A moment to seize

How do you seize a moment so perfect? Swinging lazily on a blue hammock in a shady hut with a couple of friends on a Saturday afternoon in Laos, talking about life, laughing and joking, overlooking the Nam Song (Song River) with passing kayakers and travellers in a tube and browned Laotian kids chasing after them, and limestone mountains that encircle us, forming a perimeter of svelte green. And the way the sunlight hits the river making it sparkle, filling its watery womb with a blinding flash that it hurts to almost look at it. And the insects whose names I know not of cooing and chirping in the background, and some Glee songs and other radio-friendly hits playing from Jeremy’s phone. And our antidote to the heat, the breeze gently swaying and caressing our skin.

If only I could capture this moment and put it in a capsule, I’d replay it in the future when the need to unwind or a desire to escape from real life surfaces. But even though memories do decay and become tainted from its after-effects, the words I’d recount may begin, “It was a lazy Saturday afternoon in Vang Vieng…”.