Last month I visited D.C. for a weekend and through a stroke of luck learned that my old roommate in Phnom Penh, Rachel, was in the area, too.

RACHEL!

Rachel lived with me in the apartment with the rusty staircase and the wormy cats that lived on the porch; above the family that sold heaps of pungent fruit downstairs; the friend who dolled me up in the clothes from her boutique so we could make posters proclaiming: SALE! The one I accidentally padlocked in our apartment one morning. The one who accidentally padlocked me in, too. The one who rolled fresh sushi in the back of a van WHILE WE WERE DRIVING DOWN A BUMPY MOUNTAIN PATH because we needed a snack.

American, blonde pixie haircut, been living in Phnom Penh since college. Anyway, Rachel.

She was visiting an aunt in Maryland, and I happened to be in DC. I borrowed an old minivan and drove all the way across town — rattling the whole way, straining to hear the weak prim GPS voice above the din. Not so unlike the van we drove down that mountain.

Finally I arrived — Rachel (RACHEL!) was in her aunt’s kitchen making breakfast (and would I like some?) So I set about making eggs right away. Pulled a few from the carton; grabbed a pan from a hook, dropped in shredded cheddar. Makin’ eggs in a stranger’s kitchen.

Seeing Rachel felt like home, too, because she knows what it’s like to go from Here to There and back again.

Next, a long sunny walk to the park, where we passed a carnival just beginning to set up. A washed-out, rusty carnival — the colors reminded me of Phnom Penh’s pastel amusement parks, where you think — if I get on that ride I’ll plummet to my demise, no matter how cute the smile on that bug-faced rollercoaster. I wondered where that carnival had been; and what it’s like to piece everything together, over and over. Do you get sick of tightening the same bolts?

Then we laid in the cool grass under a cherry tree and blew petals off our palms, catching up on all the stupid stuff. Our favorite Hungarian fashion photographer and his dirty mouth. The new cool restaurants; who’s leaving, who’s staying; The Cambodian girls and our wishes for their precarious or bright futures.

We bought bottles of water from a food stand and started to walk home. That’s when we saw the house. Covered in intricate metal scrollwork, a gingerbread house out of metal and more; everything metallic recycled and affixed in ways that suggested grandeur but up close looked like old eggbeaters and fan blades and muffin tins. In a row of normal-looking suburban homes, suddenly this.

Back at Rachel’s, her aunt unearthed framed drawings by Rachel’s great-grandfather for Vogue magazine, then unrolled an intricate beige silk shawl woven and embroidered in the Phillipines. And, oh, Rachel said, yawning, sipping tea — later she had to make a friend’s wedding dress. Because that’s a weekend project. Her entire family and its lineage burst at the seams with creativity and art.

Days later I Googled the crazy metallic house, and found this video of the owner talking about why he does what he does — tricking out his suburban house in elaborate metal sculpture. The point, he says, is just to make things.

It is the point. It is the point.

One of my favorite days in Phnom Penh: the afternoon I learned how to screenprint. It’d been a hot, horrible weekend. One of those days when you’d rather stay in bed, but it’s too hot in bed, so you walk around like a total zombie and hope your knees don’t melt into your shoes.

But then Rachel called and said she needed a hand screenprinting some fabric in her workshop. I parked my clunky aluminum pedal bike downstairs, walked through a tiny concrete tunnel and then up a dark staircase, certain this had to be the wrong place. But then, the workshop: Light-filled, top floor, a balcony overlooking the outskirts of a bustling market. A smiling Khmer woman was already at work, pushing bright ink through a wood-framed screen onto hand-cut fabric pieces that would become skirts.

That day I helped hose off the silk mesh screens; develop new ones over a light box and, eventually, ink them myself. The work was methodical, and just what I needed.

At sunset on the balcony I saw cross-legged amongst screens propped everywhere and drying in the warm breeze. The orange-sherbert light washed through them and over us. The fabric hung over clothes lines, pink and green flags covered in new inked patterns and scrolls.

