the movable
a few things I learned through years of packing for travel; sundries worth having, ideas worth remembering, travel epiphanies
I am packing for a trip, a process which bends and contorts me into shapes and anxieties I hardly recognize and have self pity for. It is simultaneously one of the hardest parts of travel for me, as well as the physical realization of my excitement. I flit, I float, I fleetly flee. I turn into a strange creature, squirrel like, packing, unpacking, then packing again, as if something is looming. There is a strange chaotic ritual about the whole thing, a solid mixture of excitement and fear that sets me in motion.
I am a child of divorced parents, and when the times were tough and my sense of home was scattered in the pieces of my teenage life, I held tightly to a small carpet the size of a bathmat. The idea came to me from the Kevin Costner classic Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves movie. Morgan Freeman's character Azeem carries his carpet to use for prayer as he faces towards Mecca. I thought it was a wonderfully simple and elegant idea of a movable home, a small cut of cloth to signify an idea and place. My small carpet turned into a number of trinkets that float with me while I travel, things that remind me of roots and routine.
Below are a few things I learned through the pain and process of years of packing, sundries worth having, ideas worth remembering, travel epiphanies:
The kinds of books to bring:
Part of this package, this recipe for remembering, are books. I bring books when I travel, books that have nothing to do with the place I will be. This is to ward off being totally consumed by the newness of place; being on the hoof, on the road, can be all consuming. I bring poetry, the perfect literary companion to a journey, the semantic form of adventure in words. A friend once told me not to bring Kipling when in Burma, or Burroughs in Tangier. No. Instead, bring the coldness of northern winters when you are equatorial, and the heat of Havana when you are in the windswept highlands. It creates a sharpness in focus and doesn’t cloud your own newness and judgment of place with the subjective lens of another. It helps to juxtapose.
Cashmere
This fiber, good lord this fiber. There are a lot of poorly made Cashmere products out there, but if you get a good supplier then stick with it. A black crew neck sweater for any and all occasions is the most versatile thing in my bag. It keeps me warm on the long flights, it is elegant, it is strong, it is natural. It also works on a beach when the sun goes down, and looks good at a cocktail party. Or in hot climates there are any number of places that blast the AC where you need something to hold you tight. I have a few places I get mine but here are a few worthy of note:
Whenever I pass through Dublin I stop by:
https://monaghanscashmere.ie/
I have yet to pick anything up from here but I get the feeling they know what they are doing:
https://ghiaiacashmere.com/
The poetics of Night flights
There is already alchemy involved in flying through the sky, but to do it at night, and over oceans, and through time zones, this all adds to the metaphysical magic of this particular celestial movement. It should not be forgotten, the strangeness and miracle of flight. This is not just hoity-toity talk, there are physical implements of Jet lag that show the reality of its effect; we feel sick, our bodies react in a way to moving too fast, too long, through the ether. Circadian rhythms are thrown off axis. But, to further that, fly when the sun is on the other side of the earth, and it is dark, and you are flying through the night at an inhuman speed and height, and it becomes supernatural, and your soul, perhaps, is slightly ripped from the body, and you are allowed to look at things from outside of yourself, if only for the few hours of the flight. It is a type of hypnosis, and like poetry, brings us a different point of view to the world we inhabit. It is the abstract physical, the other worldly, the celestial, and I love it. I love the long flight from dawn to dusk or dusk to dawn. I love the time suspended, the practicality on hold. Give me hours of the impractical, perchance to dream and play at being gods with our ideas. As children we have this direct access to the imagination, we bypass static life and are only of the heavens and heights. This is what happens in that little metal tube that is propelled through the stratosphere at ungodly speeds, we no longer are human, we are either sub or super human. It doesn’t matter. We are allowed to be other, and can think of new ideas and reach that much closer to the heavens because we are 24,000 feet closer and whizzing past at 500 miles per hour, propelled by fire.
If it is cold…
If it is cold where you are going, the people there will be cold as well and and will sell things to warm themselves with. I say this to recognize that you don’t have to pack it all. That if you forget something, it will be ok. It might even be fun.
Get a haircut
For me it is a haircut, but it can be any number of things, but it must be daily, run-of-the-mill things but in this new place. I love stopping into multiple convenient stores and would throw them in this category. The haircut works well because it is something that is a connection with someone else in a place not within the construct of the tourism industry. It is a service for longer time, measured in weeks or months, not a daily activity but something most people need at some point a few times a year at the very least. And it connects, it is intimate.
