falling

Convention holds that love bears some kind of metaphorical resemblance to falling: out of control, maybe, or crushing, sinking, something like that.

I’ve gone a long time thinking I maybe had a part missing or broken, because I’ve never experienced anything like falling when it comes to another person. People close to me talk about being in love, too, as if it’s another form of insanity or possession. It makes you do things, right? As though your actions aren’t your own, but some parasite’s. Well, as far as I know – though I doubt whoever might be researching this would call me right away, there’s no love parasite. There could be one, and maybe I’ve never ingested it. Anyhow. Let’s assume this idea is not the result of parasite evolution, and is purely figurative.

I don’t think I have a problem after all. No, I haven’t seen any kind of light. I still have absolutely no falling feelings, and rarely feel anything but fairly in touch with all my faculties. I’m just not bothered by it. There’s nothing wrong with the conventional notions; I have different ideas, and that’s pretty neat.

people and their bags

I have been on a few planes over the past week, and I am struck over and over by people’s relationships to their bags.

The fees imposed in the US for checked bags have clearly shifted people towards carrying on more, so people no longer just carry a bag to entertain themselves or work on the plane. They carry everything they possibly can. Shopping for bags shows this off even more: the 22 inch wheeled upright is touted all over as maximum legal carryon like it’s some kind of performance-enhancing drug. People can buy bags to put in their bags to help them pack more (this seems odd – surely the bag in the bag means you fit less, as you’ve got all that extra bag now?). The goal, I believe, is to carry as much with you as possible, which feels like a burden and as though you’ve gotten some special bargain by saving the $15 an airline would charge you. Travel by taking as much of home with you as possible.

So we jostle around on planes and airports feeling shackled to these bags. Don’t leave the bag. Find space for the bag. Get the bag. Stow the bag. Get the bag. Stow the bag. Don’t lose the bag. Don’t take your eyes off the bag. It makes our stuff so overwhelming.

You know what? I think $15 is a reasonable charge to not have to carry another one of those wheeled bags all over airports. I’ll give them another $5 to get it straight to whereever I’m staying.

Better yet, I’ll just take less. That’s what I’m doing this week: headed to Chicago till Friday with a lightweight duffel and a laptop bag. It’s no doubt still more stuff than I need, but I decided to err, for this work trip, on the side of having some dress shoes.

It’s a nice feeling, having a bag that just carries stuff (and which I can easily maneuver on the subway) and makes few demands on me.

toothpaste

I have a possibly somewhat weird recommendation: dry toothpaste. Which I guess isn’t a paste at all. I’ve tried a couple of DIY toothpastes and hated them, but then settled on an even-more-simple version of my friend’s simple salty toothpaste recipe.

Basically, I left out all the liquids, mushed up some anise seed & used that instead of minty oil to flavor the stuff. It’s like brushing your teeth with Indian dessert mixed with ocean (I think that’s pretty awesome, but it may be an acquired taste), and it leaves them squeaky clean. For home, I may try tossing some peroxide into this recipe, thereby restoring the whole paste concept, but I like the solid for travel.

travel broadens the mind

I am awake at 3am local time, which is a little annoying. If I could, I might poke my internal clock in the eye.

This is the thought I woke up with: when did I stop using plastic baggies? My home airport keeps an enormous box of them just outside the security line, and I picked up the second plastic baggie I’ve acquired in a year as I left on this trip. I think at some point I decided that, whatever I was doing with regard to plastics, at least I wouldn’t willfully buy small plastic bags to transfer things out of larger plastic containers. As for the small plastic containers used to transport toiletries in carryon luggage… well, those are pretty easy to reuse, at least. Except for toothpaste. [Well, people have suggestions, but how many pairs of scissors does one household have?] Yet another argument for finding a toothpaste recipe that doesn’t taste awful, or like dessert.

There are other ways traveling shows – and perhaps creates; cause and effect are pretty subtle sometimes – the changes I’ve wanted for myself over the past mumble mumble years. I packed – as I’ve been telling everyone – one large carryon bag & a laptop (in a bag that will also be my purse and walking bag) for a week. This is going to be my new standard for work travel, so it may as well be my standard everywhere. One Bag is right, though: if you’re doing a single bag, wheels are a bit stupid – they’re heavier, and a bit unwieldy even in airports. Noted.

Bag logistics aside: I forget sometimes that I was once given to impressive meltdowns when forced to travel. The first time I went to Hawai’i, I cried at a Starbucks in LAX – before we even got there. And possibly again at a rental car counter in Honolulu? My poor travel companion! I finally left the US for a bit this year, in part because I gained a sense of humor and let go of that overwhelming need to have things happen according to plan. Nothing ever goes exactly according to plan. Which is great! That’s where the real fun starts.

Partly, also, I think I used to be afraid of… well, anything that wasn’t familiar or comfortable. Forcing myself to deal with new degrees of discomfort helped get me over that. In fact, as I try to list examples, none of the things that should sound uncomfortable actually are – I mean, sure I’ve camped in 100 degree heat, but there was a shower and a swimming hole; or there were those there-and-back-in-a-day job interview flights, but the tacos were fantastic; getting up to the tip of that mountain was hard, but it was amazing and only took like an hour and a half anyhow. The more I think about it, the more I feel like I need to do scarier stuff. My stuff just isn’t that scary. But. It sure would’ve seemed that way to the version of myself who melted down at LAX that one time.

And the tacos really were fantastic.