—

Every now and then, like once a year, I have a thought that causes me to stop what I’m doing and sit on the floor. Most recently it was this: My parents have always encouraged me to be a writer, which I think — looking back — seems strange, because no one in our family had ever been a writer. We’ve worked in steel plants and hospitals and car factories and on trains and boxing rings and bars. But there are no writers. I used to think they saw my constant scribbling and thought, well kid, get yourself a bestseller so you don’t have to work. Maybe they just didn’t know the economics of the industry and had miscalculated.

But now I wonder if it was something more; consciously or unconsciously. I wonder if they didn’t see that their little oddball would need some help. Some shielding for the journey, armor against the world’s harshness, and that writing would serve that purpose. Art does this for us. When things are very hard or heartbreaking or weird. When you finally realize that you just do not fit and never will. Again and again, I remember the same lesson. Whatever your art is, hold tight to it. The point is just to make things. Especially when you’re hungry. To reach for an egg in a strange kitchen, and without hesitation, crack it.

It got me thinking about the nature of memory.

Earlier this month I visited D.C., stayed with my old friends Doran and Tina and their adorable kids, and helped out at my old nonprofit job. These were such lovely things, and if I were better at being a blogger of everyday fun, I’d list out the whole itinerary and post photos from Instagram or something. Onward.

Point being. I left my job and life there in something of a rush; packed it all into a borrowed sedan and headed west. I was reeling from a college-boyfriend-heartbreak (everybody now: “awwww….”) and just had to get the hell out of dodge. I’d never take that decision back. Chicago has been everything.

But searching through old writings today (a couple of weeks after my visit)  I found this passage. It’s so strange. I recall that entire city laced with woe-is-me and the alienation of being too young for one’s own high heels, but I must’ve been having something of a good time:

…a beautiful dinner with doran, him hobbling around on his broken leg, where we conspiratorially made fun of the restaurant’s pretensions and drank the best wine, then stopped afterward for ice cream. it seemed like he really understood. or wandering around the sun-soaked botanic gardens with josh, like children fascinated by mysterious misters and textured foliage. or making spaghetti with sarah, meatballs falling as casualties to the kitchen floor. or the feeling of having a going-away dinner that felt crowded, hot, burbling like the spaghetti sauce with love, love, love. or crying at the supply cabinet in my office as i put back the paperclips i never used, and the staples, and feeling a co-worker put his hand in the small of my back as an it-will-be-ok. or lunch with a friend from a museum we often worked with, where she gave me mementos from her colleagues of the museum’s art. or the presents i got from the teachers — pencil holder, sweatshirt, good-luck card, wild flowers that stuck out in all directions and reminded me of the teacher herself, the one from south africa who told the most articulate narratives of growing up. cramming things in — dinner parties, improv shows, nights out out out and hard-working days, each one feeling like a marathon, only to see another marathon right around the corner. and then it was done.

– Sept. 2004

So, I’ve never learned to make one myself. And when my sister Christina came to visit last weekend, we realized that none of us Muscato girls had baked a successful pie from scratch.

There are many ways to make a pie. Butter crust vs. shortening. Lattice top? Brush with milk? Sure. But we hear less about how NOT to make a pie. And that is what we did.

How Not to Make a Pie and then Make a Pie, in 27 Easy Steps

1) Decide to open a pie shop. (No one can accuse you of thinking small!!)

2) Realize that first you should probably make a pie. Any pie. Choose apple.

3) Determine in quick succession that you are missing a) a rolling pin; b) wax paper for rolling the dough and c) the knob to the oven. Disregard obstacles.

4) Use a recipe transcribed from your grandmother’s memory.

5) Wonder what’s going on when the dough is way too sticky.

6) Make the recipe a second time. The dough is way too sticky.

7) Forge ahead; roll the dough using a bottle of “Menage a Trois” red wine, on a piece of aluminum foil.

8) Pause and stare quizzically when the dough is stuck to the bottle in a bajillion places.

9) Forge ahead. Flour it up. Finally get the dough flat. Transfer to pie pan.

10) Pause and stare quizzically when the dough splits like a map of the world going through a very terrible earthquake.

11) Start eating the dough.

12) Drink the red wine. …Drink more.

