the bearable lightness of packing

^ If only life's accoutrements could fit in your jacket pocket.

How to Pack Everything You Own in One Bag | NPR (audio)

Doug Dyment, whose Web site onebag.com is devoted to the art of traveling light, says the key is to make a list in advance of what to pack and stick with it. He has developed a master list over the years that people can use as a starting point for creating their own.

"If it's not on your list, it shouldn't be in your bag," Dyment tells Michele Norris. "What happens with people is that they pack before their trip, and that packing activity consists mostly of talking to yourself and saying, 'Well I might need this and I might need that and what if the queen invites me to dinner?' And that's death to light packing."

Years ago I heard a story about how a hundred or more years back rural travelers in Japan had with them nothing but a few small possessions while on the road - no clothes, no footwear, and naturally no hairdryers. Whenever they stopped at a roadside inn for a meal and to rest for the night all the things they needed were provided by the innkeeper. Hence they were loaned kimonos to wear in the inn, and all the toiletries needed for grooming, bathing, and generally enjoying the respite until it was time to set off the next day.

Were it only that simple today.


< My boblbee pod. I own three boblbees, each one a work of art. This Swedish design firm not only knows how to travel smartly and efficiently but how to do it beautifully, too.


On Wednesday Nanay (my mom) and I fly to Chicago. I will be doing a week of job training, then enjoying the holidays with family and friends, for a total of 3 weeks. I'm taking a single carry-on (my laptop backpack but without the laptop) and my boblbee Nova, a small, lightweight semi-hard shell chocolate brown pod-like backpack with a suede-like finish.

I rarely ever travel these days but just the same, I hate lugging my shit. I hate checking in bags or suitcases, I hate suitcases period, and I hate having to rely on everything I have to drag with me. I vehemently avoid checking in anything because I vehemently hate having to get in line at the desk to do it, then having to wait with a bunch of other annoyed travelers for that carousel to parade it past me like some anthropological exhibit after landing. My ideal situation would be to bring my small boblbee pod with me and nothing else. My ideal situation would be Japan, circa 1750. Sadly, though, the world wasn't designed that way.

Thanks to those delusional religious morons who flew hijacked planes into the twin towers and the Pentagon over 7 years ago traveling restrictions have been tightened to the most draconian levels ever seen by frustrated jetsetters and occasional flyers. But maybe that's a good thing, really. At least it forces us to be smarter about what we bring with us and, more importantly, what we don't bring. The 3 ounce limit per liquid or gel products, for example, is a good idea. Why would anyone want to dump a 24 ounce bottle of shampoo or mouthwash in their suitcase?

I have a few advantages over my fellow travelers, I must say. I'm a man, for one thing. Women naturally need to pack a little more, though I argue that it's possible for you ladies to bring just as less with you as us boys (listen to the news story I posted above to see how). I'm also bald, so I don't need hair products like shampoo and conditioner, much less a brush, comb, gel. I don't plan to attend a formal dinner or cocktail party so I don't need that kind of attire.

My boblbee is perfect as well. It's smaller and lighter than a typical backpack therefore unobtrusive. It fits my small paperback copy of Carl Sagan's The Demon-Haunted World, my PSP (and 3 little game UMDs) in its travel case, and a pocket sized journal, so it works for a day of walking up Michigan Avenue, taking in a museum, gawping at stuff that I can never afford in the windows of Barneys, then later sitting at a bar with a martini. Furthermore it was damn cheap!! $22 dollars from Amazon (it was obscenely reduced)!

^ As close as you can get to pure lightness in traveling: smartphones. Whether it's an iPhone, a G1, or a Blackberry, it's a profoundly amazing upgrade from all those separate, and quite heavy, electronic equipment you had to lug with you across Europe 20 years ago. Remember that?

21st century technology plays a critical role in light traveling too, don't you think? Were it still the early 90s or even earlier, we would've had to bring a separate special bag for equipment - camera, film, video cam, blank videotapes, Walkman, audio cassettes, CD player and pack to hold various audio CDs, even portable TV... Amazing, all these things from yesteryear have finally come together into one smart gadget that fits in your pocket and can make phone calls (who would've predicted?). Except for shooting videos my iPhone does everything above and far more. I don't even need my laptop, I can simply just check emails, look up locations, Tweet, and publish blog entries - written, image, or audio - on the iPhone. Convergence is God. Dragging five different gadgets at once is Satan.

