Current mood:

melancholy

A great holliday experience and a book reccemendation
Today I was, as is my wont, I was sitting in my local Doncin' Donuts. The place is run by a group of Indians and four members of a nominally muslim west African family. The Africans call their boss "dada," which means father and "kaka," which means uncle. I laugh inside myself whenever I hear it.

I am good friends with one of the Africans, Fatima. Today, she with one of the Indians, whose name I forget was putting up the Christmas tree. It was sweet not only because neither one of them had participated in Christmas traditions before but because they were standing there trying to remember how to decorate it and I was able to give them some good advice. Tomorrow, I am going to buy them some tinsel and a star for the top and maybe a Hannakah tree.


The book is The Brief History of the Dead, by Kevin Brockmeier, published by Pantheon.

It begins with two stories which eventually merge into one. One is a adventure story of a woman who is trying to survive in Antarctica. The other is about a place the dead go, though only as long as they are remembered. As part of these subplots a terrible plague hitting the world. The characters are effectively drawn, they seem like people we might meet or be. The dead have the same existential problems we do. They wonder how they came to be there and if they will go anywhere after they "die." What I will remember the most is that I really like the personality of Laura the woman fighting to live.

By the way I have the television going on behind me. There was a news story about some scientists in China who had a problem; two porpoises had consumed plastic objects that indangered their lives. So they brought in a "specialist;" they asked the tallest man in the world to reach inside them with his three foot arms to remove the things.