How can one month be so different from another?

June? Foul. Scary. Dark. Lonely.

July? Wonderful. Calming. Light-filled. Invigorating.

Yet nothing is different. Nothing I was worried about in June has gone away. It's all still there, waiting for me.

It's just that we've been away: Sabah, Labuan, another corner of Sarawak, Brunei...

And being somewhere different stirs up your ideas. Takes your mind off nebulous, what-if, impossible-to-answer questions, and focuses it on immediate tasks (what's to see here, where can we walk to, what are the shops like, how do we negotiate the quirks of our latest accommodation, how do we get ourselves out of here at the end?). There's an in-the-moment, initiative-promoting, problem-solving quality about travel that's really therapeutic. It's the nearest my monkey-mind gets to meditation...

It doesn't have to be fancy travel either. Most of our time was spent walking, riding boats and buses, eating, and reading. Nothing mega. But it still worked.


There's a sentence that keeps recurring in Elizabeth Hand's disturbing but fascinating Generation Loss (review later): "Our gaze changes all that it falls upon." That's true. But all that our gaze falls upon also changes us in return.

So thanks, all those places, for changing me (temporarily anyway).

If you're interested in the itinerary, here's a list of the relevant posts:

1. Kota Kinabalu


2. Tenom


3. Pangi
4. KK again





5. Labuan



6. War-time Labuan


7. Even more Labuan



8. Limbang



9. Limbang to Brunei
10. Bandar Seri Begawan



11. BSB wildlife
12. The Brunei coast


So that was the month, apart from a couple of Kuching bookends.


There wasn't time for quite so much reading as usual this month, and some of it was very much geared to whiling away time on public transport. Good listens for buses/boats: Death in a White Tie, by Ngaio Marsh (a nice little mystery, and a bit of a satire on the British class system by a Kiwi author with an outsider/insider perspective); Below, by Paul Skillen and Aaron Gray (memorably weird); and Husband and Wife by K.L. Slater (twisty story, but told in a slightly pedestrian manner). In similar vein, except I read this one: The Lerouge Case by Emile Gaboriau (one of the first detective novels ever).

Less "light", but still very readable, were The Wizard of the Kremlin, a thought-provoking novel on contemporary Russia by political scientist Giuliano da Empoli; The End of the Tether, a truly harrowing novella by Joseph Conrad about a merchant navy captain who is going blind; and Babel, by Rebecca F. Kuang (historical fantasy is not totally my thing, but anything that's about translation and international relations will get my vote). I also really enjoyed listening to Bring Up the Bodies, by Hilary Mantel (it's a fantastic book, and my appreciation of it was massively enhanced by reading it in company with Simon Haisell's online book group, Footnotes & Tangents). Book of the month for me, though, was Swing Time, by Zadie Smith, who manages to pack a huge amount about ethnicity, gender, class, personality, and global inequality into an enormously engaging and relatable story.

Meanwhile, the "Book notes" thread (my latest feeble attempt to organize, in a manageable format, links on interesting things I've read) also managed a second iteration this month.



I don't suppose I'll be quite as buoyant by the end of next month. My post-trip bounce will probably have worn off a bit, and there's another hospital appointment to negotiate. But this month has been a wonderful little respite. And for that I'm very grateful.