Dead luggage has really, um, died off over the past couple of years. That seems weird, when you think about it. It’s like we’re living in opposite world. In a normal world, you’d think that, at a time when nobody can travel, the streets would be filled with abandoned suitcases and wheelie bags. Why hang onto this stuff when it’s no longer needed? There’s nothing more useless than a suitcase and having nowhere to go. Out with it!
But apparently not so. While luggage used to be a fairly commonplace death, during the pandemic it has become comparatively rare. Luggage deaths are down markedly*, even though nobody is going anywhere and has no reason to hang onto their baggage.
But is it really so counter-intuitive? The reason why there have been so few dead bags on the streets recently is because people are keeping them safe until the day dawns when bags will once again have a purpose. These bag-hoarders have hope – the hope that one day they will be able to travel again. They believe they will once more be going places.
You don’t chuck out an old bag just because you can’t travel; you get a new one because you can. That’s all part of going away; getting the bags out, discovering that the old one is no longer up to the task, and buying a new bag just for this trip. OK, so not for every trip but, I would suggest, always before a new trip, not straight after the last one.
On the other hand, maybe you get rid of it at the end of a particularly gruelling journey when the bag has succumbed to the rigours of travel and is no longer fit for purpose. No point in keeping it then. Maybe the suitcase or carry-on let you down halfway through the trip and ever since you’ve been battling with it, struggling to overcome its deficiencies, making do until the time comes when you finally jettison that bag for good. Sayonara shit case!
That’s the thing about dead luggage; it’s not a sign that nobody is travelling but rather a consequence of the fact that they are. The more people travel, the quicker the luggage dies. Bags are the man-made road-kill of our globe-trotting ways.
So this is end of the road for this luggage, so to speak. Think of the distances these bags have travelled, the places they have been. They are built to be in motion, from A to B and on to C. And when they’re not, they are just so much dead space, without purpose or interest, just an empty husk.
Of course, if they were full then that would be a very different story. Abandoned packed suitcases are a marker of people being overtaken by events; they meant to take their stuff with them but somehow became separated in the process. I hope it wasn’t fatal – for the people I mean.
Many of these bags still bear the scars of their life journeys – the scuffs and scrapes, worn-out wheels and broken handles. A few still carry their baggage labels, worn defiantly like campaign medals or tinged with nostalgia like faded rosettes from the country show. Which is worse? Being stripped of your decorations before being turfed out onto the street, or forced to keep on wearing them like a badge of shame? I guess, either way, there’s no way to sugar coat the reality of the situation: their bag packing days are done.
All of them are markers of past journeys, travelling to and fro, which survive now only as memories and mementos.
In this respect, dead luggage carries a heavy load; other laneway deaths also bear the weight of their existence, the narrative lines, the intersections and encounters, the humdrum daily rituals and the incremental passage of time, but dead luggage has a bigger burden because so much of what it accumulates happens elsewhere, in transit, away from home.
The bags we carry are our dumb travel companions, co-creators and carriers of the adventures we share. In the beginning, we pack them carefully like a parent prepping their child for that first day at school. We wait for them impatiently at the airport carousel, worry about them becoming lost, struggle them with up hills and down stairs, maybe even send them on ahead all alone for our own comfort. They put on weight so we may remain light and free. There are times, perhaps, when we ask too much of them, cajoled and cursed into accepting just that little bit more. And always we are happy to make it home again, together, the circle of life complete.
Then, when all their usefulness has been emptied out, we take them on one final short journey to the curb and cast them out into the world to go who knows where and with God knows whom.
It’s a heavy load to carry for sure, but such is the life and death of a bag. Go lightly mon bagage.
*based on nothing but a gut feeling and some wishful thinking