Dr. Howl: A Lockdown diary entry from Faye Tsang, who recently returned to her native Canton, China, after an extended Cambodia stay, and found herself in quarantine.

Finally, I could set foot on the balcony of the hotel room and freely inhale fresh air, and then be on my way home real soon. Hearing the suitcase wheels rumbling downwards the sloping path leading to the lobby, I said to myself, “That’s it… a 14-day mandatory quarantine is over.”

It turned out not so bad for me though, a period of isolation at some five-star resort. Hotel-isolation was a special measure at the time to prevent Covid-19 spread due to many infected Chinese returning from abroad. Every one stranded in this situation would not complain too much for the luxurious and costly treatment arranged by authority, even if it had been confining and extremely boring. 

This is my hometown, Canton or Guangzhou city, which is more expensive for living than many other places in China. However, many other companions who flew here from Southeast Asia to transit still had to put up with this quarantine for the time being.

Being fair here, you pay for what you get, (‘yes, I have to pay) besides the pleasant accommodation in a tranquil and beautiful rural environment tuned with birds singing. The team of hosts have been working very hard to meet our basic requires – decent meals, mosquito repellent, toilet roll, detergent, and more, all except room cleaning and customized catering.

And there was another team of medical staff from the district hospital, who have been working very dutifully to carry out the day-to-day sterilizing and checking, including virus testing twice a day, which was free of charge for us, the observed objects. 

Friends of mine all seemed very relieved for me having successfully left Cambodia, where the spread of the epidemic was unclear.

Yeah so far, I was feeling very lucky, even when completing multiple road trips across Cambodia and a two-and-a-half-hour flight to Baiyun International Airport I seem to have avoided infection.

14 days was going very peaceful and as regular as military drills. Yet for a solitary soul like me, it was not much difficult to cope with, by use of reading, copy-writing ( from my freelance job) additionally with some help of an indoor exercise video that was introduced to me by a friend, and a shuttlecock – complimentary from the hotel.

The only humane contact was eye contact and Q and A happened during my daily physical check-up. Incidentally the two-week isolation was largely in gloomy weather, that reflects the moodier spirit of the Ching Ming customary calendar period. 

Thinking of the whole endeavour Chinese people have engaged in, especially the huge sacrifice of Wuhan folks, I gradually found the emergency rules of the authorities quite acceptable and practical, given imported infected cases have been increasing.

So you see, I am still able to adapt to typical Chinese socialism, even though I have stayed overseas for a long period.

Hopefully this global health crisis will soon be defused and overcome, through co-operation across countries no matter how different the social systems, races, or political agendas are.      

In the spirit of Defoe (A Journal of a Plague Year) and Pepys (serial London diarist of the 1600s ‘great plague’) HOWL offers you the Lockdown Dairies, vignettes from around the planet, where members of the HOWL family share their ‘Covid’ thoughts and experiences.

A ‘lockdown’ poem by Scott Bywater (Phnom Penh)

the crowds are thinning
on the boulevard of cautionary tales
but maybe a new name is in order:
the street of the last chance saloons?
the avenue of the end times?
deathpat’s graveyard?
(have I been reading Tom Robbins too much?)

if only beer wasn’t half as expensive
as soda water
I think to myself
as I scratch the unshavenness
I am wearing to blend in

Monday has not traditionally
been a good day to start again
but so many of the old rules
are gone
and why wait for Tuesday?

as the street dwindles away
into shutters and sentries

~~~

one cannot help being impressed
by the creators of email spam
who continue to work tirelessly
through this crisis

the internet is our mirror
both individually and
our society
all the things we are
are in there
blaring back at us
staring back at us
in piercing shards
and loud lectures

our mythic heroes weep silently
in their corners and their caves
they are spent; they did what they could
for now we are on our own

the bandleader up on the bandstand
keeps calling up new titles but
the dream orchestra keeps playing
the same tune

the shadow protagonist
his time called at last
can only hack his way through the scenery
in stubborn repetition of past roles
on the same backlot
high shimmering painted skies
and smoke machines laid to waste
as he stumbles forward
incoherently shouting lines
from his past triumphant speeches
once there was not a dry eye in the house
now there is not a house
not even a rickety chair

