New Year in October: A fresh page

It has been three weeks since Ondoy hit us and it is still cleansing us of life’s trivialities. Politics, gossip, trends and the like are still in the back burner. These discussions seem so small compared with the ongoing need to reevaluate and rebuild not just physical structures but ourselves. I’m talking about reconstructing ourselves because tragedies like a mega typhoon strips us to the bare necessities or the bare “you.”

It makes us confront our true motivations and needs as you imagine everything else washed away and see so many neighbors left with nothing. And we are left with questions like “Given a blank fresh page to work with, where and how do I want to move on?” and “With this opportune chance to reinvent myself, will I give my life a new direction or will I retrace my steps to scavenge the old me under the mud?”

These questions are too soon to answer because Ondoy has brought a lot of insights to chew on. Too much to digest and even harder to put in summary. It brought us the whirling emotions of All Saints’ Day and Christmas early and all at once. We grieved and gave gifts to a nation in a span of two weeks. Now, we are only beginning to start anew. It’s like having a New Year in October. 

Don’t Let The Weather Bring You Down

So, how can we spend New Year in October? I’m truthfully unsure of what do to with this new page because I’m not mentally prepared for this abrupt change. Yet, I’m going to start with breezy strokes by reading light but not too sappy books. After almost doing a review on Jonathan Safran Foer’s Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close for this week, I had to put the somber journey of a boy coping with 9/11 to rest because I didn’t want its intellectual babble to darken the already gray skies.

I found instead at the last minute a gleaming literary gem called Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman and A Series of Unfortunate Events illustrator Brett Helquist timely because it is about combating the weather. Odd takes us to an ancient village in Norway which, like Manila has a water problem except in the form of an endless winter chill. The protagonist Odd learns that Frost Giant is the cause of this terrible weather as he meets the Norse gods Odin, Thor, and Loki, respectively cursed in the form of an eagle, bear and fox. Although crippled, Odd is determined to bring spring back to his village by facing the Frost Giant himself.

Odd marks another bright remarkable step of Gaiman into the world of young adult fiction. It is quite different from his current favorite literary child The Graveyard Book as it plays out more like a Disney film. It isn’t Gothic or terrifying at all. Also, it makes you forget a bit of his mature work with the Sandman or American Gods. Yet, Gaiman still doesn’t stray far from his forte of re-imagining mythology with Asgard as its backdrop. Thus, Norse mythology is casually and enjoyably introduced to a new generation of readers.

Best of all, Odd is an uplifting light reading for these gloomy times. It teaches us that we must fight our own weather giants before moving on and the best course of attack is not magic or brute force but with the intellect. It is with the strong mind that we will grow up and forge on to a new life or in this case, a new spring.

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Odd and the Frost Giants is available at Powerbooks

Send me new ideas at readnow@supreme.ph.