There is the memory of something and then there is the something right there in front of you. Take noodles: there is the memory of Maggi noodles, from a yellow package made by my grandmother for lunch and served in an era of more finicky dining sensibilities when only certain things could be consumed: fried potato sticks, but only if served in a conical shaped container made with the heavy card of pharmaceutical marketing material, or sliced tomatoes with amchur. Or cucumbers, sliced, with the bitter rinds cut off, their acridity removed with a rub of salt. But only in a steel bowl. The smallest one, one slightly bigger than my fist. Any kind of pickle, except onion. Candies that are orange. Shaped and colored. These foods should be coaxed upon me. If this fails, then they should be forced upon me, first with verbal threats of hospitalization and a shower of guilt - something to do with starving children, then Then there are no more pretenses and it's best that you give in before this part. But a kind of stubborness provides a thread, of character, of time. Character prevails. In the moviespeak of now, this is a "thruline."

Thruline said the boy who also asked me what my major was and what genre. Then every time I saw him on the main green, this time sober and avoiding me because of the ridicule I inflicted on him in my mind at that party (that he could read, telepathically) I called him genre. First in my head. Then in my sleep. Then always. With my friends. At a peace rally in Washington years later, I saw him and turned to my companion - "There's genre," I said. And there he was.

And then there are noodles. Noodles of now, a drive across the reservoir to high-end noodles, eaten with chopsticks over hipsterized minimalist formica tables and dim lighting. Integration means acknowledging how well things get on without you. How well New York gets on without me! They are even remodeling the museum. And how well Delhi gets on without me! New highways all over the place and it takes longer to get everywhere. And how well Copenhagen gets on without me and they have asked me to come to the reunion but no one will miss me if I don't come. And what about all the threads of my being that have been discarded just as carelessly in order to move forward, strands like the ambition of high school swim meets, lone midnight walks into downtown Providence, why did I even do this? because even then I was the dramatic heroine of my own narrative, tempting fate because what else is there to do?

At least I admit this now. Do you know why? because of integration. A summer of walking home from the Time Warner Building to a dorm on 117th street. A nearly two hour-walk. Sometimes I would stop to get a slice of pizza, or a flower. Once I bought a blue linen shirt from a Russian man who told me he'd give me a discount because I looked like his sister. I didn't like people this summer. I couldn't speak to them and when I did, it felt as though we spoke a different language. And whenever people tell me they are taking evening walks, particularly in scenic areas, I read this to mean that they are being sentimental or recovering from heartbreak or trying to integrate or hopeless romantics or carrying some kind of unnamable sadness, and then I remind myself that I have to stop inflicting imprinting my narrative on them. And what to do with unnamable longings, and why does unnamable look like such an ugly word when it is typed? unambled. Ambled. I am bleeding.

Bleeding what even? And I can tell you're being inauthentic, wife of Jonathan Safran Foer whatever your name is whenever I read your voice in interviews and your constant talk of nostalgia, because I don't believe all people who claim they suffer from this ailment. Perhaps I don't even believe myself. perhaps it is borrowed, a contagion I pretend I caught from someone I once knew. An honorable sort of ailment, a war injury. Not accidentally ramming your hipbone into the corner of a desk and waking up black and blue. And how carefully I inspect bruises, and their strange and beautiful colors, Purple, yellow, even green. And how carefully I inspect the other bruises too. Sleep with them next to me in my bed, grow them up so they are ready to go out in the world. How I care for them and love them. What to do with unnamed bruises, strange injuries that landwhere they please. Even after the wonderful. Like: how wonderful it is to fall into a room! And how wonderful it is to walk in the rain! And how perfect it is to sit on the curb outside Good Luck Bar for an evening and just talk. And not acknowledge that there is a price of admission. And you don't have the money to pay it. To forget about fines for a moment.

A different kind of hard labor. A different kind of ticket. And it won't do, you won't find it, searching through old drawers and cabinets. You won't find it in the pile of ticket stubs and receipts that are proof of all the times you did pay, proof of your good citizenhood all these years, proof of responsibility beyond your years. no one cares about all the times when you paid your own admission because if there is a once when you didn't, then it is like throwing a red shirt with your white linens in the wash. That is the price of integration. To bear what you can't be without. And then to be without it.