not as much inventiveness to express what was imagined.
I am doing the most mundane of things - peeling a long label off a plastic box in the kitchen - when from the far side of my consciousness, a film floats back to me.
Far Side Of The Moon...it's a lovely French Canadian film about a loser academic trying to get his thesis on the cosmos read, dealing with his mother's recent death and trying not to kill his only other loved one: his younger brother, an annoying weatherman. A fluid film, it can flow from a childhood memory about a day at the laundry - straight to space. One moment our eyes are on a boy who is watching a washing machine, the next moment we are on the other side of the machine door, and the next moment the round machine door morphs into the round window of a rocket and we are adrift. It's by Robert Lepage, who not only directs and portrays both brothers - it was his auntie-like face which bobbed, without warning, to the surface of my memory today, which is not as scary as it might sound, seriously - but also directed it when it was his one-man play!
Yep...because I didn't know Lepage the film director was the same man as Lepage the stage director. I loved his first film, The Confessional, and I knew Ms O loved his plays and I didn't know it was the same man. I just didn't. Not until I heard he would be here in June last year with his play, The Busker's Opera. Then he was here, in my country, and I was there, at his play, and he was on stage for a Q & A and I asked him a question!
But I digress. What I mean to say is, with Far Side Of The Moon, I have six and three-thirds fave films...
Postscript Two
There I am at Kaiju Shakedown, my fave Asian film blog of the moment, and what have we here?
Chen Kaige has given a quote on his own film, The Promise, that goes, "I think the way I did The Promise is very interesting - I told myself that the first thing to consider is not the story, not the characters, but the imagination. Yes, you have some real material from life, but you have to eat it up and make it yours to express. Adults eventually lose their imagination about everything. Only children can have a great imagination about everything, because they have a whole future. You can say you are old if three things around you start to occupy your mind: one is that you start to love money; second, you're afraid of death; third, you don't have any imagination." (Kaiju Shakedown, Monsters and Critics.)
Maybe, just maybe, what we have is an instance of yan gao shou di, when the eye is high and the hand is low i.e. when there is too much imagination but not as much inventiveness to express what was imagined.
Thursday, December 29, 2005
FILM | My fave five and three-thirds films
I'm a weeper. Crying at the movies comes so naturally to me, I do not my trust my tears. I have been moved to tears at good movies as much as I have cried at calculated, mediocre movies. My tear glands are that gullible, yes. But the rest of me knows the difference. Good movies do not just make me weep, they also leave me shaken, as if a couple of my organs have changed positions. Some stay on my mind for a long time, others make me want to watch them a second time. Here's my list of the year's best:
1. A History Of Violence
2. Sympathy For Lady Vengeance
3. The Hidden Blade
4. 3-Iron
5. The Wayward Cloud
5 1/3. King Kong
5 2/3. The Hand
6. Ydessa, The Bears And Etc
1. I don't know what it says about me that the top three are either violent, about vengeance or both. But David Cronenberg's A History Of Violence - a taut turn-on of a movie in which a gentle, married guy (Viggo Mortensen) may or may not have had a homicidal past - was so powerful, I didn't know how to tell other people about its power. The most I could manage was, "It's very good. Viggo's very good..." It's very, very good. Mr Mortensen's very, very good.
2. When revenge is your name and your game, you are a person who insists on living in the past. So it makes perfectly poetic sense that in Park Chan Wook's Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, a would-be avenging angel calls a meeting in a classroom with the parents of children who were murdered by her enemy, they get a class debate going on how to kill the murderer and after the deed is done, they sheepishly pose for a class photograph.
3. Yamada Yoji's The Hidden Blade has, for my money, the most quietly astounding assassination scene of the year.
4. The next two belong on my dream double bill of silent love stories. In Kim Ki Duk's 3-Iron, a wordless, homeless man roams Seoul with a woman he has rescued from her abusive spouse, occupying the homes of people who are away on trips, never speaking - ghostlike. From broken appliances to prized golf clubs, objects are as much a part of the movie as people. But by focusing on the physical, Mr Kim somehow finds the metaphysical.
5. In Tsai Ming-liang's The Wayward Cloud, a porn actor and his love traipse through Taipei silently, joyously. They don't speak but they do lip-sync and dance in musical montages.
5 1/3. Peter Jackson's King Kong, in which an ape falls wordlessly for a human actress, might have made it a triple bill. But two-thirds of the movie are too noisy, too Jurassic Park...
5 2/3. Clothes are sex, they truly are. In Wong Kar Wai's exquisite, erotic short, The Hand, tailor meets girl, tailor doesn't get girl but tailor gets to dress girl up.
