Will Self: PsychoGeography

Your support helps us to tell the story

Support Now

My recent work focusing on Latino voters in Arizona has shown me how crucial independent journalism is in giving voice to underrepresented communities.

Your support is what allows us to tell these stories, bringing attention to the issues that are often overlooked. Without your contributions, these voices might not be heard.

Every dollar you give helps us continue to shine a light on these critical issues in the run up to the election and beyond

Eric Garcia

Washington Bureau Chief

Find out more

In the closing stages of that fine TV comedy show Curb Your Enthusiasm, the star - and all-round top nudnik - Larry David, is lying on his deathbed. Asked by the Rabbi whether he has any regrets in life, David runs through, in his mind, the entire panoply of his dumb mishaps, stupid confusions and farcical denouements which have comprised the series, before replying: "No, not really."

He then thinks for a moment longer, before musing: "It's true, I wish I'd travelled more... but then I couldn't stand packing."

Oh! What a huge groan of pained - yet joyful - identification burst from me when I heard this: at last someone had accurately identified what it is that I hate most about travel. At last I was free to acknowledge that it wasn't the funny food, the dodgy currency, the pestilence, the weather, or the people. It's not the languages I don't speak, or the means of transport that cramp my languorous limbs - it's that goddamn awful, fucking packing that I cannot abide.

By the time you read this I will be in the most remote, inhabited place in the world. Where is this? You don't need to know: suffice to say, the nearest landfall to this place is 1,250 miles away, and that's Pitcairn Island!

In the run-up to this massive journey (which, at one fell, jet-howling swoop, will increase the size of my carbon footprint to Pantagruelian proportions), what is it that's been exercising me? Not what it'll be like getting there - and certainly not what I'll find when I arrive, oh no. It's the packing: what the hell should I take?

I've long since abandoned the idea that when I travel I should carry with me a simulacrum of the environment that surrounds me domestically. Not for me, the seven-piece set of Samsonite cases. I leafed through The Information, The Independent's listings supplement, the other weekend. It featured "The 50 Best Travel Essentials", and I can safely say that not one of them seemed essential to me, from the velvet eye mask, to the Solio USB Solar Panel Charger.

What is essential is that I take as little as possible. In my experience bearers are increasingly difficult to get hold of nowadays, and there's nothing more contempt-inducing than the sight of someone weighed down by too many chattels. We've all seen them: the young traveller, heaving a giant wheelie-bag up the steps of the tube station, her face contorted with the effort of transporting 40 pairs of jeans from Houston, Texas, to Harrogate, Yorkshire.

The other day, I was walking along the South Bank, opposite Parliament, when I encountered an amiable young Asian-American, who had stopped off in London en route to Pakistan. He'd never visited my fair city before, had six hours to kill, and wanted to take in as much as possible. There was only one small problem: the pantechnicon-with-a-handle that he pulled behind him. And get this: this wasn't even his hold baggage - that was already checked through to Karachi. This was his carry-on!

No. Standing at an airport luggage carousel, waiting for the bale of your impedimenta to come round again, has to be one of the most soul-destroying experiences known to us. It is an inversion of the Buddhist principle of "non-attachment"; in essence, it is a kind of re-attachment, by which we are locked in again to the vicious circle of the acquisition, ordering and storage of all those little items we cannot do without: pants and pens, books and buff-puffs.

"So," you say, "having liberated yourself from the tyranny of the suitcase, is your life not free and easy? Surely, with only a small rucksack to fill, your packing anxiety must be dispensed with?" Ah! If only it were so simple. But I've discovered that it doesn't matter how little you take, if you take anything at all. I now spend quite as long deliberating over whether I can get away with two lightweight pairs of socks, as I did when I was wedded to an entire wardrobe of ornate ball gowns. Arguably, it's even worse.

Working on the basis that a great deal of what I truly need will be available at my destination, I then have to determine exactly what, and whether the replacement cost of any given item will be justified by not carrying it with me. Such calculations have a deranging quality to them, as I lie awake at night trying to estimate the cost of propelling pencils or cigar cutters in Chile.

It long ago dawned on me that the only way to fully resolve the packing dilemma was not to take any luggage with me whatsoever. Pack nothing. Walk forth from the house in only the clothes I stand up in, be a contemporary hunter-gatherer, primed to move through the world with a hawk's eye.

There's only one problem with this: what should I put in my pockets?