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Days of The Rat: Predictions for 2008

[Tokyo, late December, the blackest hour of the night. At the door of my apartment, a feeble, scratching knock. Outside stands a man so ancient that it is impossible even to guess his age. His dark skin is papery and wrinkled, his eyes are brown pools, and his earlobes hang loose from the weight of the polished rhinoceros horns which pierce them. He presses an object into my hand, picks up his blow pipe, and melts into the night.

It is a twist of parchment containing three or four lumps of a dried out, woody substance. My sniffs of gratification turn into cackles of triumph. My wishes have been granted. My dreams have come true. The future is mine!

Every year this blog solicits predictions for the year ahead from Asia’s most renowned prophets and soothsayers. The results have been lamentable. The Sage of Singapore, whom I consulted for 2006, was a bit of a disappointment. Madam Sosostris, last year’s featured soothsayer, was a disgrace! What was the fatuous old trout on about?

This year I decided to take matters into my own hands. Through contacts among the Dayak people of Borneo, I acquired certain . . . substances, harvested from the rain forest by the timanggong, or animist wizards. When inhaled, in combination with the correct incantations, they open invisible doors which allow glimpses of the future. Men of weak spirit would be driven mad by such visions, but this is a risk which I am prepared to take for you, my readers.

I drop the woody lumps, as instructed, into a cauldron of snake blood, and heat it slowly, breathing in the fumes and muttering the eldritch syllables inked on the parchment. Within moments, I am transported to the jungle. Faces painted with blood and clay flash before my eyes. My ears are filled with the sounds of insects and the screams of animals and humans. The Great Lord of the Forest taps me on the shoulder and whispers in my ear . . . Here is what I see in 2008, Heisei 20, the Year of the Rat . . . ]

Journey to the Carterets (Words and Photographs)

This month the photographer Jeremy Sutton-Hibbert and I travelled to the Carteret Atoll, a collection of tiny coral islands far off the coast of Papua New Guinea. For at least 20 years now it has been obvious that the Carterets, and their population of 2,600 people, are sinking into the sea. As usual, it's difficult to state with absolute confidence why this is happening. Is it because of a submarine volcano which is causing changes in the level of the sea bed? Or is because - as this research demonstrates - global warming is causing sea levels in the South Pacific to rise steadily?

You can read my piece from Thursday's paper here; Jeremy's put a few of his photographs on his blog here, here and here; and a few of my own follow.

Click on any of these images to enlarge. (All photographs are the copyright of Richard Lloyd Parry.)

In the sea of stones

We need tales of Wonders - encounters with extreme experience, man-made or natural, which inspire or appal, and impart a sense of human smallness and  insignificance. A jungle forest, burning out of control. An entire town, wholly consumed and washed away by a wave. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion, or C-beams glittering in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.

A yacht, sailing the Pacific, came across such a Wonder. "Early afternoon, somewhere east of the Lau Group in Fiji," wrote its captain, Fredrik Fransson. "We are sailing south of the island group to avoid having to pass through it during night. Yesterday we saw the birth of an island, most likely we were the first humans to see the new creation."