The stuff that makes us
Leaving and going are not the same thing
"At some point you have to stop dreaming and, somehow, set off already."
Amyr Klink
25th of July, Tokyo, Japan
A mercifully cloudy day. Hugo loaded up the tandem outside for the second time since our arrival in Japan twelve days before, while I took one last look around our tiny tatami room, and cried a bit. I didn’t really want to go.
Back in London, there had been no big send-off, no party, no fanfare. There had been, instead, a string of individual goodbyes. In the UK and in Brazil, in Zurich, Montreal, New York and San Francisco. Months of slowly leaving after years of slowly preparing. And now I stalled.
I remember a clear quality to those last few weeks at home, like mountain air, despite, or perhaps because of, the uncertainty ahead. Everything felt raw and full of meaning, each emotion in crisp focus. I cherished them all, the joyous, the painful, the ambivalent. In each lingering hug was a reassurance of the bonds we’d created and I felt deeply loved and supported. But, as a friend likes to remind me, there’s no choice without loss and I also grieved the life we loved, but had no plans to return to.
There was nothing crisp or clear about this July day in Tokyo, not the air (muggy), not my feelings (muddled). We’d set this in motion with all our desire and now here we were, time to take this precious thing, this dream, forever perfect in the safety of our minds, and throw reality all over it.
It was almost exactly three years from our maiden voyage to here. Not by design, more a matter of timing for one or the other, then of immigration status in the UK for one, then the other.
While we waited, we planned — for me almost as much fun as travel itself. I’d imagined it all in such detail that sometimes it felt like I didn’t even need to actually do it. I’d travelled in my mind and it’d been great.
Our kitchen filled up with guidebooks on the table and maps on the wall, things we knew the bike had no room for. But, with a departure date still far off and uncertain, we needed physical evidence that it was, indeed, real.
As it got closer, we researched every single item we’d need and, as perfectly insecure beginners, perfectly over prepared. Our tent was tornado proof, our stove Swedish military, our sleeping bags for polar nights. I craved adventure, but would rather not wake up buried under a flattened tent if I could help it. Once in life is enough.
Knowing space would be limited and, at some point, supply too, I’d begun early on trying to streamline my routines, getting used to go without some luxuries like conditioner, nail polish or make up. I went “no poo” — an unfortunate experiment — but in the process found I could use shampoo to also wash my face and body as well as the same moisturiser on both (I know, I know, the horror!). My lists and spreadsheets were down to what each packing cube would have in each pannier.
•••
A mercilessly sunny day. Hugo loaded up the tandem outside for the first time since our arrival in Japan two days before, while I went to get us some drinks. This should have been the official start of our great adventure. Instead, we were just moving hotels — I’d accepted a commission to shoot in Nara, and Hugo would wait for me in Tokyo.
I came back all smiles, barley iced tea and pão de queijo in hand, amazed to find Brazil’s national snack at a random 7-Eleven in Japan, and found Hugo dismayed, the bike on its side on the floor, the kickstand collapsed under all the weight.
Our starting in Japan was not initially by design either. We’d always envisioned cycling out of our front door in London, in love with the idea of such simplicity. We’d leave in spring and cycle East, crossing the high passes of Central Asia that summer.
In March, we gave notice on our flat and had just ordered a new tandem when, through a mix of luck and great generosity, were suddenly faced with the chance to get the true bike of our dreams instead: a made-to-order Co-Motion Java Rohloff. Estimated delivery: July, in Oregon.
We’d have to adjust our plans. Considering how hard it can be to get your mind to let go of an imagined scenario when it’s lived in you this long, we were quick to decide. We really wanted that bike. Plus, having mentally lived through the initial plan already, it was fun to have a new version to dream up.
So we traced a new route, from East to West: bike pick-up in Oregon, flight from San Francisco to Tokyo, winter in SE Asia, Central Asia the following year. We paid the deposit and spent the rest of the day in giddy disbelief, mocking up colour schemes for the bike in Photoshop.
•••
We lifted our purple and yellow dream bike up from its sad position and struggled to our next Tokyo hotel. These tandems are wonderfully built and made to carry a lot of weight, but we’d never been this loaded up before and didn’t have enough experience manoeuvring such a heavy beast.
Hugo knew what was in his bags and rightly assumed mine were to blame. Before flying out of San Francisco we’d packed all the panniers to see what fit while there was still time to leave things with our friends there. I admit to cheating. My panniers did close, but just barely and I already anticipated the intense hate I’d feel trying to find anything in them each night. Hugo asked me to go through my stuff again while there was still time to leave things with our friends in Tokyo.
What about those precise lists and spreadsheets?, you ask. Yeah, that.
In my imagined version of the trip, I’d managed to distill life down to its bare, yet elegant, minimum. The perfect clothes, shoes and cosmetics that were light and unfussy, but kept me cool and warm and looking great. I would be a minimalist cycling muse. In reality I had what? A cross-stitch kit.
