The story of the bag-on-wheels

It's like putting on a pair of sunglasses. The world is still the same only slightly darker and maybe a bit prettier. Your own eyes are concealed and can steal glances here and there. Perhaps it's delayed jetlag but I'm still not so sure that I'm here. Like perhaps - as the cliche goes - it's all a dream, tinted a beige brown and viewed from far inside.




I had put off buying one of the old lady carts. I knew I was going to need one for all the things necessary to haul up to a 6th floor apartment for living: hangers, washcloth, bread, wine, salad, vegetables, olive oil, sugar, coffee, Principe cookies, tampons, etc. But for some reason it seemed rather 'adapted,' rather like permanence, rather like getting into the lot, like becoming one of the regulars. No longer a tourist burdened by heavy shoulder bags. And it just felt too soon for me to start assimilating. Especially since I feel more like I'm a poser. But I'm slowly realizing that I am living here. A bag on wheels. I always associated them with the old ladies in Buenos Aires.

But still... I stopped at a sucker-tourist shop for a big shoulder bag, thinking that that would cut it. But my first trip to the supermarche with all the cereal, the rice milk & soy milk (!!), the Canadian-imported peanut butter, the fresh veggies, the fair trade sugar, the yogurt.. well it weighed too much so I gave in. And then I became one of them - and not yet one of them.

Next door to the supermarche is a type of odds-and-ends shop where I bought the bag-on-wheels. The BOW, of course, made it easier to buy the 20 shirt hangers and 10 skirt hangers over at the nearby low-budget flea market near Metro Anvers. And the BOW made it easier to buy 2 cheap bottles of Rhone wine from Nicolas.


Coming back to the apartment, a French man made a joke with me. I knew it was something like me being too small for the big bag or something about sizes and speed. A lady laughed with him and of course, I wanted to know exactly what it was - not just the gist of the idea. "Pardon?" and I tried to understand that it looked like the bag was chasing me down the street. At least that was my interpretation of the whole conversation. After I walked away, I looked back over my shoulder with a smile to confirm that everything was good between us. I'm hoping he was looking back at me with the same idea and not shaking his head, "Paris overrun by foreigners trying to look like Parisians." [Momentary insecurities arise quite frequently but then are dispelled by a glimpse of beauty or an understood phrase.]

Of course, then the question came. How do I get the BOW up the curving stairwell? Somehow I imagined I'd just pull it up behind me as if it weighed as much as a cloud or some pudgy cupids would swoop down to carry it pinched between their joyful fingers. I had forgotten that I was on the 6th floor and that there were no secret backpack straps lurking inside the BOW. So, I turned my arm and carried it over my shoulder. Slowly each step, thinking about a nice greasy pulley system to set up over my balcony.