For the last few days I’ve been living on the edge. The edge of memory capabilities, the edge of “Storage Full.” My dear little phone, which has been with me for nine years, is striving mightily to keep up with the flow of bits and bytes I throw its way … but it is losing the battle.

I’ve added storage, deleted all but the most necessary apps, even purged some conversations. It’s still teetering on immobility. This morning, afraid the thing would stop working entirely, I began to delete videos. This led me into a strange netherworld of old footage from a 2016 work trip to Myanmar.

I must have flipped on some strange setting back then because many of the still photos I thought I took were actually three-second videos — not “live” shots but actual videos. Sorting through them has taken me back to that strange and wondrous country, a place transformed since the 2021 coup.

There was the ginger farmer we interviewed, the walk I took from my hotel into the village of Kalaw and its market, poinsettias blooming, motorcycles zooming. All was hustle-bustle in preparation for the Fire Tower Festival and parade that evening. A moment in time, captured in data.