Zerebria

When I see a person carrying a suitcase, I try to be gentle. It is not hard to see that it is someone who

• …endures a lot of effort. In his dystopic novel “Erewhon”, the writer Samuel Butler talks about a people who considered tools and items as parts of their bodies themselves. From that point of view, a suitcase, even with good ergonomics, nice wheels and the  like, is not one of the lightest limbs, and represents a tremendous disadvantage in a world of strangers.
• …is having quite a funny subjective time. The abstract environment of airports and trains, the wicked combination of sudden hurries and long waits… not to mention, in case of long trips, the psychedelic effects of jet lag, a trip itself.
• …has a limited attention span: in our natural habitats, all of us have points of reference, fixed anchors thanks to which we pretty much get to live in “automatic pilot”, reducing energy drain. Someone who just arrives, in addition to having to solve very immediate needs, is either rearranging those anchors or struggling to create them.
• …is helpless. Tired, miserable, risen very early, submitted to a lot of effort, permanent lack of privacy, industrial food if any… the list is endless.

I guess I’m thinking mostly about those people who come back from a travel to our ruthless city, and it is Sunday, and everything is gloomy… Of course there are very positive things to traveling, too (but I also hate that stance that sees a journey in the same way as a hamburger, as something that you simply consume).

Then I think about those people who carry a suitcase in their heart too. People who have been obliged to travel thousands of miles to try to make a living. What are the effects of such a shock on a human being? Just like many things in our days, it is at the same time atrocious and daily.

Films like ‘The visitor’, ‘Paraiso Travel’ or ‘In this world’ try to talk about those people, about those suitcases, detaching themselves from cliches and old-fashioned guilt, while at the same time keeping an eye on the sacrosanct box office, on the average Joe who just wants to be entertained (the same kind of virtuous juggling as in ‘Slumdog Millionaire’). The three films are excellent, I mention them orderly, in function of the size of the hole that they leave in your chest. But it is a pure, clean hole, through which the air comes in (after all, grief in films is always gratifying).

So let’s try to be kind when we see a suitcase. Sometimes it feels like there is not enough compassion in three universes together to deal with the world we’re in, but there is always something we can do.

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May 25, 2010 at 9:04 pm by Nacho Jordi
Tags: Adaptation, Books, Communication, Compassion, Consciousness, Difference, Emotions, Experience, Fear, Films, Globalization, Gratification, Gratitude, Growth, Hurry, Interdependence, Perception, Poetry, Samuel Butler, Society, Tears, Time, Violence, Walking