6. Agnes Varda's new short, Ydessa, The Bears And Etc, is a provocative, playful piece about a bizarre art exhibition which consists of thousands of photographs of people with teddy bears. Girls with bears. Boys with bears. Naked women with bears. Nazi men with bears. Boys pointing toy guns at bears. Et cetera. Armed with a camera and a curious mind, Ms Varda, 77, is having some serious fun as she explores the deceptively innocent display of photographs. She's my heroine.
1. A History Of Violence
2. Sympathy For Lady Vengeance
3. The Hidden Blade
4. 3-Iron
5. The Wayward Cloud
5 1/3. King Kong
5 2/3. The Hand
6. Ydessa, The Bears And Etc
1. I don't know what it says about me that the top three are either violent, about vengeance or both. But David Cronenberg's A History Of Violence - a taut turn-on of a movie in which a gentle, married guy (Viggo Mortensen) may or may not have had a homicidal past - was so powerful, I didn't know how to tell other people about its power. The most I could manage was, "It's very good. Viggo's very good..." It's very, very good. Mr Mortensen's very, very good.
2. When revenge is your name and your game, you are a person who insists on living in the past. So it makes perfectly poetic sense that in Park Chan Wook's Sympathy For Lady Vengeance, a would-be avenging angel calls a meeting in a classroom with the parents of children who were murdered by her enemy, they get a class debate going on how to kill the murderer and after the deed is done, they sheepishly pose for a class photograph.
3. Yamada Yoji's The Hidden Blade has, for my money, the most quietly astounding assassination scene of the year.
4. The next two belong on my dream double bill of silent love stories. In Kim Ki Duk's 3-Iron, a wordless, homeless man roams Seoul with a woman he has rescued from her abusive spouse, occupying the homes of people who are away on trips, never speaking - ghostlike. From broken appliances to prized golf clubs, objects are as much a part of the movie as people. But by focusing on the physical, Mr Kim somehow finds the metaphysical.
5. In Tsai Ming-liang's The Wayward Cloud, a porn actor and his love traipse through Taipei silently, joyously. They don't speak but they do lip-sync and dance in musical montages.
5 1/3. Peter Jackson's King Kong, in which an ape falls wordlessly for a human actress, might have made it a triple bill. But two-thirds of the movie are too noisy, too Jurassic Park...
5 2/3. Clothes are sex, they truly are. In Wong Kar Wai's exquisite, erotic short, The Hand, tailor meets girl, tailor doesn't get girl but tailor gets to dress girl up.
6. Agnes Varda's new short, Ydessa, The Bears And Etc, is a provocative, playful piece about a bizarre art exhibition which consists of thousands of photographs of people with teddy bears. Girls with bears. Boys with bears. Naked women with bears. Nazi men with bears. Boys pointing toy guns at bears. Et cetera. Armed with a camera and a curious mind, Ms Varda, 77, is having some serious fun as she explores the deceptively innocent display of photographs. She's my heroine.
Saturday, December 10, 2005
Foreign talent
They are all around us. They could be the taxi man from Hong Kong, who quotes the Tao Te Ching to you as he drives. They could be the boy from Indonesia, who answers your queries in Hokkien as he peddles freshly-trafficked passion fruit on a piece of canvas in a corner of a market. Or they could be the man from South Korea, who sells you $20 LV wallets at the same market.
I met him on my way home last night, the cabbie from Hong Kong. I had been in some sort of taxi-stand rage outside the Heeren, because it had bloody annoyed me, how those at the head of the queue wouldn't walk an extra step to board a cab as soon as they saw one. They wouldn't speed things up for everybody else in the queue. They would rather stand still, wait for the taxi to stop right at their feet and make everybody else wait with them. Grrr.
By the time I did get a cab, I was still so angry that the first thing I said after my address was, "What's wrong with them? Why can't they take an extra step? Why can't they spare a thought for everybody else? They'll be the death of me."
"They don't mean to do it. It's habit," replied the taxi man in Mandonese (Hong Kong Mandarin).
His accent alone was hilarious; I forgot my anger; and as he recounted to me the gahmen's many policy reversals, he turned out to be both concerned citizen and aspiring comedian.
The taxi man: "It's like when you fry a small fish. One side isn't cooked yet, you flip the fish. The other side isn't cooked yet, you flip the fish again. You flip, flip, flip, the fish falls apart before it is cooked."
Me: "Yes, doesn't the Tao Te Ching say so, too?"
The taxi man: "You read it, too? Yes, as it says, 'Rule a big country as you would fry small fish.'"
(He knew the book by heart!)
"They don't read the Tao Te Ching. If you don't read old Chinese books, you should at least read fairy tales. They should at least read Aesop's Fables."
(He pulled out then a book from a plastic bag, on lessons to be learnt from the fables.)
"Fables are about human nature. How do you govern without knowing human nature?"
