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A week without a lifeline to the world has ended. My computer’s been returned, faster, cleaner and extremely welcome. It’s been a hard week. And the sun came out today, the first time for about a fortnight. Nothing is more spirit-lifting.

My existence is split. Part of it is contemplative, almost monastic. I read, I think, I observe, I daydream, I meditate. The other part is at my computer. I read Stuff, Scoop, and the New York Times daily and usually look at Kiwiblog and Bookman Beattie's blog. Once a week online I read the Economist, Time and New Yorker. My own blog is my outreach, attracting comment and feedback.

In my computer’s absence I read two books, Denis McLean’s Howard Kippenberger: Dauntless Spirit and Colin Thurbon’s The Shadow of the Silk Road. I enjoyed the Kippenberger more than I anticipated. Especially the letters from the Western Front in the First World War – what conditions our soldiers had to endure. From private in one war to a general in the next. Quite a transition. McLean gives a lucid account of the North African campaign after the wasteful debacle of Greece and Crete. The contrast between the fighting across desert spaces and then the Italian hills is striking

Thurbon’s book earlier book The Lost Heart of Asia pointed out the environmental damage of the Soviet inheritance in Central Asia. His own self-doubt added credibility to his account. Likewise in this one about the Silk Road, the 2000 year old route from China to Rome. He set off from Xian in China. A personal quest is mingled with history, anthropology and observation. Along the journey little vignettes illustrate the plights, hopes and life of people he meets.

There are poignant descriptions of the plight of the old in rural China. Their children are rejecting their collective Confucianism for Western individualism and materialism. His descriptions of the clash between the Han and the Muslim peoples contain warnings of the bloodshed that erupted between them this year,
I can’t get enthusiastic about Tibetan Buddhism but he seems to have an empathy.

Sad, the markets of Samarkand are now full of flogged DVDs rather than silk and gold. The post-Soviet disillusionment and the disruption of the Islamic faith present a gloomy picture. Some of the people he visits look back to the ‘glory’ days of Stalin. Past glories are even more obvious in neighbouring Afganistan. Warlords, Soviet and now American troops, the Taliban. The picture Thurbon paints is one of anger rather than despair. These steppes have seen many conquerors come and go. He’d visited Heart (my bloody spell-check keeps turning the city spelt h e r a t into heart) before and describes it as once a fertile oasis.

On to Persia – a religious festival, faithful fanatics, and the impact of the internet – the restiveness of the young and the perplexities of the elderly. And so to Antioch and the Mediterranean. A visit to the ruins of an old Greek temple sums up the streak of religious exploration which is a major theme of the narrative. His own faded faith allows a clear exploration of other belief systems. Underlying the whole journey is a note of wistful sadness. It could be the territory he traverses but more likely it’s his own temperament.

He points out that the Chinese invention of the compass opened the way for the sea route to the East and the decay of the silk road.

The one bad note - a blackbird has learnt to take a whole slice of bread and fly away with it. Instead of a gaggle of sparrows I have a deserted lawn while somewhere else that blackbird gorges on a feast of his own.