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Today is a holiday for purging bad memories. Until now, the sky lanterns and floating candles have largely been symbolic, but new techniques in selective memoryerasure have changed all that.
Chakkri carries his new lanterns from Sukhumvit's Atlanta Hotel, all the way to this smoky blur of neon at the edge of Chao Phraya River.
A crowd gathers around him, eager to buy the festive paraphernalia of Loi Krathong.
With his lanterns displayed, Chakkri holds one ofthem out for the gathered buyers to see. He channels through a sequence of tailor-made images and the crowd steps back - countless faces flashing in reflection. Stock images of news clips and footage of war scenes explode across the pixelated surface of the paper. He lights a lantern and lets it go - a gust of wind pushing it out over the stalls of Canvas Town and over Chao Phraya, where it joins other lanterns ablaze with memory. Young and old stand along the shores of the river, watching their own selected moments of time drift away.
As his hands pass swiftly over the counter, exchanging lanterns for old baht, Chakkri notices a boy in the crowd, pushing his way forward.
He has seldom seen such eagerness in a child's eyes, and for a moment it reminds him of his own childhood memories of Loi Krathong, the...