Richard Oh

I’ve always dreaded traveling. Don’t get me wrong though. I’m not some larded ass who prefers the familiarity of one place to another or some loon with a developed case of phobia for strangers. I’m way more ahead than any one of these fellows. I love the tingling serenity of the cabin, peering out through the plane’s window at the foaming clouds, my iPods plugged in my ears slowly building a mood of ethereal bliss. I love getting lost in the meandering streets of Rome or the perplexing Tokyo underground. I actually love being in another place complete with its various outlandish landscapes and idiosyncratic ways of life. I truly savor all that. It’s the idea of packing my luggage that gets me started anywhere south of excitement. Now, I’m not talking about puzzling over what clothes to put in to suit a certain climate. That never bothers me at all. It’s the thought of what books to bring with me that really gets me in a state of ineffable anxiety.

I read somewhere that Somerset Maugham had always lugged a suitcase full of books wherever he traveled. Lucky for him. He traveled in an age before air travel with the ground stewardess’s priggish glare fixedly at the scale for any sign of gross over limit of the twenty-kilos allowed on a hand-carry luggage. Recently, on a trip to the Byron Bay Writers Festival in NSW, Australia, I ran into such a fierce ground patrol virago. After a protracted exchange, in which I pleaded, begged and when nothing panned out well put down my weight only to be snubbed by her cool superior piercing indifference. I finally pulled out my laptop and my sweater and a couple of books and shoved my hand-carry luggage back on the scale. Smugly satisfied with what she saw on the scale, she issued me the boarding pass. To this day, I’m certain that she gave me a finger behind my back as I pulled my luggage away, with my laptop twisted in my left armpit and the jumble of sweater and books cradled in one hand. My spirits sagging, the next best thing I could think of to salvage any semblance of joy from the impending trip was to pretend to limp to the lavatory, take a leak and stuff everything back into the luggage and trundle it through the immigration and into the plane. That exactly was what I did. Unchecked. When the plane took off, my luggage safely locked away in the overheard luggage compartment and my iPod plugged in my ears, comfortably nestled in the anti static blanket, my mood air born, I began to open a page of Adorno’s Aesthetic Theory and read with priggish satisfaction.

With a suitcase full of books, I seriously doubt if Mr. Maugham bought any books in his travel. Now, the root of my anxiety of putting in as many books into the luggage before a trip has always been the anticipation of the many books I’ll purchase in the many bookstores I’ll definitely visit. Books are unlike articles of clothing that one could shift and fold to fit into the nooks and crannies of a suitcase. In fact, I had a first hand experience of the concept of dead weight when I tried checking in a luggage full of books in the London’s Heathrow airport. The damn luggage simply wouldn’t budge. It sat there on the ground like some overgrown lout after a full lunch. If it hadn’t been for my unused AsiaMiles points, I would have had to pay the equivalent of a first class ticket back home.

You would think that I’ve learnt my lesson from that one trip from London. No, I did it again this time on the trip to Australia. As soon as I landed in Sydney, on a few days stopover for a reading at the Writer’s Center en route to Byron Bay, the first thing I did was to check out the nearest bookstore. Right there on the second floor was a full-fledged collection of the most alluring second hand books. My head told me oh oh, my heart kept thumping saying uh huh, so I bought all the first editions hardcover Carlos Fuentes, Nabokov and Thomas Pynchon I could lay my hands on. A few hundred Aussie dollars the worse on my credit card later, lugging the bulky brown bags back to the house they put me in, about a mean fifteen minutes that threatened a serious hernia attack anywhere in the tortuous trudge, I found next the daunting task of shoving all the books into a suitcase already filled with books and bulky winter clothes. As you might imagine what would happen next. The debacle of haggling with the ground stewardess, who took a bribe of a box of London Telephone Booth chocolates from a woman before me but granted nothing sweet whatsoever to me, although I seriously thought of pulling out one of my books and gave it to her, and the ensuing inevitable payment of yet a few hundred Aussie dollars for the short flight to Byron Bay and then from there, being slightly wiser, I shipped a whole box of these books, costing yet another 70 odd dollars, back home. Now writing this column, my eyes flick over to the stack of newly acquired books piling up next to my sofa with more books squatting there, I discover that I have no remorse at all, but the overflowing sense of hard-won ownership rights over them.

You might think at this juncture that I would have some brilliant ideas to share with you about traveling with books. Wrong. This is a bad era to travel with books. With stricter control of hand-carry luggage in most International airports brought on by Jihad fighters all over the world, you’d be lucky if you would be allowed a decent book with you to read in the plane. Or for that matter, I wonder if one would be able to concentrate on a book, wary as every passenger is these days for any suspicious movements aboard plane. A few years back, audio books and eBook were heralded as the next best things to replace books. The prediction has yet to be proven true. Moreover, most electronic devices, including cellular phones I suspect, will one day soon be disallowed in-flight. I can’t bother with these new-fangled things anyway. A well-made book has the feel and smell that heighten one’s expectant imagination that can’t easily be replaced by the sterility of a virtual book.

One is always hopeful though for some revolutionary idea to germinate. Some book nut in the higher echelons of one of these airliners might hit on the idea of an in-flight library. I know those mavericks at Virgin Air would certainly come up with a neat idea like that. In fact, one hotel in New York has caught a lot of attention by lining the shelves of each room with books by a well-known author, complete with a writing desk and the writer’s paraphernalia. A Faulkner room, sir? Or may we suggest something a bit saucy for your stay, sir? A Henry Miller junior suite? We recently acquired the rare first edition of Crazy Cock.

One hopes soon instead of the beguilingly appetizing names of dishes on the menu, all of which I’m sure taste similarly vapid airline fare anyway, we are offered a list of books on the plane. What would your pleasure be this evening, ma’am? I’d recommend the new bestseller by Patricia Cornwell. I will assure you any book is better company than watching Paris Hilton on the small screen before you in a long flight. Until such a reality comes into being, there’s really no other better option than lugging that weighty luggage filled with the books you’ve always wanted to read but never quite got around to reading them. Whether you’d get past the fierce viragos at check-in counters depends really on your best guiles. Besides, with the constant threat from the Jihad fighters, a thick hardcover might come in handy in the worst case scenario. Or should you land in an isolated island, you’ll at least have your Arthur Rimbaud, Roland Barthes and Haruki Murakami to keep you company, until Man Friday shows up.

Tags: Books, indonesia, richard oh, travel

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