November 4, 2007
Sunday

Make a list of things that are done in small units of time. Here are several suggestions: Naming a pet or a child, breaking up with someone, playing a game such as Risk or Monopoly, washing a car, stealing something, waiting or standing in line for something, packing to go somewhere, changing the message on an answering machine, cleaning a refrigerator, having a birthday party.
                             — exercise in What If? Writing Exercises for Fiction Writers
                                 by Anne Bernays, b. 1930 and Pamela Painter, b. 1942, American writers and teachers

I cleaned my refrigerator on Saturday. That took about an hour, what I would consider a small unit of time. That evening I changed a lot of clocks, back one hour to Eastern Standard Time. That took a few minutes. Vespers on Friday and the concert that followed took about an hour and a half. I’ve never washed a car except at T.J.’s Brushless down there beside the 7-11, where you sit inside the car for maybe three minutes while the rotating jets move around spraying plain water, soapy water, rinse water, and a thin coat of wax.

But packing to go somewhere as a “small unit of time”? It didn’t take long one day last week when I loaded my computer, my journal, and a few manuscript pages into a backpack to go off for a day writing at a friend’s apartment (and coincidentally to walk around a mall auditioning the heft and shape of the backpack and the comfort of the shoes in preparation for navigating airports next week). But I was only going to be gone six hours.

I’ve been packing for Wyoming — more accurately, I’ve been applying the Think System to packing for Wyoming — since I got back from Vermont nine weeks ago. I’m at the point now where when certain items come through the weekly laundry sessions I put them on top of my large suitcase, which is on the living room floor in front of the fireplace. This includes my wool hiking socks, brand new extra warm socks I bought in Vermont (although I nearly went downstairs and got a pair last night), and my collection of writing-related t-shirts (such as the one from my friend’s Art of Revision workshop: There are no great writers, only great rewriters).

I have lists of things I think I absolutely need but which I use every day and so can’t put in the suitcase yet: my Derwent colored pencils, my sketch book, my journal, my agenda, and my cosmetics, including the goo and the dryer that keeps my hair looking like Betsie Lesher’s. I’m trying to decide if I should take at least one outfit more tailored and more feminine than my four pairs of corduroy Lands’ End stretch pants and my extensive array of turtlenecks and warm sweaters. But that means another pair of shoes (my dress ballet flats) and pantyhose, and I already have to allow space (and weight) for two pairs of hiking shoes in addition to the slip-ons I’ll be wearing (shearling-lined suede clogs that passed the mall test).

Then there are my supplies: my highlighter pens (six colors), my Post-its (also in six colors and several sizes), my files of notes and research and charts and scraps of ideas for the novel I’ll be working on (currently about an inch thick in a three-ring binder), and the 500-page academic study of grief and mourning that I will never actually read if I don’t take it with me to a cabin in the woods where my whole reason for being there is to study and to write.

Last night I visited The Universal Packing List, filled out the form with details of my trip (weather? traveling with children? cooking for yourself?), and got back a supposedly customized packing list. It recommends as preparation that I empty my refrigerator of perishables (it didn’t know, because it didn’t ask, that I am traveling alone and Ron and Lynn will have Thanksgiving here without me) and take my airline tickets with me (d’oh!). Probably because I said I would be providing my own food, it suggested a stove and a Swiss army knife. Under “miscellaneous” it listed a compass and candles along with my own bed linens. And under “health” it reminded me to pack any prescription medications, a first aid kit, and condoms.

Condoms.

Nothing about the Post-its!! Or my picture of Lynn at four years old, my paperweight of Robert Indiana’s Love sculpture that I’ve had since college, or my Nashville Skyline album cover that I look up at every day when I feel I can’t write one more paragraph, so Bob Dylan can tip his hat to me and tell me that I’m the best thing that he’s ever seen and he just wants to see the colors in my mind. What about those things? Huh?

I’ve been packing for Wyoming nine weeks, and all my life.

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