To Pack or Not to Pack

In packing, I am more excited about the notion of Kundera's "[bearable] lightness of being," than having my many "essentials" on-hand at all times. The beauty of travel is the fresh perspective it provides regarding necessity vs. dispensability.

While living in an apartment for an extended amount of time, the phenomenon of accumulation manifests itself in one's uncanny ability to become attached to inanimate objects. My mother's joke that I have assigned pet names to my t-shirts is unfortunately...
true.

When I travel, I am the other extreme. I prefer minimalism. The concise traveler cannot be burdened by accumulation, with the exception of an exponential gain of knowledge and life experience. Therefore, I am placing higher value on objects of documentation than personal cladding.

So here it is, Beth's "minimalist" must-haves:

1. Sketchbook and pens.
2. Pocket-sized camera.
3. Journal
4. Backpack.
5. Phaidon's mini-"Atlas of Contemporary World Architecture"
6. Lonely Planet's "Western Europe" edition
7. Daily planner (to be at one point dramatically disregarded, in hopes of spontaneity...)
8. Walking shoes.
9. Ipod Shuffle (for movie-soundtrack moments a la gazing out train windows...)
10. Hat collection (?!) (Modeled below by my portrait bust of Sloth from Goonies, done in a sculpture class taught byYuriko Yamiguchi--I apologize for the resolution...)

Stay tuned to see what makes the final cut.

In more important news, my classmates and I have started a google group to document our activity in both London and Florence (http://groups.google.com/group/syracuse-archi-a-go-go). Visit it to find out what we're packing, whom is going where, and how our group has evolved from day 1 to t-minus 3 remaining semesters...