~~~

after the day-after-day morning bangclatter
the view from my window
is still and flatly hot
like childhood summer afternoons
when everything was distant
and the birds were the loudest thing
to be heard

when we walk the streets
the comparison with zombies
is hard to avoid,
with our mouth hiders
firmly in place,
eyes working overtime in exaggerated expressions
to overcome the facewrinkles that
complete our brief exchanges

all plans mothballed
all bets off
all opinions bleated
all encouragements obeying
the law of diminishing cares

~~~

the streetscape edited
erratically, but continually
the familiar faces of these years past
disappeared:
home means different things to different people
particularly when pushed

strange times, we nod sagely,
as we quietly rearrange our priorities
even as we wonder what they are

somewhere it seems
our alter egos
are off hiking in the hills
picnicking halfway up cliffs
waving bottles of wine
at a different sun
wondering where the glasses are
wondering where the corkscrews are
wondering where we are

all plans mothballed

all bets off

shutters and sentries

the dream orchestra keeps playing
the same tune

Scott Bywater – poet, writer, word raconteur

Julie Svay: Written from Rueil-Malmaison, the imperial city of Napoléon and Joséphine Bonaparte, near Paris, France, on lockdown J+32. And inspired by the emotions awakened by Saarah Choudhury’s Lockdown post: ‘Duet between a widow and her husband, Post 2020’

What words can I share after such lines … ?

Lately, someone blamed me for three simple words of mine, “I am fine“, because how can someone feel fine in such dramatic times? So many are in grief, fear or depression.

For reasons, good or bad, here we are; confined and little by little deprived of our freedoms – from going out (for more than one hour daily, authorized reasons only), from the warmth of gathering (so important to our elders), and to parks and places of green – our connections with nature.

Then, why not take the chance of these suspended times to reconnect with our profound beings? And through this inner journey face our shadows, and despite it all why not allow ourselves to reconnect with the beauty of each simple moment? And more than ever, the beauty of living?

It is springtime here, glycine and lilac trees blooming along the walls in the city gardens. Few cars pass on the usually congested and noisy roadway, allowing the breeze to bring scents of flowers and the sound of buzzing bees.

In the quietness of the evening I walk along the (forbidden) banks of the Seine. Sitting on a pier I send a prayer to its green flowing waters … a prayer of no religion but for our humanity, in the unexplained hope to fill the water with consolation and love; to carry along in its journey from the sea to the clouds, from the rains to the sources, and to the drinking water we welcome in our bodies.

Maybe it does not take more to feel fine. Maybe we can all learn, day after day. There must be lighthouses that stand before the dark and stormy sea, to remain us silently that there is hope until the Flower Moon light and the signs of dawn …

On my way back there are cherry trees in bloom, like the trees that you see in Japan, with an old Mercedes car parked beneath. It’s after a storm of thunder and rain and the vehicle is covered with pink petals, a ‘wedding car’.

Julie

April 17, 2020.

Hi, my name is Emily Moss and I’m 9 years old. I live in the countryside in Maheno, Oamaru, New Zealand with my mum and dad and my 6 sheep and Max the cat. I wrote this about my school and how lonely it might feel with no kids in it’s classrooms because of Covid-19.

Let’s see what Maheno School has to say about having no kids because of Covid 19…

EM:    “ Ruru Room how do you feel about having no kids in you ?”

RR:     “ I feel lonely, but happy because kids are not jumping on my floor!”    

EM:        “Wow sad and happy. It must be so quiet at Maheno school in the play-ground. Tui Room what do you have to say?”

TR:        “ Hmm…I can sleep in till 10:00am.”

EM:          “Thank you Tui Room let’s go to Pukeko Room, what do you have to…”

PR:          “Well I am not lonely because I have two butterflies. I miss the kids working, but they are safe in their homes now.”

EM:        “ Well thank you Maheno School. Stay safe and this is Emily Moss for home school news”.

Dr. Howl: In a case of the past echoing today a note from Barbara, Em’s mum: “Maheno School was named after the Hospital Ship ‘Maheno’, which took care of WW1 soldiers suffering from the Spanish Flu in 1919. The wreck of the Maheno is on the beach at Fraser Island, Queensland, Australia. The school has the original ship’s bell.”