On and on he went about SMRT Taxis, the economy and ERP, and as we neared my neighbourhood, he explained what it means now that an HDB home-buyer has to go to a bank, not the gahmen, for a housing loan.
"When people couldn't pay the HDB back, they could get their MP to talk to the government. But when you can't pay the bank back, even if your surname is Wee, even if your grandpa is Wee Cho Yaw, it will be no use, you will be sleeping on the street."
He has been here for 40 years, the taxi man. He might have been taken out of Hong Kong but the Hong Kong wise guy has not been taken out of him.
I met him on my way home last night, the cabbie from Hong Kong. I had been in some sort of taxi-stand rage outside the Heeren, because it had bloody annoyed me, how those at the head of the queue wouldn't walk an extra step to board a cab as soon as they saw one. They wouldn't speed things up for everybody else in the queue. They would rather stand still, wait for the taxi to stop right at their feet and make everybody else wait with them. Grrr.
By the time I did get a cab, I was still so angry that the first thing I said after my address was, "What's wrong with them? Why can't they take an extra step? Why can't they spare a thought for everybody else? They'll be the death of me."
"They don't mean to do it. It's habit," replied the taxi man in Mandonese (Hong Kong Mandarin).
His accent alone was hilarious; I forgot my anger; and as he recounted to me the gahmen's many policy reversals, he turned out to be both concerned citizen and aspiring comedian.
The taxi man: "It's like when you fry a small fish. One side isn't cooked yet, you flip the fish. The other side isn't cooked yet, you flip the fish again. You flip, flip, flip, the fish falls apart before it is cooked."
Me: "Yes, doesn't the Tao Te Ching say so, too?"
The taxi man: "You read it, too? Yes, as it says, 'Rule a big country as you would fry small fish.'"
(He knew the book by heart!)
"They don't read the Tao Te Ching. If you don't read old Chinese books, you should at least read fairy tales. They should at least read Aesop's Fables."
(He pulled out then a book from a plastic bag, on lessons to be learnt from the fables.)
"Fables are about human nature. How do you govern without knowing human nature?"
On and on he went about SMRT Taxis, the economy and ERP, and as we neared my neighbourhood, he explained what it means now that an HDB home-buyer has to go to a bank, not the gahmen, for a housing loan.
"When people couldn't pay the HDB back, they could get their MP to talk to the government. But when you can't pay the bank back, even if your surname is Wee, even if your grandpa is Wee Cho Yaw, it will be no use, you will be sleeping on the street."
He has been here for 40 years, the taxi man. He might have been taken out of Hong Kong but the Hong Kong wise guy has not been taken out of him.
Tuesday, December 06, 2005
A-wu
Since I'm still here to tell you this, it means only one thing. I haven't been kidnapped by Takeshi Kaneshiro - haven't even come close - and soon he will have come and gone from Singapore. And the world will have read about what a bastard he was, apparently, at an interview with two journalists here.
A few days ago, for a few happy hours, the interview was a dream assignment that had come to me. (I was so drunk on my daydreams, you have no idea.) Then the assignment went to somebody else, who came back from it saying it was a nightmare. What went wrong?
Now, Takeshi is here for his movie, Perhaps Love, which is about a jilted lover. On one hand, you do understand why a journalist, fishing for a good read in a 12-minute interview, would go hook, line and sinker for it and ask him as a first question, "So how many times have you been jilted?" And on the other hand, you don't have to be Einstein to understand why anybody would clam up at this question, do you?
But it is just as well that I wasn't there. I don't know the real Takeshi and I don't need to, as much as I did dream of being kidnapped by him. I know the make-believe movie Takeshi - the beautiful boy with the soul of a fat boy - who needs reality?
A few days ago, for a few happy hours, the interview was a dream assignment that had come to me. (I was so drunk on my daydreams, you have no idea.) Then the assignment went to somebody else, who came back from it saying it was a nightmare. What went wrong?
Now, Takeshi is here for his movie, Perhaps Love, which is about a jilted lover. On one hand, you do understand why a journalist, fishing for a good read in a 12-minute interview, would go hook, line and sinker for it and ask him as a first question, "So how many times have you been jilted?" And on the other hand, you don't have to be Einstein to understand why anybody would clam up at this question, do you?
But it is just as well that I wasn't there. I don't know the real Takeshi and I don't need to, as much as I did dream of being kidnapped by him. I know the make-believe movie Takeshi - the beautiful boy with the soul of a fat boy - who needs reality?
Sunday, November 27, 2005
A vehicle for catharsis
Was on my way to Party World yesterday; my brother was on his way to Great World; so we shared a cab. One night more than one year ago, in the backseat of a different cab, he had told me all about his new girlfriend then. Yesterday, he updated me on all that had gone wrong with her since, then asked for my advice. I had no wise words for him, just Yodaisms. Our cab got to Party World. I alighted, all upbeat, to go KTVing with Ms C and Ms H.