13) Pay no attention when one of your team members, perhaps the eldest sister, dashes to the store for a rolling pin and wax paper. In fact, don’t notice that she’s left.

14) While she’s gone, start jamming the dough into cupcake tins. These will be “tarts” you tell yourselves. Dream of your tart shop.

15) When your eldest sibling returns, try to explain the DisasterTarts. Then, just stop talking as your arguments peter out. As a trio, briefly consider deep-frying the dough. Realize you have no deep-fryer.

16) Make a new batch of dough using a recipe from the internet and an off-brand of butter named “Challenge Butter”. Feel that this is appropriate.

17) Snack on sugary sliced apples. Drink more wine.

18) Roll the new Challenge Butter dough using a rolling pin and wax paper. It’s so easy! Transfer to pie plate without incident. Marvel and congratulate selves.

19) Try to set the oven to the appropriate temperature using a pliers. See also: missing oven knob. Set your timer for forty minutes.

20) Note that the pie is not cooking fast enough. And not cooking. Now it is midnight. It is not cooking.

21) Call your grandmother, even though it is midnight and two of your team members are fast asleep in the living room, one curled up in an armchair. Your grandmother answers, because she is always awake at all hours. Her main comment is: No, a pie should not take an hour and a half to cook.

22) The top is not browning. Glaze it in honey. Glaze it in leftover cinnamon butter from yesterday’s biscuits!! STAY AWAKE! STAY AWAKE!

23) Finally remove pie from oven. Go to sleep at 2am.

24) Wake up after four hours of sleep.

25) Bleary-eyed, watch your sisters wake up, parade into the kitchen  and peek under the foil approvingly. It looks delicious, they say.

26) Pie for breakfast. Send celebratory text messages all day remarking on the fabulousness of your pie.

27) Decide to never, ever open a pie shop.

I have a special wariness of people who write opening sentences with nothing in mind, and then try to create a story around them. These sentences, usually easy to detect, go like this: “Mrs. Ponsonby had never put the dog in the oven before,” “‘I have a wine tree, if you would care to see it,’ said Mr. Dillingworth,” and “Jackson decided suddenly, for no reason, really, to buy his wife a tricycle.” I have never traced the fortunes of such characters in the stories I receive beyond the opening sentence, but, like you, I have a fair notion of what happens, or doesn’t happen, in “The Barking Oven,” “The Burgundy Tree,” and “A Tricycle for Mama.”

– James Thurber

On Friday, though, a few of us saw a play that obliterated us. We left the theater in silence; a reverent, stunned and full-headed hush. High school kids from Albany Park Theatre Project had interviewed dozens of community members about their stories and assembled them into a performance called Home/Land. True stories, told in words but also motion and rhythmn, color and light. About inustice and intolerance and irrational hate and unspeakable resilience. Transforming a tiny black box space in a utilitarian park district building with some of the most powerful performances I’ve ever seen on a stage, let alone from a group of kids.

I’ve been thinking a lot about telling stories; how we transmit our personal experience and knowledge to others. I’ve always revered English. Though I break its rules for kicks and for joy, I can easily default to its formalities, the way my fingers still know what to do with a rosary. But last year I learned of English’s slippery places. How other languages tick and translate, from speakers with other native tongues. In candlelit cafes we’d compare idioms for hours, passing a notebook back and forth. Swapping words and turns of phrase like kids sharing sticky sections of peeled orange — valencia, clementine, blood.

In French there’s l’esprit d’escalier — “the spirit of the staircase” — to describe that feeling of leaving the room only to suddenly realize all you wished you’d said. There’s also coup de coeur — one of my very favorites. It means something like “I heart that”. Your passion of the moment.

The play brought immigration issues to life; discrimination, neon orange jumpsuits for fathers who tried to get work, elderly nuns who fought to legalize prayer in deportation centers, traffic stops that turned to panic and kids who couldn’t say their parents’ real names in public.

Even on the bus ride home, we still didn’t really talk.

Non-fiction theater about social justice has been in the news. You know, the Mike Daisey/This American Life thing. His play, and that original radio episode, hit people hard, too. What’s the word for how we felt as audience members, listening for the first time to stories of hardship and injustice? It’s not guilt or sympathy or even empathy.

