The month didn't start that propitiously. But it's ending with an overall gain for the positive.

On the plus side, we celebrated an anniversary; there was some good news on the health front (Nigel's ears have been given the green light); and we had a great trip to Jong's Crocodile Farm.





The highlight of the month, though, was the 10 days we spent in Singkawang. OK, the bus trip wasn't our favourite part. But it was REALLY nice to be back in Indonesia again, and Singkawang offers plenty of variety: Walking; Chinese culture; street art; the newest and biggest temple; food; and the indispensable Singkawang Grand Mall.




Since returning, we've been catching up, and getting on with organizing the next block of travel, due to kick off in September.

On the negative side of the ledger, that annual phenomenon euphemistically known as the "haze" has made its ugly reappeareance. This is always a major nuisance as the bad air quality cuts down the amount of time you want to spend outside, and means we get to walk less. Meanwhile, random noise continues in our apartment block; all written information on its possible source seems to have disappeared; and the admin people are talking vaguely about the record-breaking eighth-floor reno maybe finishing "soon" -- yeah, right...

Just keep remembering that trip away...







Meanwhile, The Velvet Cushion hosted a very mixed bag this month:

-- A couple of Book notes posts took in anniversaries and various aspects of survival.

-- In the "quick reads" category, I'd probably file Ruth Rendell's The Water's Lovely under "not her best"; nor did Anita Shreve's Body Surfing encourage me to visit this author again. The Wedding People, by Alison Espach, on the other hand, is a great example of the light read. You forgive its cosy improbability for the sake of its sparkling observation, brisk pace, and laugh-out-loud humour.

-- On the heavier -- much heavier -- side, we had Preeta Samarasan's Evening Is the Whole Day (a claustrophobic account of a Malaysian family's secrets, with a hint at their socio-political subtext); Mihail Sebastian's For Two Thousand Years (a harrowing recollection of what it meant to be a Jew in 1930s Romania -- and a reminder for us now to resist having our legitimate criticism of the Israeli Government tainted by a more general anti-Semitism); Hisham Matar's In the Country of Men (a child's-eye view of growing up in Qaddafi's Libya); and Jerome Ferrari's In His Own Image (a requiem for a photographer, taking us from Corsica to the Balkans, and encouraging us to interrogate what photography actually is).

-- In the calm but thought-provoking middle, I'd put The Uncommon Reader, Alan Bennett's funny, gentle, insightful little story of royal bibliophilia; and William, by E.H. Young (a perceptive study of changing moral values, and another publication celebrating its 100th anniversary, but much less famously than some of its fellows).

How I love books...


***

What else? Two articles that really made me think:

First, this could not fail to resonate with a Tern: "Over the course of its migration from Brazil to northern Canada, a semipalmated sandpiper will fly the human equivalent of 126 marathons in a row... By the time a bar-tailed godwit dies, it will have flown the equivalent distance of the moon and back." Click that link for a lovely animation (at the top of the page); the longer piece is here.

Second, Andrea Gibson. I'd never heard of this person before their death. The first thing I saw was a Substack tribute by their wife, Meg. The sort of piece you start reading casually, and then feel ripping into you... The real wake-up lines were these: "One of the last things they said before dying was, 'I fucking loved my life.' Their conviction stunned the room. If Andrea’s life was a poem (and it was), could there be a better last line?"

Judging by the outpouring of reaction and reflection, I wasn't the only one to have been sideswiped by this incredibly talented, vibrant person, who was a poet, a thinker, and -- despite a terminal illness -- a passionate advocate for this amazing, bewildering experience called human life.

I went on to read A List of Things I Love. We should probably all make one of those.

It's also worth looking up this New York Times obituary, which talks of Gibson's uniquely empathetic "tenderness activism", and this reflection from another Substacker, which spells out some of the things we might learn from their life, and quotes one of their poems. Some lines:

For decades I gave my days the cold shoulder
and that is no longer something I am willing to do
with my one wild and precious life...

At the end of our lives don’t we want to
say we celebrated the holiday of having bodies?
Don’t we want to know we lived like we never forgot
we were born astonished and were never intended
to grow out of our awe?

Awe is the most powerful medicine in the world...

***

Which couldn't be more appropriate as we move into August...