on packing light

everything i travel with now fits in one bag small enough to shove under a seat. one camera, one lens, three shirts, a charger, a book i will probably not finish. it took five trips to get down to this, and every trip before that i carried things for a version of myself who never showed up.

the second lens was the hardest to leave behind. i told myself the wide angle was for landscapes, and the landscapes were the whole point, weren't they? then i checked what i had actually shot over two years: nearly everything at the same focal length, feet doing the zooming. the wide angle had mostly photographed the inside of the bag.

you don't pack for the trip. you pack for your fears about the trip.

someone said that to me on a night bus, years ago, apropos of the enormous rucksack i was using as a pillow. it took a while to sink in. the extra shirt is fear of laundry. the second lens is fear of missing a shot. the laptop is fear of being unreachable, which is strange, because being unreachable is usually why i left.

what i actually miss when it's gone: the notebook. never the gear. so the notebook stays, and the fears can make their own travel arrangements.