It's that time of year again when I get to pack everything up and go back home. I live in New England and go to school in California, so this is not a trivial endeavor. And I've come to realize that there's nothing like packing up your entire life twice a year to make you realize just how little it all boils down to, materially. This year, the essentials (the stuff that I have to take with me and can't store at school) fit in a suitcase, my fencing bag (the size and shape of a hard golf bag), a duffel, and a computer bag. It's not much. And the real essentials -- swords and other fencing gear, laptop, fiction notebooks, CDs, cell phone -- just take up the fencing and computer bags; the rest of the space is mostly clothing.

Of course there are intangibles that are just as essential as the stuff I have to physically carry to and from the airport. But it's still always something of a minor shock to me to look at my bags and think that this is basically my whole life packed up and ready to go.


~Chrysan"I hadn't posted in ages, so I thought I should write SOMETHING"themum~