A beautiful and powerful ‘lockdown’ poem from Saarah Choudhury (Siem Reap)

They say it’s dead now, this ghost town,
Milkshake and coffee shop shut down.
Only police on foot patrol.
Webs of wyrdness in control,
But what to do? 
But what to do? 

Oh there are flowers in my lungs 
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I’m still into you. 
I’m still into you.

This world is bruised and bitter-sweet
Like dancing flowers on the beach,
Where we used to laugh and run.
Life outdoors was so much fun. 
We’d watch each sunrise anew, 
We’d watch each sunrise anew. 

Oh there are flowers in my lungs
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I’m still into you. 
I’m still into you.

There is no time like the past, 
Who thought good things would never last,
Remember when the pink moon rising
We watched without moralising?
Now my world is blue. 
Now my world is blue. 

Oh there are flowers in my lungs 
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I’m still into you. 
I’m still into you.

Birds under my window sing. 
We like to think nature’s breathing.
In this isolated madness,
They only add to all the sadness.
Each day’s so hard to get through,
So hard to get through.

Oh there are flowers in my lungs 
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I’m still into you. 
I’m still into you.

Now we’re all afraid to fly, 
Afraid to go on late night drives.
The streets are quiet anyway. 
Mantle of fear’s the mainstay 
Yet I cling to thoughts of you.
I cling to thoughts of you.

Oh there are flowers in my lungs 
Waiting to greet you when you come, 
Hypnotic heavens set ablaze 
The day angels upon you gaze,
And I wait for you.
And I wait for you.

Saarah Choudhury

Published poet

Freedom, safety, joy, service, all the good things in life

In the spirit of Defoe (A Journal of a Plague Year) and Pepys (serial London diarist of the 1600s ‘great plague’) HOWL offers you the Lockdown Dairies, vignettes from around the planet, where members of the HOWL family share their ‘Covid’ thoughts and experiences.

Cambodia, Siem Reap: A ‘lockdown’ entry from Dr. Howl

The last night of December 2019: it seems an age ago now, a different time, another world, not a moment barely five months past. That night, with a friend, we found ourselves at Ms. Wong—as much of a hospitality institution as you can get in this town—with me enjoying a cool mojito as the festive sounds of Siem Reap buzzed around us. 

Had I heard of the virus back then? A strange sickness in a distant Chinese city that I had barely heard of and that I struggled to pronounce? Maybe, a rumour or a brief news piece, but with Australia aflame and football scores to consider its repercussions—what it would mean for me and the rest of the planet— barely registered on this, the eve of new years.  

Ms. Wong is closed now – a victim of the economic disarray that follows the virus like an evil twin. The friend from that evening is in lockdown, somewhere in Bangkok, unable to work, unable to travel. Today, on the last day of another new year—Khmer—Siem Reap should be buzzing. It’s not. After twilight one expects to see tumbleweeds spiralling down the dark alleys of ‘Pub Street’, with rats and lost souls the remaining vestige of the quarter’s wandering night-life.

Still, during the day, life seems cosmopolitan here compared with images from back home, the kingdom manufacturing a distinct take on Covid control. Currently we are in a holiday-centred lockdown, although the notion of where to place the ‘lock’ stretches to the boundaries of your province and not your back door. On the streets and out on the rural roads social distancing translates to three in a tuk tuk (chickens an optional extra) and ‘flattening the curve’ is something that a drunken reveller does in a speeding SUV.

In mood we seem to be on-hold, waiting for something to happen, spectators to an unofficial race – will we succumb to the virus first or will its economic consequences overtake us before? The local media provide us with scant details. While in Europe, the USA, back home, we read that the world is on fire, the ‘bug’ burning through people’s lives, the economy, friends and family. 

Last week, returning from work, I drove through the trees and ruins of Angkor. There were still people about—all Khmer, hardly a ‘barang’ to be seen—and they seemed happy, picnicking on the sides of the park’s wide barays, taking selfies, juggling babies and soda cans in overfull hands. And if one closed out everything else, if one concentrated only on this moment, you could forget what was happening beyond, you could almost imagine that you were back on a mild evening in late December.