When we got home from the play, I paced the house. Grilled my roommates. Googled. Tip of my tongue. Like schadenfreude, but in reverse? Maybe that hippie word, “grok”, one of them said. The difference between knowing something in your heart instead of just your head.

Today I came across the word somehow, not even looking for it, clicked on through
and there it was. Oh, the Germans. I should have guessed it’d be you guys. A squiggly, innocent-looking word that sums up entire sentences of English thought.

Weltschmerz. World pain. Wikipedia tells us, the modern meaning of Weltschmerz in the German language is the psychological pain caused by sadness that can occur when realizing that someone’s own weaknesses are caused by the inappropriateness and cruelty of the world and (physical and social) circumstances.

In a physical sense, the only thing I can compare it to is the pain of breaking a bone. It’s not that the pain itself is worse than a sprain, it’s the slight grinding of bone on bone that’s sickening, because that’s how you know something’s really fucked up and will take forever to mend.

Our best shot is through stories. We need human bridges to these big issues, of
course. This is not a revelation to any journalist. But my new vocab word might help explain the tenor of the backlash against Daisey. People felt so betrayed over a selection of facts in a play and a radio program. Things that usually merit little attention at all. Why did this sting so badly?

I propose it’s because he’d made us feel that particular, rare flavor of world-pain — and for what? For nothing? There is plenty of truth to his words. But it is so much easier to push it far away, fast and hard and angry. We can forget it. It wasn’t real. Thank god. It was just a sprain. We got hurt for nothing and now it’s over.

Theater is particularly effective at spreading this feeling because of its inherent intimacy and immediacy.

On the bus after the play we didn’t talk but then on the walk from the bus stop to the
house we did. The night opened up with rattling el trains and light spilling from dive
bar doors and on all the trees, new green leaves shuddered under a near-frost but
held steady.

I still don’t have words for everything.

Simone de Beauvoir wrote: “Each one (of us) has the incomparable taste in his
mouth of his own life, and yet each feels himself more insignificant than an insect
within the immense collectivity whose limits are one with the earth’s.”

I just know that in Phnom Penh, a little French girl taught me a new
way to eat an orange. We were at the rum bar late at night and she came over to our table. Maybe four years old. Long brown curls, a white pinafore and a bow-tie mouth. She reached up to me and offered the fruit, so of course I took it. And she showed me how you can make a little hatch in the top — take off just a circlet of peel. Then squeeze it a bit until the golden juice starts flowing free, and put it to your lips and drink. I think it’s an analogy for something, and someday I’ll find out which one.

If we have not struggled
as hard as we can
at our strongest
how will we sense
the shape of our losses
or know what sustains
us longest or name
what change costs us,
saying how strange
it is that one sector
of the self can step in
for another in trouble,
how loss activates
a latent double, how
we can feed as upon nectar
upon need.

– Kay Ryan, “Why We Must Struggle” in The Best of It

Lately I’ve been learning the shapes of things, of gains and losses. By feel. By chance. Stumbling through an unlit room, pressing a palm to the walls and bumping into the stairs. Then waking in a vineyard. A lucky one, when I’m lucky.

Wrong again, Muscato. I am now totally fine. And I’m thankful that Oriana talked me into sitting in the wheelchair. We breezed through customs and got to the hospital that much faster. But I’ve appreciated my legs a lot more ever since. Now I lace up my sneakers and run sometimes.

I just got these fancy running shorts with a tiny zipper pocket in the waistband, perfect for a house key and an ID. I began to slip the house key from the ring and slide it into that itty bitty pocket. But then I stared at the salad of metallic shapes in my palm.

I am terrible at locks. I am clumsy at keys. It’d all seem too conveniently metaphorical if it weren’t so true.

Silver keys and gold keys, with curved tops and square tops, and one of those fancy ones that can’t be copied — suddenly I realized: I didn’t need any of them. In fact, I didn’t even know what any of them were for. So I slid off each bright key until just one remained. Simple. Weird. Easy. Good. Then I locked the door behind me and started to run.

