The Big Scram Plan

Oh, let me wax poetic about the excitement of sorting, of reducing things to essentials. Leaving behind the superfluous. The thrill of packing just so.

In my own little travel obsessed world, there are few things as satisfying as packing the perfect bag. Everything you need for an extended period, nothing extraneous to weigh you down. Compact and complete, so that everything is possible. Free to move, but with enough comfort to stay in place. Like all perfect things, this is an illusion, albeit one that seems attainable with enough thought, foresight, planning, effort, money, and time. As a philosophy, we could call it Essentialism. The minimum of belongings but with a maximum of possibilities. It unleashes my inventiveness, my imagination. All creative pursuits need limits, and there’s a creative impulse even in setting them up.

My former style of dress is best described as thrift store theatrical. And excessive. Now I delight in having a uniform, which may seem to be the antithesis of creativity, but I would disagree. It’s creativity with a limited palette. I can spend hours mentally constructing the perfect travel capsule wardrobe of 10 things, but it won’t become a reality because I can’t spend even one hour shopping without losing my mind. Perfection has to cede to good enough. Not to mention that just enough bows down to just in case.

This essentialism is coupled with the impression of heaviness, of excess, of dross. The awareness of the accumulation that has installed itself chez nous, which is a highfalutin way of saying we have too much crap. This can only mean one thing: it’s time to play the 5 things game. The rules are simple. Every day, each of us has to get rid of 5 things, for a period of time. We have chosen the 7 weeks leading up to the big scram. Who knows what it will lead to? There’s a mental freedom that comes with lightening the load. Historically, this has lead to major changes for us. Moving house. Changing countries.

Shining a light into the corners of closets leads inevitably to the corners of the mind. What do I most want in the time I have left? Not maintenance and housekeeping. This isn’t nesting time. Here’s to sweeping the corners and making room for change.

And so the big scram plan is taking shape. Take little, go far. Scotland, England, a pause in Chicago. Mexico, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia. And points beyond. Is the big scram just a dalliance, an excursion? I don’t know. I have the feeling of being on the verge. This could be a dash or it could be a périple, a useful French word meaning trek, journey, expedition. It has the same root as peripatetic: walking about, itinerant, wandering. The only difference is the intended outcome. Will we move in a line or in a circle? Do I even want to know at this point? Would I, if I could, flip a few pages ahead to see if there’s a plot twist? You can’t read ahead, and foreshadowing is only seen in hindsight.

You might think that I’m hinting at something, but I’m not. I’m trying to read the tea leaves too. Leaving France definitively is not on the table, but something is afoot. All I know is I think, therefore I scram.

Onward!

Maer

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