. . . that the world was ‘normal’.

How will this all play out? I have little idea. But each day of good health seems like a miracle and, for now, that is enough. 

Stay safe, stay healthy . . . and keep on howling.  

In the spirit of Defoe (A Journal of a Plague Year) and Pepys (serial London diarist of the 1600s ‘great plague’) HOWL offers you the Lockdown Dairies, vignettes from around the planet, in which members of the HOWL family share their ‘corona’ thoughts and experiences.

First up is Greg McCann, rainforest memoirist and eco-wunderkind, who offers his thoughts from Buffalo, USA.

Only one thing matters: will my flight still depart on July 8^th, taking me from New York—the pandemic epicenter in the USA—to Taiwan? That’s it, that’s all. This consumes me. There are other things, of course, like my son, and the fact that I’m putting on weight—and that really irks me because I have a gym membership and, considering how unhealthy the food is in Buffalo, NY, I was doing pretty good as far as staying in shape over the past two years. I can feel the bulge now, and jumping jacks in the basement don’t seem to do that much; neither do push-ups or sit-ups. Maybe I need to do more. Anyway, I scan the news looking for glimmers of hope that things will turn semi-normal by July, and I still think they will. Anything else is inconceivable.

My friend just sent me a photo of my favorite Taipei sauna, captioning it with “It won’t be long now, Greg!” I hope he’s right. He has to be. The bars and restaurants are still open in Taiwan. You can eat stinky tofu and wash it down with a Taiwan beer on the sidewalks of the city. Sounds like another planet, but that was my life for 14 years, and it will be my life again if I can get the hell out of here. I called the airline because my boss said I had better budget in 2 weeks for quarantine if I want to be able to report for duty on July 31^st, plus a few days for a physical exam at the hospital. Airline changed my dates, but for a fee—thought they weren’t supposed to charge for that in these worrying times, but they did. Oh, and I have an ARC (alien resident card) for Taiwan, so even if foreigners are banned, I can still enter. The latest news says overall deaths might not be nearly as bad as earlier models predicted. Looking good.

And it’s not just Taiwan, but Cambodia and Thailand too. Because after I report for duty I’m supposed to be on another flight for my beloved Phnom Penh, and then up into the north of the Kingdom where I travel for wildlife surveying, and after that, back down to PP for R&R, and then a bus or plane to Bangkok, and then more jungle adventures in that fine kingdom.

Cambodia and Thailand should be OK by August, no? Is there anything else I should do besides some sit-ups? My son is on his third hour of Fortnite, or, actually, his first hour of that after two hours of some other game. But at least he gets to “hang out” with his classmates online while he plays. I hear them talking. Time to put on some coffee. It’s 12:40 PM, Thursday, April 9^th.

A very special review from the author of the Cambodia wilderness epic, Called Away by a Mountain Spirit: Journeys to the Green Corridor, Greg McCann.

I can’t remember what exactly spurred my interest in curlews—pretty waders with mottled feathers and long, bending bills used for plucking worms, snails and other invertebrates from their oozy homes in grasslands, mudflats, and moorlands. Probably it was the singularity of their proboscis-like beaks that seem stuck onto their face like downturned rhinoceros horns, but it might also have been their name, curlew, which to my ear has the ring of some kind of old world beauty.

Although I have a great interest in birds and have had the exquisite privilege of seeing and hearing some of the rarest in the wild, such as the Helmeted Hornbill, Rhinoceros Hornbill and Sumatran Laughing thrush in Indonesia, and while I have camera-trapped several species new to Cambodia in Virachey National Park—such as the Black-hooded Laughing thrush, Silver Pheasant, and Bar-bellied Partridge—I still don’t think I can call myself a “birder.” True birders are hardcore: they carry binoculars, they know all the bird calls, and some of them even connect mini-speakers to their breast pockets and crank out bird songs from their iPods as they trek through the forest, tricking birds to fly in to inspect what turns out to be a human imposter holding a pen and paper, scribbling down or twitchingoff his list. I need to get my act together before I can identify as a real birder.

