Moments and momentos

I cannot find a particular momento. It's a Starbucks coffee-holder cardboard thingey, that is used to insulate fingers from boiling hot caffeinated drinks. On it, there's Jonny's name, Jonny's present address in Crawley, our shared address in Bloomsbury. The thingey is one of a pair, and Jonny has the other one. In it is embedded a particular moment: a moment of parting at Heathrow, a moment of extreme sadness at Starbucks, a moment of shared amusement at the soya froth in Jonny's tea, a moment in time that I hope I will always remember.

I feel a bit sad at its loss. It could have fallen out of my wallet (I have been carrying it around most days since coming back to Singapore). It could have accidentally been chucked away as I spring-cleaned my wallet. Hopefully, Jonny has taken it with him to England on SQ320 yesterday. Maybe some day, it will pop out of a crevice in my room, as numerous other little mementos from other moments in time have done.

I am clingey to moments and mementos. I still have texts from first dates. Primary school scribbles. Tissues from friends. My mother's shoes. My own ultrasound scan (me as a thingamabob in the womb).

To me, the missing Starbucks thingey is no small loss. Thankfully, I have very many other momentos to remember the same moment. Photographs in the main. And the wrist sweatbands that Jonny and I got that day at Niketown and Prowlers, and were each wearing at Heathrow. Probably a receipt or two from Starbucks and Niketown and Prowlers. A journal entry online. A journal entry offline.

I have got mementos of happier moments too. The recent ones include: the neoprint and Saving Face ticket from the 2nd, the Underwater World and Sentosa tickets from the 3rd, numerous other receipts of purchases made elsewhere. And of course the photographs.

In The Hours, Michael Cunningham writes of the hours that his main characters have to endure. I love the book and the movie, especially the emotions so powerfully . However, I doubt I am similarly enduring the hours. Instead, I seem to be rather busy living and observing life (more the latter than the former), maybe too busy clutching at the individual moments, past and present.

The future? What do I know of the future?

Not very much. Just that there will be numerous more moments that I will want to clutch at, to savour, to hold, to yearn for and to be nostalgic about.