Tuesday, 02 April 2002 | Transport

Strange, how you could be holding something one minute, it gets weighed and stamped, you scribble an address, it gets passed between hands and between vehicles, and just a few days later, someone else far away is holding that very thing, eyeing it and turning it over the way you did just before sticking it in the envelope. It makes transport seem easy, as if all I would have to do would be to cover myself with stamps and wait at the post office, and I could go anywhere I wanted to go, just as long as the postage was right.

What about the things I've dragged around with me while traveling? Mainly, the things that I take and never use—barely even see—when I'm digging through my things. I pack for all weather, all occasions, so it's inevitable that I section off a corner of unwanteds. The pointless kind of transport. Why did I take that shirt from Germany to Raleigh to Austin? I never even wore it. Is it fair that a shirt is more traveled than some people are? Did the red, sore dent in my shoulder appreciate that extra shirt in my bag?

I'm sitting in Raleigh, North Carolina, in my room, at my desk, and you are not here, but you can read what I've been thinking, because I put these words where you can see them. I still haven't gotten used to this kind of transport.