Travel writer and journalist Horatio Claire’s recent offering, Orison for a Curlew: In search of a bird on the edge of extinction, is a timely read. It was recommended by my friend Jonathan Slaght, another curlew fan and author of a forthcoming book on the Blakiston’s Fish Owl—Owls of the Eastern Ice— which is set in the Russian Far East. Slaght works for Wildlife Conservation Society and I attended his talk on tigers, leopards and owls in Minneapolis a few years back, and if he recommends a bird book, I order it. This is how I came to my copy of Claire’s spirited 96-page volume about a bird, the Slender-billed Curlew, which could well be extinct. 

The Slender-billed Curlew has not been confirmed in the wild since 1999, despite major efforts by devoted birders and organized teams who set out in search of it in recent years. So instead of setting off on a wild goose chase, Claire elects to hunt down and interview people who saw the bird decades ago. This takes him on journeys to the Greek coast, the shores of a Bulgarian lake, and the hinterlands of Romania. He chats with a fascinating array of characters, from park rangers, to wizened hermits, to environmental activists who tell him about lost relics that are like “extraordinary flashes of another planet.” The Slender-billed Curlew is a symbol of past abundance, when the world was still ecologically more or less whole, when species that are now rare or extinct were represented in numbers appropriate for a healthy planetary ecosystem. 

But mankind cannot leave well enough alone; we are tinkerers and up-enders and we drastically alter and destroy ecosystems in our quest for development and better lives. Wetlands are drained, rivers diverted, pesticides sprayed, oil spilled, mist nets set on beaches, rifles aimed at the sky. Has the slender-billed curlew managed to run this gauntlet along its migratory route from Siberia, through Europe, and into Africa and survive in secret into the present? Could it be, as one energetic Bulgarian bachelor hypothesizes, nesting in an unknown site in vast Siberia and making its main flyway stopover in forbidden Iran, making its existence almost impossible to confirm? It is tempting to imagine. 

Claire offers some hope, observing that, “The journey I undertook shows, again and again, that passionate efforts by very small numbers of committed people can have a tremendous effect on the planet and its inhabitants, whatever the species.” Brief but beautifully told, this book is likely to draw those who read it into birding, and environmental conservation in general. It will probably even rekindle a feeling of wanderlust in those kept in the dreary lockdowns of our current time. 

In 1954 Fred Bosworth wrote in his classic Last of the Curlews: “first there were many, then there were two, then there was one, and now there are none.” Bodsworth’s book was about the last two Eskimo Curlews, a small species that nested in the Arctic, now gone, annihilated largely by American hunters. Has the same sad fate befallen the Slender-billed Curlew? It seems we may never know for sure, and perhaps that’s not a bad thing. As someone who has spent a bit of time in the jungles of Cambodia and Sumatra looking for rare and possibly vanished species, I can relate to Claire’s insight: “Perhaps it will live on for many years in unconfirmed sightings. I hope so. Too much certainty is a miserable thing, while the unknowable has a pristine beauty and wonder with no end.”

And whether it was Orison for a Curlew, or the combined of all the other bird books I’ve recently read, I will be ordering my first set of binoculars this weekend as I delve into my new passion—birding—and it’s something that can even be done from the window of one’s home during the time of Covid-19. 

Orison for a Curlew: In search of a bird on the edge of extinction

Please follow the Corona Code – Ensure books are washed and cleaned with a suitable swap, follow social distancing norms when exchanging (masks, distance etc.). Happy reading.

Current swap stock

The Devil in the White City – Erik Larson – Non-fiction –
Contact: wayne@songsaa.com or whatsapp +855 77 777 498

Overstory – Richard Power – Fiction –
Contact: wayne@songsaa.com or whatsapp +855 77 777 498

A request for Brother Enemy from Dennis Gray . . . anybody up for a swap?