Southeast Asia here is no mere backdrop. It is fuel for the flame, the heat that rises and commingles with sweat and effects motion, the brand that has seared all of us who hail from it and/or have deep ties with it. It infuses our lives with particular absurdities, catastrophes and joys, tiny habits and affectations, variations on English and on our hundreds of other languages, ecstatic fantasies and terrors that can come from nowhere else.