Dressing up, dressing down

Not Marie Kondo

In packing for a recent trip to the US, I ended up overpacking. Not surprising. I hadn’t been to this country in a few years, and was landing at the tail end of winter, likely portending light snow, perhaps rain, and perhaps even that perfidious combination of both that is euphemistically called a “wintry mix.” Hence, an abundance of winter clothes. Jackets, sweaters, gloves, stockings, scarves. Also, after four years, I was headed to a conference and a workshop. And one of the many reasons to subject oneself to said events, besides intellectual edification, the breaking of bread with friends and lovers, and the wistful longing for work other than of the ilk currently holding one’s fancy, is clothes. Or conference dressing up. Hence, a few necessary business casuals.

Bringing up the rear to these accoutrements, was the business of being someone else when one travels. One’s best, most jouissance-filled self. Otherwise inaccessible in a daily life of fixing house, self, and office. And one that must be captured through the occasional photograph: hair carelessly askew, shiny cheekbones flush with the cold, a scarf announcing the intent to throw it all to the wind, gold hoops, and nails painted in burgundy and wine. Knee-high boots.

Having gathered all these myriad selves into 18 kilograms, there still remained a few checklists. Of the kind that were needed to maintain the physical body. Medicines, moisturizer, tweezers, reading glasses, toothpaste, Tiger Balm. We were now at 20.

So much to carry around.

Every other day, I fancy myself one of these people who can throw on the same thing everyday, with an added signature quirk or two, each item of impeccable quality, fit and steep value, and look not just perfect, but perfectly nonchalant. Who can put together a capsule wardrobe of 12 clothes in 12 minutes and walk in that assertive but oblivious manner of the very rich through all the airports of the world, each of which they know in great intimate detail.

Yayoi Kusuma @Dubai airport

But, let’s face it. I’m not. Rich, or nonchalant, or oblivious. I’m arrested by every decision, every detail, every scenario. I juggle new possibilities every morning and am petrified into inaction by the myriad parameters that seem to govern the act of stepping out of home.

But.

Once all of me has been packed into rectangles measuring 27 by 21 by 14 inches, the world opens out. The lightness of being I’ve realized is surprisingly bearable.

And off I go, to new adventures, the beginnings of which are always agony even as the ends spell relief and rest. It’s the middle, as ever, that is the best. For in the middle, I have taken like to the manor born to every new locale, person, and canine. The weather is always new and the air smells different. Like a terrier in unfamiliar territory, I am assaulted by a sensory banquet.

In Flights, the book I am currently reading, the narrator, ostensibly the author Olga Tokarczuk though unnamed, tell us that, “My energy derives from movement — from the shuddering of buses, the rumble of planes, trains’ and ferries’ rocking.” This may be a question all of us have encountered at various points of time, the answer to which is determined by and determines so many things should we be so privileged to have agency over them; our work choices, our love affairs, the music that moves us, the people we relate to, and the life we covet. Having been raised by a set of parents, one of who revelled in the outside that is the world, work and travel, even as the other found solace in home, family and hearth, I find myself never quite able to figure out exactly where I derive energy from. I long to leave, only to crave home fifteen days in.

My middle path may well be that I constantly reinvent home in the image of the world. The opposite of colonialism, perhaps? New habits, new rituals, new foods, new arrangements of time and space all become fodder to think of home anew. A trip back from Kyoto found me in thrall to minimalism and rolled up mattresses on the floor. Not to mention, whisky. For days after that, I refused to get out of my Yukata.Italy made me even more a coffee drinker. And an academic in hot pursuit of the Medici. Not to mention, scurry in search of cardigans, scarves, and pearls. I went to Vietnam armed with some knowledge of war and colonialism, but came away seeking hot soup for breakfast, determined to be of as much good cheer as Hanoian motorists on a Monday morning. I brought back two ao dais.

Clothing and food. I borrow them at will as I move away from identifiable roots. It would be co-optation were I of a desire to fetishize or conquer. I try to guard against both. For travel does not hinder the ability to critique in equal measure. To see each place we go to, as beset by equal measures of difficulty, discrimination, and alienation as one’s own intimate locales.

The desire to root. In limited quantities. Is perhaps what I seek most. So I return, enthralled and mindful, vowing to be alive to every moment that one is given, and every place that supports such inhabitation.

I will learn to pack lighter only because well, I grow old, I grow old…But my version of Marie Kondo is not minimalist, or capable of only retaining that which sparks joy. For I do not quite know, do I? Different things spark different joys in different places. As I dress up, dress down, and bask in the love, lives and care of dear ones, known and unknown, strewn across the world, I know that I move closer to being at home in the world.

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What I am reading:

Exquisite.

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What I’m cooking:

Chunky, delicious, salsa.

Pulse four tomatoes, one bell pepper, one red onion, three cloves garlic, a fistful of coriander leaves, salt, pepper, two pinches of cumin and paprika powder each, until chunky or fine as you please. Spritz a generous burst of lemon/ lime juice.

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