Forget DNA and its handmaiden language,

rewrite history in terms of cuisine, the trails of tomatoes and the paths of potatoes. The Chinese leave gastronomical tracks wherever they go. All people do. Thais immigrate with kitchen utensils, opening restaurants like plowing fields and claiming land, blurring the edge between origin and immigration. There’s something magic about a name on a map becoming reality in the flesh, complete with tacos and tom yam, spring rolls and pizza, sex and chocolate. The moon sets over a featureless plain as trains pass through the night and border guards check my papers. Names of cities flash by on signs like flash cards to study a language that just keeps changing everywhere you go. Just when you think you’ve about got it figured out, it shifts gears by some Chomskyan rule of transformation and proceeds by another set of standards. Those are the other borders that reside within consciousness, separating not time nor space, but operating systems, thought, virtual consciousness.

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