Vanishing 2.0

Cooking. The matching of recipes with unfamiliar labels in front of the pantry shelves; the hesitation in front of the stove as hazy memories mix into decisions; the ingredients in the pot slowly taking on familiar colors, and finally, after all the chaos or tedium, that first bite which stirs memories vivid enough to pull you out of time and space – cooking seems to be the one river flowing through countless forms of drifting, the one tether we all hold on to. As for diasporas themselves – the disorientation of new rules, the awkward language stuck in the throat, the quiet rehearsals before ordering food – all the seemingly monstrous challenges that have marked us often stem from insignificant moments, eventually patched over by the repetition of ordinary life: the taste of home we can’t find outside, a sense of control we can grasp amid confusion. We who live far from home begin to cook for all kinds of reasons. Among pots and pans, we linger between containing and merging, placing ourselves, quietly, into every plate. In Vanishing 2.0, cooking becomes the stage, theater becomes a space between ritual and play, and steam rising from the pots reveals the imprint of diaspora – along with the ways we choose, again and again, to carry ourselves onward.