I think in the end it's ultimately not a matter of forcing the trip, the traveling, to conform to what we want. By that I mean that if we refuse to give up all our comforts and conveniences we shouldn't even deserve to travel, just stay home to work or live. Instead it's we who should adapt ourselves to the efficiency of traveling as lightly as we possibly can. After all, how much - or how little - of that 24 ounce bottle of shampoo do you really end up using during your 1 week stay in Paris? Hmmm? I thought so.

Bon voyage.

la séduction d'une ville

^ Bryan Ferry's Slave To Love, shot on location in Paris in the mid 80s. Like fine vintage wine, the writing of Colette, or the visions of artist Odilon Redon, the romantic art direction and sepia toned dreamlike photography are eternal and will always inspire me to dream.

Paris...Chicago...Petaluma...South Pasadena. I just read an old blog post from my good friend N., while by coincidence listening to a song from Carla Bruni (or is it now Madame Sarkozy?) , and thinking about the fact that my niece K. has yet to experience Paris (preferably on her own, one must experience that world for the very first time on one's own, it's absolutely necessary). What a confluence!

So I leave my suburban homestead each morning, walk a few metres and catch a bus, where a nice portugese man greets me every morning. I ride to the local SNCF station, sit on the train for 20 minutes, surrounded by a melange of strange African languages that I have never heard before, wake up to the Eiffel Tower on the left and arrive in the center of the city. I have no sense of direction in the circular flow of things in Europe...I am accustomed to the grid-like structures of modern-day American cities, thus I have purchased a compass and have honed my intuitive skills even further. I am Rudolphe the red nosed reindeer. Guess I look like I know what I'm doing because people ask me for directions all the time. If only they knew...

I have befriended a few fun pals from all over the place. A gal from Pasadena, a boy from Trinidad, and Spaniard, a Texan, an Algerian and a Parisian. Imagine that. My first day here I met a 65 year old Parisian man who offered to buy me an apartment in Paris so I could stay here. Hmmmmmm. WEIRD! Then there are the Japanese business men on the CHamps-Elysees who want to give me 1000 euros cash to go buy things at Louis Vuitton to help them smuggle back to their boutiques. Then there are the men in Montmartre who grab your face and want to paint you. I haven't come up with a good comeback yet but I'm working on it. They're really irritating. It's all just too weird. Everything. But oddly enough, why do I feel more at home wandering these streets then I do in the USA?

- from N.'s blog J'y pense et puis j'oublie...

N. and I share similar passions over Paris. She is of French descent but of Midwestern upbringing, and I having been there a few times years back for work and pleasure. N., much to my jealousy, has actually lived in Paris for a while, something I plan to do in the future, preferably making art, writing, blogging, and of course, experiencing. I think N.'s blog post sums it up well enough that I needn't do so myself, she speaks for me just as much.

Paris must be experienced for the very first time alone. You must be alone (even if already partnered). That is when everything opens up and invitations cascade at your feet and you can pick and choose, or let fate choose for you. Once in the city, an itinerary is about as useful as a prison cage with a view. Throw it out and get lost - literally. Only then will the city begin its slow and gradual seduction and you have no choice but to float along. "Let your pleasure be your guide", as Jeanne Moreau tells Anne Parillaud in the French action thriller La Femme Nikita.

^ Carla Bruni - Those Dancing Days Are Gone

K., and for that matter another good friend of mine, J., have never been to Paris. They have only the experiences of others to live through vicariously until they themselves can go. Paris, I tell them, is an entirely different state of mind if you allow it. When you're there it is not a holiday, it's not a sightseeing tour (not the way N. and I experienced it). Rather, it is a tonic, a seduction, a lover's hot embrace, a swig of whiskey, an aphrodisiac, a sensuous wafting.

And then you wake up back home, and the hangover is magnificent.