I pulled out my camera backpack from a pannier. Some, let’s say, non-essentials came out: books (never mind I had a Kindle), a thick notebook, a thin notebook, a bunch of colourful pens and stencil rulers. Aerolíneas Argentinas wet wipes, among others. Hugo asked me the last time I’d flown Aerolíneas — five years before, the wipes by now as drained of life as his face.
When out came some crystals, he says it felt like he was being pranked. He couldn’t believe I was literally weighing us down with stones. Then, from the bottom of a small pocket sprung a pencil sharpener. Not the one I bought at the Metropolitan Museum in New York when I was 15 and still keep for its emotional value. Noooo, this was a cheap yellow one from god knows where. One of those without a case, that you have to use over a bin and stains your fingers silver.
I broke out in tears. Not the pencil sharpener! Hugo sat, in infinite compassion, across the non-essentials from me, and asked if parting with them made me feel less like myself. It did.
He reminded me that it was not like I would never be able to sharpen a pencil again, but space and weight really are limited on a bike, even more so on a tandem, where we can only carry four panniers — as opposed to the eight of two individual bikes. I knew all that, of course I did, just as he knew it was not about the pencil sharpener.
I hadn’t even considered messing around with the contents of my backpack because I’d spent the previous 13 years of travel, of moving, of creating new homes, unconsciously perfecting the setup. I don’t think even I realised that until Hugo asked.
Now, I am fully aware it sounds ridiculous, but it’s like the things in there were my emotional support objects. When everything around me was in flux, and I was so often on my own, it felt grounding to have a mini, portable version of my world with me. It brought me comfort. Except for the cross-stitch kit. No idea what that was about.
We both went through all our bags again. I managed to buy a lighter camera lens and lighter hard drives and packed a box with my non-essentials and the rest of our temporary rejects.
•••
What perhaps neither of us realised just then either was how long that string of goodbyes had been. Not just to people but to so much more too. We’d started packing up the house in December. In February I took with me to Brazil the things I couldn’t bear losing: my summer dresses, my collection of tchotchkes from different countries, and back-up hard drives with all my work.
I’d gone around the London neighbourhood I loved so much with renewed appreciation: the chocolate cake at the deli, my favourite twin trees in a burst of pink blossoms, the garden centre, the pub on the corner, the chaos and energy of Kingsland Rd. I already missed even the neighbour’s cat – to whom I’m allergic – who always ran up to greet us, then tried to break into our house.
It may seem obvious, but before going, we had to leave. Just like there’s no choice without loss, leaving, even towards something wonderful, is not without grief. In the midst of all the guidebooks, the maps, the physical evidence of the future, was the physical evidence of our then current life that we had to take stock of, to deal with, to say goodbye to. Some temporarily, some permanently.
Not only were the things I’d chosen to surround myself with part of what makes home, home, they also reinforced my sense of identity. They helped me see my inner world mirrored in the outer world.
We were about to be fully uprooted indefinitely. Most of what we carried with us was new, fit for purpose in this new life. Tremendously exciting, yes, just not fully us yet.
I’d Ubered one last trunkful to my dearest friend Claudia's house, whose husband was already not amused. Another friend came to see us off and take our picture in front of the house for the last time.
Hugo and I rode together to the airport, but were off to different journeys. So much for simplicity. We still had some weeks between leaving our flat and the bike being ready. I flew to Montreal to see another of my dearest friends, Manu, and meet their newborn baby, then to New York for meetings. Hugo went to Brazil to see his family. We’d meet again in Oregon.
It was my first time in Canada, but arriving at Manu's felt like coming home. In our unwaning intimacy after five years without seeing each other, in our decades-long inside jokes, in the same feeling of deep love and support I’d left London with. I was reminded of the immeasurable luck that is to find home, and identity, in the people we love.
I’d lingered in Montreal longer than planned, unable to peel myself away from all that love. And now, having shed all I could, I lingered in this tiny tatami room in Tokyo, struggling to peel myself away from one last bit of familiarity before the unknown – even as the man in whom I most find a sense of home waited outside.
Sometimes our fear and discomfort blind us to the obvious. Now I know that these pieces of me, then scattered with my stuff and my people — in London, in Brazil, in Montreal, are never truly left behind. I carry them with me.
As for the unknown, that was obviously the whole point of this whole thing, or we wouldn’t have bought the first map to begin with. The point was to see the ways dream and reality would come or clash together to change and reshape the trip we had in our minds, the ways it would change and reshape us. I was still unsettled, but I knew there was nothing else to do but go.
I thanked the room and closed the door behind me.
__
PS: I never saw that pencil sharpener again, but now I have a better one, case and all.
lindo, excited for the next chapters!