Traveling Heavy
Overdoing It Can Have Its Perks
Love is sneaky. It reveals the beloved slowly, counting on the hormones and hopes for that dreamy happily-ever-after to help us overlook the less than dreamy aspects of commitment. When my husband Nate and I met in April of 1999, I walked through his door with a big smile and a small purse. How could he have known that eight months later we’d be taking giant suitcases to Venezuela as we traveled to spend Christmas with my family? How could Nate have foreseen that for the rest of his life there’d be a high probability that he’d be one of those people who hold up the check-in line as he and I moved items around to spread the weight among our suitcases?
It's not a pretty ritual. Everything’s out in the open as you frantically shuffle objects, stuffing your already stuffed carry-ons so you don’t have to pay the exorbitant overweight baggage fees. Is it embarrassing? You bet. Do people gawk at you? Sure. But you also get I-get-it looks from people who know what’s going on.
Most of us aren’t wearing ten outfits a day when we travel to visit our relatives. Instead, our bags are brimming with items that are hard to come by in our countries of origin. Vitamins, car parts, Nintendo Switches, a George Foreman Grill, soccer shoes, dress shoes, wedding shoes. Nate and I have transported them all. It works in both directions too. When my mom visits, she fills her suitcases with heirlooms and relics of my childhood I’d otherwise never see again.
I grew up traveling heavy, and I doubt that will ever change. Burdensome as it may be, it comes with benefits I’m not willing to forgo. In late March, I went to the Association of Writers & Writing Programs Conference (AWP) in LA. For my six-day journey, I traveled with a suitcase, my purse, my camera bag, and my recently acquired computer bag.
I’ve been attending Rhetoric and Composition conferences for 16 years, but this was my first foray into the biggest Creative Writing conference in the US. I figured I’d be anonymous among the 10,000 attendees, but I kept running into fellow multihyphenates, like my friend Lynne Sachs, a groundbreaking experimental filmmaker who publishes poetry, and Trish Fancher and Kimberly Ann Priest, who straddle rhetoric and creative writing. There’s a heaviness to working in more than one genre. Double the conferences, double the networking, double the work. It can drag you down, but it also lets you explore new modes of expression and make friends you wouldn’t otherwise.
Like I’ve done at the dozens of conferences I’ve attended, I roamed AWP saddled with my purse, computer, and camera bag. I photographed the panels and took detailed notes on the exquisite wisdom the presenters shared with us. My approach requires a lot of multitasking, but I love having a visual and written record of these ephemeral gatherings. The presenters are grateful for the photos, and I’m grateful to return to their words later, processing them over time.
At one of the panels, author Joanna Rakoff talked about pitching a story to a magazine. She could tell they weren’t interested, so she said, “I could write a personal essay about answering JD Salinger’s fan mail.” Now, that got their attention. She explained to us, “I was able to spew out this sentence because I’d spent the last two years reading every single back issue of this magazine, so I knew what they published.”
The essay led to her international bestseller My Salinger Year, which was later adapted into film. You can interpret this as a story of someone who sparked her writing career with an improvised sentence, but to me that story is not as interesting (or inspiring) as the story of someone who got her break because she went the extra preparational mile. I find more hope in stories of people who are rewarded for their efforts than in stories of doors that magically open. I can’t make the magic materialize, but I can put in the work and hope it makes some magic happen for me.
We do want to make sure we direct our efforts in the right direction—a challenge for multihyphenates like me. At AWP, I had a mentorship session with writer and publishing expert Jane Friedman. Ever prepared, I handed her a printout summarizing my ongoing projects.
After reading the long list, she met my gaze. “What do you want to be known for?”
“My novels,” I answered without hesitation.
She smiled. “Then you should focus on your novels.”
Can I fill my suitcases with only fiction? Probably not, but I can fill them with mostly fiction. At least during the academic summer when the other demands of my professional life calm down. I haven’t published any novels, though, and it’s risky to focus on projects that are only castles in the sky when our other ventures are more solid. And yet, it’s also risky—maybe even unhealthy—to go against the call of our core being.
