Category: writing

A moment along the Mekong River in Laos

They say the Mekong is a river only in the way a body is a body. Those who live along its banks step toward the water with a quietness that borders on reverence, as though approaching an elder who has seen too much to be impressed by human urgency.

The young man who came each morning did not bow, but he paused. That small hesitation was his offering. His name was Somchai, though the villagers usually shortened it to Chai, a name easier to say. He was nineteen, but the river had already begun its slow work on him seen in the way he listened, the way he moved with a patience that did not belong to youth.

He stood barefoot on the damp bank, in the early light. Smoke from distant cooking fires drifted in thin threads behind him. The river held its usual calm, but beneath that calm he sensed a stirring, the kind that has nothing to do with weather or tide.

He lifted his net and cast it in a wide, practiced arc. The net opened above him like a breath released, then settled onto the water.

Chai waited, not with impatience but with the quiet attention of someone who has learned that the river does not respond to force. His father had taught him that before the fever hollowed him out, leaving Chai with a net, a family to feed, and a grief that settled into him like sediment.

The surface of the water shimmered. He pulled the net.

It rose with weight, but not the familiar, wriggling weight of fish. This was a different heaviness, the kind that belongs to objects that have waited a long time to be found.

When the net broke the surface, he saw only a single stone caught in its mesh.

It was smooth, shaped by years of water, but etched with markings that resembled script. He held it in his hands, and something in him shifted, the way a locked door sometimes shifts when the right key is near.

He knelt at the water’s edge. The river was quiet as though it were listening.

“I don’t know what you want,” he said, his voice barely heard above the sound of the current. “I only know I need to feed my family.”

The water touched the shore in a slow, deliberate rhythm, as though acknowledging the truth of his words.

He looked again at the stone. The markings seemed to pulse, not with light but with intention. He placed the stone on the water.

It floated.

It drifted outward, turning slowly, as though guided by a current he could not feel. For a moment, the river’s surface deepened, revealing shapes beneath it, their movements belonged to another order of being, something fluid and ancient.

He blinked, and the shapes dissolved.

The stone stopped a few feet from shore.

A voice rose then. It was neither male nor female, neither young nor old. It carried the timbre of something that had never needed to raise its voice.

“You cast your net for fish, but the river casts its net for you.“

Chai felt his breath catch.

“You carry more than hunger,” the voice continued. “You carry the weight of those who depend on you, the ache of what you have lost, the fear of what you cannot shape.“

The words named what was already true.

“But you also carry patience,” the voice said. “And a listening heart. These are the qualities the river recognizes.“

The stone drifted back toward him, as though returning something he had not realized he had offered.

“You are not alone,” the voice said. “The river remembers your father. It remembers your grandmother. It remembers every hand that has ever cast a net in hope or in despair. It remembers you.“

He lifted the stone from the water. It felt warm now, as though it had absorbed something from the river.

“What am I meant to do?” he whispered.

“Fish,” the voice said. “But not only with your hands. Fish with your memory. Fish with your grief. Fish with the understanding that you are part of something larger than your hunger.“

The shimmer faded. The river returned to its ordinary calm, though Chai sensed that nothing was quite the same.

He cast his net again.

This time, when he pulled, the weight was familiar with the solid, wriggling weight of fish. More than he had caught in weeks. Enough to feed his family for days.

He did not smile with triumph. He simply breathed, deeply, as though the river had lent him a breath of its own.

He gathered his net, tucked the stone into his bag, and began the walk home. The morning light warmed his shoulders. The fish weighed down his hands.

He did not look back at the river. He didn’t need to. He could feel it watching him.

This story must be told, not because it is ancient, though it is, and not because it is sacred, though it might be, but because it speaks to something that has always lived quietly inside the human heart.

Long before the first cities rose, before the first names were spoken, before the first grief carved its hollow into the chest of the world, there was a tree that grew in the space between what is seen and what is felt. It did not grow in soil, though it had roots. It did not reach toward the sun, though it had branches. It was a tree spanning many worlds. It still exists in the place where the visible world thins enough for the invisible to show through.

Some called it the First Tree. Others called it the Listening Tree. But the oldest name, the one whispered by those who still remembered the shape of the world before language, was the Tree Beneath the Skin of the World. The Norse called it Yggdrasil.

