in the rainforest, ii

feeding fish can be therapeutic. not when there are two of them in a little bowl, but where two thousand arrive, thrashing about in unison, leaping out of water to swallow morsels strewn about at random. they came as i stood at the banks of the taman negara river, an incredibly long, meandering body of water that cut through a 4000-square-kilometre wide rainforest. thousands of them, each over a foot-long. feeding them for twelve whole minutes, i felt a lot like god. around me, the boatmen stood, watching in silence.

monitor lizards have little that is therapeutic about them. at 8 am, they lie on riverbanks, sunning themselves, huge animals with forked tongues testing the air before them. they're slow, until you decide to annoy them. given my history of infuriating people, i knew it was only a matter of time. when they attack, the thing to do is drop your bags and run. they rarely follow. the thai eat them, i was told. better them than us, i replied.

spiders rule large swathes of rainforest. they spin little whorl-worlds, capturing the air between massive tree trunks and spreading their legs apart, hanging guard. below them, russians, americans, australians and japanese tourists stream past, looking down. all failing to notice the spiderlords above. one can hardly blame the insects, in their innocence, for flying in to die...

in the rainforest

what two days in the heart of taman negara, a rainforest in malaysia 130 million years old, can teach you: nothing in the jungle cares about who you are or what you think you want to become. above you, lemurs shriek. on the ground beneath, scorpions roam in tight circles. at 7 pm, all is black, and you can't tell tree from sky. you are left to confront no one but yourself. in that moment of clarity, careers are redundant.

kadeeri, the forest guide, tells me about molly, the 30-year-old american woman who stepped into the rainforest and was swallowed. six years on, traces of her have yet to be found. as you walk deeper in the jungle, then, you can't help but think of molly. of who she was and what she went on to be. the possibility of her being alive does not exist, but you want to believe it does.

six hours from kuala lumpur city, the petronas towers are furthest from your mind. only molly and the jungle exist. and a slow-moving lemur, 25 metres above.