What will I do on the other side of the world, with no friends, no books, and a bruised ego?

In twenty-plus years of existence, I have accumulated a lot of stuff attributed to my various phases. Pardon, not phases but ‘who I really am’.

There are two things I truly, deeply, dislike in life: going to the dentist and packing. - Adventure, travelling to uncharted lands, exotic places, Wanderlust… That's all fun and games until you have to pack.

I hadn’t left yet and I already deeply missed some of the clothes that defined my university years, like my Galaxy-coloured shoes or t-shirts from bands I couldn’t name three songs from. The thought of abandoning my edgy outfits on the other side of the world because a blog said to leave something behind made me sick but I kept going. I had a cute bowler hat worn twice and some vintage boots begging to be chosen despite the fact that I didn’t know what my new life would look like and what my priorities were going to be. Plus, something told me online shopping would only get better.

I was just now realising I would also have to leave behind all my things, books, and the two-meter tall cardboard silhouette my best friend and I stole from an artsy installation around town.

It’s a long story, it involves some alcohol and a best friend.

I have also bought some objects with the clear intention of making them a staple in my future home. Sadly, Sacher the pleather teddy bear, the unnamed black furry throw, and the tall black vase didn’t make it to my suitcase.

Such are the hardships of a transoceanic move.

I’d like to believe if something were to ever happen to me, I’d stick around as a ghost because those were the ‘unfinished business’ that tied me to this world.

And what would be of all of my books which I loved oh-so-much? Well, not truly all of them. Some I have no emotional attachment to, but are titles one simply has to own and proudly display. I had single-handedly developed and perfected a categorising system that may be polarising.

Oddly enough, my bookshelf organisation theory didn’t apply to CDs, which had to be in alphabetical order and subsequently in chronological order within each artist or band. It was a moral matter and every other CD organisation was pure sociopathy. On the other hand, I didn’t believe in arranging books in alphabetical order by title.

The risk of finding ‘Magic Through the Ages’ next to ‘Mein Kampf’ is just around the corner.

Maybe arranged by the author’s name worked out better, but there was not much fun in it. Also, it would be a nuisance if Aubrey Beardsley’s illustrated masterpiece was out of reach and out of sight because of its high shelf placement. No, my bookshelf was much like a dramaturgical act, implying an unseen audience present and judging. Who was, then, the audience of self-deception? Usually me, and occasionally my mother, who added or subtracted books she already read and highlighted, in an ever-so-slight form of domestic anarchy.

This could be me daintily reading vintage book collections with flowers, instead I am leaving it all behind. Courtesy of Canva PRO.

My bookshelf was an integral part of interior decoration, it needed to both tell a story and display my own taste. Therefore it required its own marketing strategy just like products on a supermarket shelf. In my journey through the internet, I came across people who arranged their books by colour to achieve an aesthetically pleasing rainbow on their shelves. As much as I could appreciate the final result and agree their memory worked in mysterious ways I considered them only marginally better than those spine-first weirdos.

I didn’t know then, but years later I will be guilty of both decorative books and spine-first crimes for aesthetics’ sake.

This left me with genre arrangement as the only legitimate way to arrange a bookshelf. And I used ‘genre’ very loosely.

My book organisation technique went straight to the point: Which books would I be embarrassed for people to see immediately?

From this simple thought, the easily accessible books were titles I was fond of and, most importantly, not ashamed of. Whereas, all the way in the top corner, far from sight, were all my guilty pleasures and just below those were the books somehow useful or given to me already highlighted by my mum because ‘I could use that for my career’. As if I’ll ever have one.

I could still hear the employment agency guy laughing when I told him about my philosophy degree. “Why would you do that?” he asked, and didn’t even turn the page around to see the back of my resume’. Granted, there was nothing printed there. But he could have at least tried.

At this point, the only acceptable careers for me were: Village Witch, Ornamental Hermit, Town Crier, Holy Roman Empress, Delphian Oracle.

I’ve always thought that money spent on books is money well spent, but was I supposed to re-buy my favourite books? I don’t have that kind of money, plus, most of those books come from the cash prize I received from winning a poetry contest in high school.

I know, such a nerd.

Maybe an e-reader is a solution to all of my problems. Alas, being one of those people who folded corners of pages to find quotes easily made it hard to rely solely on a piece of plastic. Plus, I couldn’t enjoy the smell of books on an electronic device either. Also, I wouldn’t be able to see the pile of to-read books accumulating, and people wouldn’t appreciate all the classics I own.

Again, nerd.

The challenges of modernity, a self-inflicted pain.

I pondered these existential topics as I realised I had too many belts, an unnecessary number of shorts and more leggings than I could count. At that point in my packing journey, I was ready to escape from the Millennial baroque cage around me and build a tower of carefully selected clothes along with three non-wearable items: my hair straightener, epilator, and face exfoliating brush.

I understand these may seem rather random items to be locked in my memory, but years from now I will be acutely aware of my ever-distancing life from Italy based on the decrease in my usage of power adaptors in favour of new items purchased in Australia. Who would have thought that a power plug would symbolise the end of an Era?

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Directly from the archives, please enjoy this authentic photographic evidence:

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When was the last time you left home without your name?

Playing the part of the Romantic Wanderer is easy with a return ticket in your pocket.

Bonus: The Postcard Club on Substack