Man in a Suitcase

Back in the late 60’s there was a TV series in the UK called “Man in a Suitcase” in which a the main character lived out of a suitcase as he travelled about as a freelance detective. The title of the series came to mind today as I considered my own journey over the past 12 months: “Man in a suitcase” is quite an appropriate description, if somewhat macabre given recent findings of bodies in bags. “Man living out of a suitcase” is better, even if it doesn’t flow quite so well.

Most of my belongings went into a self-store lock up storage about this time last year and hasn’t been seen touched since. I have a set of keys to a padlock and a monthly bill to prove it. What didn’t go into storage came with me to the Midlands in my little car. You realise how little a car can be when you have crammed things into every available space apart from the driver’s seat and can just about see with the rear view mirror.  Some of those things occupied spare corners of spare rooms, a loft, and a garage as I set off to Montana shortly afterwards with one over-packed suitcase and a couple of heavy carry on bags. By the time I arrived I’d become quite used to walking upright as if the carry on bags weighed nothing, when in fact I should have been bent double because they exceeded the weight limits. Camera equipment is not lightweight.

My time in Montana was not technically lived out of a suitcase; I had a chest of drawers and plenty of hanging space. I also had a wonderful host who had a wonderful dog that seemed to adopt me, or at least adopt a space under my bed given half a chance. I daresay he would have occupied the space on my bed had I let him, or his legs been long enough to get him there - dachshunds are not the tallest breed around. Even so, the sum total of my possessions in Montana had to go back with me on the plane or else get left behind. As it happens I bought another, smaller suitcase for the return journey, still left stuff behind, and now had four bags to deal with at airports plus some extra photo equipment to add to the weight. A man in two suitcases.

The winter months saw me living out of these two suitcases plus a selection of the bags and boxes I’d left behind. It saw me searching for a place to rent in an area I felt was home but which I’d hardly lived in for 40 years. Odd that - most of my time spent away and yet it’s still home. I did find a place.  It had a decidedly pink colour scheme, which I was prepared to live with because it had other factors in its favour. It also had a landlord who changed his mind about the whole idea of renting three days before I was due to move in. His prerogative of course. Subsequent searching found a different place which had a landlord who was initially reluctant to let the place unfurnished. The delay prompted me to rethink and subsequently abandon the idea. I moved instead into a friend of a brother’s house and rented a room for a short while.

Stuff happens, it would seem. Moving out of a small house around 20 months before saw all the stuff that had been happening for the previous 21 years come out of hiding. I was heading to a much smaller flat so a significant amount of purging followed, much to the benefit of a local charity shop. By the time I’d moved out I felt I deserved a season ticket to the local dump. More purging followed when I moved out of that flat into storage - no sense paying to store old stuff that was worth less than the additional storage fees. And so I became the Man in a Suitcase (and an assortment of bags and boxes).

My final pilgrimage took me plus my overloaded suitcase and two overweight carry-ons back to the USA for a couple of months, with surplus items going into yet another storage unit while I was away. Deja vu and disbelief prevailed as I weighed my bags before setting off. There must be some universal law of packing that says the amount you want to take equals the amount you need - times two. A second law states that the amount you want to take will always be more than either the suitcase can hold or the airline is prepared to take for free, or both. I got there in the end, wore hardly any of the clothing I took with me and bought different things more suited to the climate. Needless to say I had to borrow a second suitcase to get these and all the additional things I’d acquired back home.

Living out of a suitcase has it’s place. It teaches you just how little you really need and just how heavy luggage can be. My days of living out of a suitcase are fortunately numbered. In less than a week I get the keys to a rental property - providing this landlord doesn’t also have a sudden change of heart. I get to move in, I get to unpack, I get to empty my two storage units, and I get to stay put for a while. Hopefully I don’t get to start accumulating again, at least not much. Travelling light is good.

Smelling the Roses

It's a bit late in the year to be taking time to smell the roses though the principle works all year round. The idea isn't even confined to roses, nor smelling for that matter.

Last week I had to be at a different location than normal for a class I'm attending and I had to ride there with a fellow student.  To avoid keeping him waiting I went out on the front deck a few minutes early with the things I had to take with me and sat in a rocking chair to wait. The day had hardly started, the early morning sun was shining through the leaves and the air was fresh. For those few minutes it was bliss.

So often we are, or at least I am so busy that I don't stop to sit and do nothing more than 'be'. And just being is remarkably good for the soul.

Life can be hectic at times, or at least the list of things calling for our attention can make life seem hectic. We follow along with this apparent predicament and before long we run out of resources, be it daytime or energy - often both. Not surprisingly we rarely run out of  'to do' list.

Perhaps the trick is to push smelling the roses, or in my case observing the sunshine, a little further up the 'to do' list. Maybe even to the top. Five minutes spent doing nothing - other than being still and contemplating the good things in life - will hardly be noticed in the grand scheme of the day. We can wait that long in line to be served with coffee. On the other hand, the benefits of spending, investing even, five minutes in our own well being will definitely be noticed over the course of a day.

Perhaps it really is time to pause and smell the roses.

Stretching time

Put simply, one of the facets of relativity is that time varies with speed. Except that the idea time is quicker or slower depending on how fast things move is rather academic, at least at the kind of speeds humans can manage.

With modern digital clocks there isn't even a change as a clock spring winds down, and for a few pounds you can get a timepiece which will be amazingly accurate. There are radio controlled clocks that update themselves from signals sent by atomic clocks and which will even adjust for daylight saving all by themselves.

So given that time is readily available and, for practical purposes, remarkably constant why do we speak about it as though it comes in all shapes and sizes?

"A few short hours" is a typical phrase, as used to emphasise the speed of travel.  Since when did we have short hours, or long days for that matter - I have recollections of a brand of chocolate being stirred "for two long days" in order to give it a superior taste. In Scotland, interruptions are often made by politely asking if you can disturb someone for a "wee second", as if a second wasn't short enough as it is.

It isn't time that is varying in these everyday sayings, it is our perception of time. Holidays seem too short, as do weekends, as does life itself when making an excuse to avoid something: "Life's too short to....", (fill in your own pet hate here).  Something boring, on the other hand, "takes an age", or even "forever".

Why are we so keen to wish away our week so as to get to the fleeting time off at the weekend?  If time were endless then maybe it wouldn't matter if we wasted an hour here, or a week there.  The trouble is time is not endless, it's finite, at least from a human perspective. It lasts the regulation three score years and ten, or until you blindly step into the road and meet the proverbial bus on the way home from work. "Meet" as used here is a messy one-off event and distinctly different from catching the bus, which you can do as often as you like.

Perhaps there is something to be said for enjoying time for what it is: the here and now. Time past has gone; future time may not arrive for some of us in the short term, and for all of us in the long term. Living in the moment and enjoying with gratitude the good parts of whatever we are doing, and wherever we are doing it seems like a good game plan for life. And yes, there are obvious differences in circumstances for each of us, but they are relative too. In the words of that well known saying on life, "Two men looked through prison bars, one saw mud and the other saw stars".   Stars works for me.