Travel Light

“As a kid I used to be fascinated by people who, like they say, ‘traveled light.’ My father died when I was very young, but there were things of his left in the house that my mother kept as evidences of his life: his bag, for example, his surgical instruments, even his prescription pads. These things were not only relics of his person, but what was interesting to me was that this instrumentation was peculiarly contained in this thing that he could carry in his hand. The doctor’s ‘bag.’ One thinks of the idiom that is so current now, ‘bag,’ to be in this or that ‘bag.’ The doctor’s bag was an absolutely explicit instance of something you carry with you and work out of. As a kid, growing up without a father, I was always interested in men who came to the house with specific instrumentation of that sort—carpenters, repairmen—and I was fascinated by the idea that you could travel in the world that way with all that you needed in your hands ... a Johnny Appleseed. All of this comes back to me when I find myself talking to people about writing. The scene is always this: ‘What a great thing! To be a writer! Words are something you can carry in your head. You can really ‘travel light.’”

~Robert Creeley