For a lot of November, we were under the Conditional Movement Control Order (CMCO), so it's not been the most exciting of times.

Still, given that the local covid numbers were creeping up, it was definitely good to see action being taken, and we'd modified our habits even before the CMCO kicked in. 

And it seems to have had an effect. Kuching is now a "yellow zone" again, and we've had several days of low numbers or zero cases. Long may that continue.

So, today, we cautiously resumed eating out:


And later this week, we're going to seize the opportunity to get away for a little while before the rainy season grounds us some more. 



Things next door in Sabah and over on the peninsula are still not good, mind you, and we all know how quickly the dastardly Spikes can bounce back, so the show's definitely not over yet.


Nevertheless, the tiny lifting of the curtain here, plus the various bits of news about vaccines, have left me much more optimistic than I was this time last month.


So what did confined November bring? Well, lots of weather-watching on the balcony:


And general waiting for action:


But also the Japanese Film Festival, Deepavali, and an improvised Korean day. My shadow journey (now in the Caucasus) continued. I wrote two posts for The Velvet Cushion (one Caucasus-related, and one on our Japanese movie viewing), and one for Vintage Travel (on my first encounter with India). The importance of travel reminiscence has been really clear during this only-faintly-purple month...




Here's the slightly subdued 1SE visual record of the month. But, as I wrote when I put it up on Facebook, if this wretched year has taught us anything, it's that the everyday is actually pretty special.

This was underlined in another lovely suggestion from Maria Popova this weekend. It's Billy Collins's As If To Demonstrate an Eclipse, and I think it's amazing:

I pick an orange from a wicker basket
and place it on the table
to represent the sun.
Then down at the other end
a blue and white marble
becomes the earth
and nearby I lay the little moon of an aspirin.

I get a glass from a cabinet,
open a bottle of wine,
then I sit in a ladder-back chair,
a benevolent god presiding
over a miniature creation myth,

and I begin to sing
a homemade canticle of thanks
for this perfect little arrangement,
for not making the earth too hot or cold
not making it spin too fast or slow

so that the grove of orange trees
and the owl become possible,
not to mention the rolling wave,
the play of clouds, geese in flight,
and the Z of lightning on a dark lake.

Then I fill my glass again
and give thanks for the trout,
the oak, and the yellow feather,

singing the room full of shadows,
as sun and earth and moon
circle one another in their impeccable orbits
and I get more and more cockeyed with gratitude.

_*_*_

It doesn't always feel like a "perfect little arrangement" at the moment, but there's still a huge amount to be grateful for.