Its trunk glowed with a deep, ember-red warmth, as though was lit from within by a memory of fire. Its branches spread outward in intricate patterns, splitting and re-joining, weaving themselves into shapes that resembled the branching of rivers, the pathways of lightning, the delicate threads of the human mind. Roots mirrored branches reaching downward with the same complexity, as though the tree was a bridge between two realms .

And holding the tree were two human hands. They were not the hands of a single person. They were the hands of humanity itself, shaped by every gesture ever made in kindness, every touch offered in comfort, every moment when one being reached toward another with the simple desire to care. These hands were not perfect. They bore scars, calluses, lines etched by time and labour. But they were steady, and they were gentle, and they held the tree with the reverence of someone holding a new baby.

This story begins on a day when the world felt heavier than usual, though nothing in particular had happened to make it so. A young woman walked alone through a valley she had never visited before. She had lived her life with a quiet diligence, doing what was expected, offering what was needed, carrying what was asked of her. But something inside her had begun to shift, like a tide turning beneath the surface of the sea.

She followed a narrow path that wound through the valley, the air warm against her skin, touched with the faint scent of something sweet — not flowers, not fruit, but something that reminded her of childhood afternoons when the world felt larger than she could understand. The sky above her was neither dawn nor dusk, but something in between, as though time itself had paused to listen.

The tree stood at the centre, glowing softly, its branches and roots weaving patterns that made her breath catch. The colours around it moved in slow spirals, as though the world were exhaling in her direction. And the hands, those immense, gentle hands held the tree with a tenderness that made her chest ache.

She stepped closer, drawn by something she could not name.

The ground beneath her feet felt warm, alive. The closer she came, the more she sensed something stirring inside her — not fear, not awe, but recognition. As though some part of her had been here before, long before she had a name or a history.

When she reached the base of the tree, she placed her hand on the trunk. The bark was smooth, almost like skin, and beneath it she felt a faint vibration, steady and calm, like the heartbeat of a sleeping giant.

A voice rose then, not from the tree, not from the air, but from somewhere inside her, a voice that was neither male nor female, neither young nor old.

“You have come far to remember what you already know. Sit,” the voice said.

She lowered herself to the ground, leaning against the warm trunk. The moment her back touched the tree, a wave of memory washed through her, memories of sensations: the feeling of being held, the feeling of belonging, the feeling of being connected to something vast and benevolent. The tree pulsed gently.

“Every life grows tangled,” the voice continued. “Branches twist, roots collide, paths split and re-join. People forget that they are not separate from the world that shapes them. You carry questions,” the voice said. “Not the kind that seek answers, but the kind that seek direction.“

She felt her breath deepen. It was true. She had not come seeking solutions. She had come because something in her had begun to unravel, not in a destructive way but in a way that suggested she was outgrowing the shape of her life.

“The world within you is not smaller that the world around you,” the voice said. “It is simply less explored. Look.”

She opened her eyes.

The tree’s trunk had changed. Where her hand had rested, the bark had become translucent, revealing a network of glowing lines beneath the surface. The tree was not a tree. Or rather, it was more than a tree. It was a map of the world, of the self, of the unseen connections that bind everything together.

“Every life is a pattern,” the voice said. “Every choice a branch. Every loss a root. Every hope a leaf waiting to unfurl. You have forgotten how to listen to your own roots. Place your hand here,” the voice said.

A section of the trunk glowed softly. She pressed her palm against it.

She was no longer sitting at the base of the tree. She was standing inside it. The branches above her stretched into a sky that was not a sky, but a vast expanse of possibility. The roots below her reached into a ground that was not earth, but memory. Images rose around her, not as scenes but as impressions: moments of joy, moments of fear, moments of hesitation, moments of courage. They moved like currents, weaving themselves into patterns she had never noticed.

“You are not lost,” the voice said. “You are simply between shapes. Growth is not a straight line. It is a spiral. You return to what you thought you had left behind, only to see it with new eyes. You came here because you are ready to grow in a new direction. But growth requires release. Let go of what no longer feeds you. And trust what is emerging. It is time to return.“

She blinked. She was once again sitting at the base of the tree, her hand resting on the warm bark. The valley was quiet, the colours around the tree calmer now, as though the world had exhaled.

The voice spoke one last time.

“Carry the pattern with you. It will change as you change. That is its purpose.”