In the event that this post is found in a digital time capsule in 2097, an explanation: A writer and performer named Mike Daisey traveled to China, visited a factory where some very popular computer products were being made, returned home and wrote about it. The resulting play was performed live for many people, excerpted for an extraordinarily popular journalistic radio program, and then found to be factually untrue. There was an uproar.

Denizens of the future: Hopefully someone has recorded the meanings of China, factory, journalistic, computer and radio so that you can decipher the above.

I became an early fan of Daisey after seeing him give a thrilling and mostly improvised talk at a conference of arts administrators. He pegged us from the start. He knew we were artists too and wanted, more than anything, to be valued for our work. Our art, yes, but also for our labor to connect art with its viewer. He said it was our mission “to make art visible in our time”. He nailed our fears and insecurities so deftly that I found myself scribbling into a notebook dotted with tear stains.

Muffins had been served in the lobby but we were not allowed to bring them into the lecture room. He wove this tiny injustice into his speech on the spot, our desire for the muffins that were separated from us by red tape, a detail mirroring all the administrivia that so often sunk our spirits. I scribbled down quotes. “Sometimes you just think, ‘Fuck art.’ And it may not always make you happy. But the point is not to be happy, the point is to do the shit you’re called to do.” He said art is often a hard sell because this country was founded by Puritans — but we must keep at it; deep down, everyone still wants to make art. He said in his signature, dramatic throatiness, “It calls to them in the night.”

The man can reach an audience. And his story about Apple was perhaps his best work. But people don’t like their bitter pills mislabeled.

Writer Tim O’Brien posits in his famous and much-beloved essay, How to Tell a True War Story [pdf], that there are different kinds of truth. Factual truth — and story truth.

True war stories do not generalize. They do not indulge in abstraction or analysis. For example: War is hell. As a moral declaration the old truism seems perfectly true, and yet because it abstracts, because it generalizes, I can’t believe it with my stomach. Nothing turns inside. It comes down to gut instinct. A true war story, if truly told, makes the stomach believe.

Daisey made our stomachs believe. Bitter pills, mislabeled — for reasons I can only guess. But something strange happened during Daisey’s talk to us arts administrators. He’d been speaking about the muffins being denied us; saying the words with such passion you could taste them. And then, suddenly, we could taste them. One of the experimental theatre performers in the room had stood up, walked out the door and returned with these illicit muffins on a silver platter.

The artist passed them throughout the audience in a jolly manner. I was happy for the second chance at breakfast — but something in the air turned, a slight scratching of the needle on the record. Daisey didn’t chuckle with us or celebrate this turn of events. In fact he looked annoyed; so fond of the poetics metaphor surrounding our lack of muffins that he didn’t actually want us to have them at all. And I was so entranced by his performance that I almost didn’t want to eat.

In Our Time of Great Speed

in our time of great speed
everything’s fast
even spring
the sticky green leaves
opened in march
as the sun ticked us
closer to 90 degrees
though we dug out cars
in marches past
and under the ground
thirteen-year cicadas
murmur in half-sleep;
“twelve, twelve”

“Suppose time is a circle, bending back on itself. The world repeats itself, precisely, endlessly.” — Alan Lightman, Einstein’s Dreams

If you can imagine becoming sentimental about a Canon copier.

I once wrote about being in charge of purchasing a new copy machine at my first-ever real job; and this past weekend I witnessed the copier’s last day. It was being replaced by a newer model, on the very afternoon that I visited my old co-workers.

I remember so clearly being the person who inhabited the skin that purchased the copier. More afraid, more alone, with tuning-fork bones and an ear infection. It was a bad season.

They took the copier away and replaced it with a new one, where you can fax from your desk and send cheese to the moon; and maybe even drink warm merlot from a spigot on the side. The guys who came to pick up the old machine said it was the longest they’d seen one in service.

If you can imagine becoming sentimental about a Canon copier.

But standing there; I remembered so clearly being that person with those tuning-fork bones. The precision and dread with which I spent $5,280 of my company’s money, at age 22. I could not have imagined my life in a decade, but here is all I have to say about it: I am so calm. I am so calm.