But his confession caught up with me. Somehow, I was choking back tears when I did my duet with Jay Chou on 一路向北, a break-up song set in a car, and got to: 你说你好累 已无法再爱上谁 风在山路吹 过往的画面全都是我不对 细述惭愧 我伤你几回. Somehow, I had to sing the song three more times, each time with Jay's original vocalising on.
Ms C and Ms H indulged my madness, thinking I was just being my usual daft Jay-loving self. By the fourth time, Ms C, who is heavy with child and was also heavy with lunch, had curled up on the couch for an afternoon nap. And on I rasped uselessly, wholeheartedly but not as full-throatedly - the song was now some sort of sad lullaby.
Friday, November 25, 2005
BOOKS | How I made the mistake of leaving my brain at the door of Howl's Moving Castle
I'd forgotten how fun it could be to read a book collectively.
A few friends of friends, friends and I met as a book club tonight to talk about Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, a truly charming children's book, my friends, that should not be judged by its cover or cinematic adaptation. So charming, its magic was lost on me at first.
I went to it last month, wanting to lose myself in it. I love Wynne Jones' Charmed Life. I like love stories. How could I not love Howl's Moving Castle, a love story by Wynne Jones? But I did not and it was a disappointment. I was in denial, however, and when anyone asked me, I would still say, "It was nice."
Then I met up last week with my friend, Ms N. A really alert reader, she once observed of a sentence in AS Byatt's Possession about a male character's sexy smile that it seemed out of place. We later learnt Byatt had added the sentence to the American edition to sex up the character for American readers. So Ms N had read Howl's Moving Castle and as we talked about it, it was as if we had read different books.
In my book, there is a girl, Sophie, who has aged decades because of a curse. She goes to the castle of a wizard, Howl - who might or might not be an evil eater of girls' hearts and who was born in Wales - and comes to be his cleaning lady. There is a fire demon, Calcifer, who is bound to Howl's hearth by contract. Calcifer sometimes sings what is known as the saucepan song.
There is much more in Ms N's book: "The saucepan song is a real Welsh rugby song...Calcifer must have heard Howl sing it...so Howl is a man who sings when he cooks, he's adorable."
Wynne Jones, you see, does not so much write as sprinkle her story all around, as if it were magic dust; you have to read between the lines to connect the dots; I realised, after my meeting with Ms N, I had to reread Howl's Moving Castle.
At the book club tonight, as more of us talked about Howl's Moving Castle, more of it came to light - to life. Someone asked how a girl like Sophie could love a guy like Howl. I forget what I answered but it was enough to made Ms N turn to me and say, "You're a romantic."
Maybe - then what you have heard is the tale of how I fell for a book.
A few friends of friends, friends and I met as a book club tonight to talk about Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones, a truly charming children's book, my friends, that should not be judged by its cover or cinematic adaptation. So charming, its magic was lost on me at first.
I went to it last month, wanting to lose myself in it. I love Wynne Jones' Charmed Life. I like love stories. How could I not love Howl's Moving Castle, a love story by Wynne Jones? But I did not and it was a disappointment. I was in denial, however, and when anyone asked me, I would still say, "It was nice."
Then I met up last week with my friend, Ms N. A really alert reader, she once observed of a sentence in AS Byatt's Possession about a male character's sexy smile that it seemed out of place. We later learnt Byatt had added the sentence to the American edition to sex up the character for American readers. So Ms N had read Howl's Moving Castle and as we talked about it, it was as if we had read different books.
In my book, there is a girl, Sophie, who has aged decades because of a curse. She goes to the castle of a wizard, Howl - who might or might not be an evil eater of girls' hearts and who was born in Wales - and comes to be his cleaning lady. There is a fire demon, Calcifer, who is bound to Howl's hearth by contract. Calcifer sometimes sings what is known as the saucepan song.
There is much more in Ms N's book: "The saucepan song is a real Welsh rugby song...Calcifer must have heard Howl sing it...so Howl is a man who sings when he cooks, he's adorable."
Wynne Jones, you see, does not so much write as sprinkle her story all around, as if it were magic dust; you have to read between the lines to connect the dots; I realised, after my meeting with Ms N, I had to reread Howl's Moving Castle.
At the book club tonight, as more of us talked about Howl's Moving Castle, more of it came to light - to life. Someone asked how a girl like Sophie could love a guy like Howl. I forget what I answered but it was enough to made Ms N turn to me and say, "You're a romantic."
Maybe - then what you have heard is the tale of how I fell for a book.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)