Two days after meeting with Jane, I was reminded why so many of us put up with the distress and frustration of being storytellers. By some miraculous coincidence, on my last night in LA there was an event honoring Amy Sherman-Palladino at the Dolby Theater (where the Academy Awards are filmed). Amy, the creator of Gilmore Girls and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, is my favorite showrunner. This event featured cast members from her past shows and from Étoile, her upcoming show starring Charlotte Gainsbourg, Luke Kirby, and Lou de Laâge.
I arrived at the Dolby early and decided to have dinner at a burger joint across the street. I don’t like burgers, but I liked the proximity, and they luckily had grilled cheese and tomato soup on the menu. Big fan of hydration that I am, I needed to pee, and my waitress pointed to a back door, explaining I’d have to cross the lobby. The door was like a portal into an impossibly glamorous world. There were potted palm trees and velvety pillows on golden sofas, and don’t get me started on the stenciled high ceilings. Two men in suits were standing in a corner by an Étoile poster, checking names on a list as people lined up to come in.
No, I didn’t try to sweet talk my way into the Étoile party. I peed and returned to my grilled cheese, but as I ate, I felt time ticking, pulling me back to the lobby. I paid and rushed through the door, and the moment I reached the middle of the lobby, a girl in a sparkly silver dress walked out of the Étoile party. Behind her were Amy and her husband Dan Palladino, followed by the Étoile cast. I stood there, camera bag in one hand and purse in the other, taking it all in.
Amy is small and her posture is perfect. Her focus was on making it through the lobby without interruption. She was, after all, about to spend two hours in front of thousands of her fans. For her, the moment was a hurdle to get her from party to stage. For me, it was a reminder that your work can mean so much to others that watching you cross a room can feel like magic to them. And not the magic of success effortlessly coming your way, but the magic of the universe reminding you you’re on the right track, that your heavy traveling may yet lead you somewhere marvelous.
I didn’t film Amy at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel, but I did film her and her delightful mother engaging in a hilarious meeting of the wits at the Dolby Theater. Whether you know Amy’s work or not, this should spark some magic for you:
Stories that Transfixed Me (and May Transfix You)
Flow, directed by Gints Zilbalodis
As I arguehere, the Academy Awards should stop nominating so many long and ponderous films if they want more people to watch them (and the show itself, which can also be long and ponderous). We need more nominees like Flow, the Latvian Best Animated Feature winner, that has no human dialogue, though the animal characters have plenty to say in meows, growls, and squawks. After a flood makes his idyllic home uninhabitable, our black cat protagonist joins a capybara on a wooden boat. Their journey takes them through the countryside and deserted cities as they pick up new companions—a secretarybird, a lemur, and a yellow lab. The quest is survival, but the reward is friendship, and you’ll be rooting for them to get it all.
For the Love of the Bard by Jessica Martin
Jessica Martin seamlessly blends romance, family, theater, writing woes, and small-town charm into her debut novel. Miranda is a best-selling YA fantasy author who finds herself in a creative rut when readers disagree with plot points in her latest book. Hoping to reunite with her muse, she returns to Bard’s Rest, the Shakespeare-obsessed town where she grew up. However, instead of writing, she finds herself directing Twelfth Night for the town’s yearly Shakespeare festival while helping her mother face her mortality. Add Miranda running into Adam, the boy who broke her heart back in high school, and you have the makings of a fun summer romp—and that’s exactly what Martin delivers wrapped in clever Shakespearean puns and references.
Your Turn
Do you travel light or heavy? Have you run into your heroes? What do you want to be known for?
Tits up Alex. Love this compilation of so many aspects of your loves, compulsions, and for me Mrs Maisel and Susie the magnificent duo eating popcorn in their elder years remaining friends til the credits finish running. Tits up❤️
Your writing is so beautiful! And what gorgeous photographs too.