You Are a World Traveller: Pack Lightly
// September 28th, 2011 // Uncategorized, World Travel: Change your Relationship to Time
The first time I traveled abroad I shoved my prettiest clothes in a true hiker’s framed backpack a cousin had lent me. I was going to Scotland, the fantasy destination of my childhood, with a good friend from highschool I kept every free memento from the trip: Underground ticket stubs, Cadbury chocolate wrappers, a complimentary map of Edinburgh, a stolen beer coaster from a ritzy London pub, a kebab advertisement quaintly urging us to “‘ave one.” My friend chided me, bemused. I had legitimate souvenirs already, bought at the Dublin Guinness brewery or in a Glasgow side street. Why was I keeping all of this junk? Sentimental reasons, I told her. I was keeping these artifacts to preserve and record our journey. I didn’t want to forget a single moment.
And I still have them. It’s all in a silver shoe box in my childhood bedroom, a shoebox held together with duct tape and triumphantly labeled: England/Scotland/Ireland 2003! The silver shoe box is in a steamer trunk with several other shoe boxes, around fifteen year’s worth of shoe boxes from the age of 13 onward, boxes full of old movie tickets, wrist corsages, concert bracelets, flyers, locks of hair, beer bottle caps and notes passed in class. If I had to tell you why I’ve kept it all, well, I’m not sure that anyone could really understand my answer.
I have many diaries from those years, but they’re incomplete and inadequate in so many ways. Words cannot keep up with the hectic events of adolescence. I wrote down what I thought were the important things, and history rendered them unimportant. Only the objects bear proof. My diary from highschool might record the mad crush I had on Jerry. Jerry didn’t give me anything, but Tom, who had a mad crush on me, gave me a photocopy of his hand during math class. I still have that photocopy, and look at it I think of Tom and I smile.
That photocopy, that artifact, is proof that when I was fourteen a boy liked me and was too shy to say so. Without my many artifacts, how will I remember the time I saw a friend’s band play, the beer I shared with a new roommate, the friend I had for two weeks in the fifth grade? And the travel…what will happen when I am old and I forget the time I took the bus overnight to Phoenix, Arizona because I itched to see the Southwest? How will I remember that without my old and faded Greyhound ticket? Where will my experiences go?
My friend, the same practical friend who teased me as we wobbled our way through Dublin, lives in a tiny apartment with her fiance, cat, the accouterments of various hobbies, clothes, cooking utensils and, at any given time, at least four or five hungry friends. Her apartment is charming and well-organized and I can always walk across the floor. I live in a spacious two bedroom apartment whose closets barely contain evidence of hobbies abandoned, clothing I’ve never really worn, clothing I’ve worn to death but can’t bear to give away, postcards unsent, maps I’ve used once, books, books, books, and a shopping bag stuffed with the past year’s mementos: a two-year old day planner, movie ticket stubs, a menu from a Czech restaurant, and the list goes on.
Where does the list stop? What is worth keeping and what isn’t?
When I returned from that first trip abroad I remember sitting stunned in my bathtub looking at the shampoos and soaps sitting along the rim. At one time I had thought they were necessary. I had bought them in good faith that they would make my hair shiny and my skin soft. But after three weeks living from my borrowed backpack, everything outside of that backpack had suddenly been rendered superfluous.
If I want to leave, if I really want to leave, I have to leave it all. The old movie tickets, wrist corsages, concert bracelets, flyers, locks of hair, beer bottle caps and notes passed in class. I don’t need the detritus of hobbies abandoned, clothing I don’t wear, postcards unsent, maps of cities I’ll never return to, books, books, books.
I am terrified that what I have is who I am, when all travel has taught me tells me the opposite. Who I am is what I have. I am a traveler and I in the world. These objects are not the world. When I rid myself of them, the world is able to come in.
Linda