I'm back in Paris, almost Huberman'd and how to live out of one bag for 16 years

something something three pairs of undies

I’m in Paris. I just landed with the carry-on bag I’ve been living out of, on-and-off for up to six months at a time, for ooooh about 16 years now. Plus, a very large suitcase of extra things I may as well take to Paris with me, such as the Greek herbs and Tasmanian salt I didn’t use up before leaving, some shampoo dregs, spare batteries, an earplugs stash and my camping gear.

Since I’m always asked for it, I’ve compiled a loose packing guide for travelling light, below. Although, it’s really a guide for living light. Because everything I travel with (or at least almost everything) is what I live with in a somewhat permanent way.

I’m basically a snail.

Also, a few thoughts on two very long reads I waded through on the plane, which, honestly, you really do need to have a stab at because I’d love your thoughts. Let’s discuss when you’re done!

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Oh, but before we move on, today’s Wild upload is an interview with former world poker champ and raging intellect Liv Boeree about Moloch (as I promised to do here). But more specifically we chat about a potential way to shift the race to the bottom we’re all in to, well, a more feminine way. We have fun with this chat. Reckon you’ll all love it.

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The Huberman bubble bust

I read the New York magazine cover exposé of podcaster Dr Andrew Huberman’s dodgy dalliances as it landed (and as I landed at Ho Chi Minh airport, in transit). The article is written in the old school, very Manhattan longread manner whereby one must work their way right to the end for the bomb to go off (a style that demands great New Yorker confidence from the journalist).

I read to the end. And I was left thinking, I know this man.

Indeed, Andrew and I met on a dating app in 2020 and corresponded a number of times on Instagram.

I also know his type, or the type the New York article depicts. A smart, ambitious and often “good” guy who turns popular, famous and/or rich and gets caught up (in Huberman’s case) in the algorithmic rise to gurudom, but who then finds his emotional capacity can’t keep up. This lag often shows up around women. He will love bomb when he can’t process the big feels. But will then freak out and retreat (ghost, flake) when he catches himself going in too hard and vulnerable. He seduces with “correct” terminology and gesturing (“I’m willing to do the repair work on this.”) and quite likes the version of himself that can pull this off. Such men (and I’ve encountered dozens? scores?) are perfectionists, and when things wobble, or they get found out, they gaslight and control the woman to keep their precarious world order intact.

All the while, they maintain the nice, reasoned, “repair working”, good guy reputation in a thoroughly Orwellian double-thinky way.

I’m not sure how I feel about the journalist’s rationale for writing the expose. Her argument is feeble (I’ll let you read down to it). Does it pass the “public interest” test? Or was it reaching for a different metric, one that is about exposing the ways of the gurus and other new power structures, as part of a broader mission to get us all awake to how we get our information in 2024?

The Shoah and Our Shame

Over the past few months I’ve been digging around to find a compassionate answer, or explainer, to a question that has surfaced many times here: How do traumatised people allow the same crime to be committed on others, in their name and justified by said trauma? What kind of stranglehold does victimhood have on so many of the Israeli people that sees such a dissonance? Is it inevitable? Or contrived for vested interests, and implicating all of us? This very long read by Pankaj Mishra for the latest London Review of Books answers a lot of the really tough questions and I really recommend reading it (I think one of you here might have sent me the link).

This passage answered another raging question: What is the extent of US President Biden’s pro-Israel stance? How far will he go in allowing Netanyahu’s criminal actions?

“The secular-political religion of the Shoah and the over-identification with Israel since the 1970s has fatally distorted the foreign policy of Israel’s main sponsor, the US. In 1982, shortly before Reagan bluntly ordered [the then militant Zionist Prime Minister Menachem] Begin to cease his ‘holocaust’ in Lebanon, a young US senator who revered Elie Wiesel as his great teacher met the Israeli prime minister. In Begin’s own stunned account of the meeting, the senator commended the Israeli war effort and boasted that he would have gone further, even if it meant killing women and children. Begin himself was taken aback by the words of the future US president, Joe Biden. ‘No, sir,’ he insisted. ‘According to our values, it is forbidden to hurt women and children, even in war ... This is a yardstick of human civilisation, not to hurt civilians.’

Shit, hey.

How to live out of a 10.8kg bag

I arrived back to Australia with one small backpack that weighed in at 10.8kg and I have largely lived out of it for four months, with a suitcase of the provisions I flag above in tow. I do this quite regularly - live out of (conduct life with the stuff contained in) a very small bag for up to six months at a time, admittedly mostly over summer. This has enabled me to fly carry-on and to travel via a bike share scheme on arrival (with all my worldly possessions on my back, snail-like).

I adore this. 108 is a mathematically pure number; it’s the number of beads in sacred threads; the distance between the earth, moon and the Sun is 108 times the diameter of each; I was born at 1.08am on January 8…and so on.

From this 10.8kg scenario, I’m able to draw what I need to do TV interviews, keynote presentations, swim, do some yoga/pilates, exist, socialise and sleep. It will also contain my medications and beauty products. And laptop. Oh, and I’ve recently taken to travelling everywhere with my own linen.

I’ve written about how I “do” this since at least 2017 in various blogs and columns. Nothing has changed, including about 70 per cent of what is actually in the bag, so I’ll reproduce the points here in no particular order. You can scroll to the flat lay below.

• I give into wearing the same clothing on repeat. I honestly don’t think people notice or care. Have you of me? Yep, figured.
  

• I researched the lightest and simplest multi-day pack (light enough to be a day-pack, too) on the market. The reviews revealed the Southwest Ultralight backpack was the one to go for. And so I went for it. It’s also the most waterproof and has the least number of added bits. That’s it below, from a trip in 2017.

• I am also able to camp with the same bag…which is another packing story, but here’s the bag (7 years later) and my tent, together.

• I wear things out. Then I replace that thing. My good shirt will become my hiking shirt after about six months of constant wear. Replacing the hiking shirt that has also worn out. Things get bumped down the line and we keep things neatly “net”. Above is a singlet I wore most days for about four years. I currently have a striped one, exactly the same, that probably has another six months in it.

• I own 3-5 pairs of undies at a time. You don’t need more than this when you handwash your smalls in the shower at night.

• I live in silk and light woollen and synthetic things; they scrunch up tight and weigh little. And don’t need ironing.

• I wear sneakers, even my hiking shoes, with dresses very happily. I also carry a very flimsy (thus, light) pair of heels for fancy things. I have had these heels for 8 years.

• The above is what 10kg of gear looks like. This photo was taken in 2017, but I still own, or have a similar version of, the whole lot. If I don’t say otherwise, I still have the item packed in the same bag, seven years later.

From top left (not including stuff you can work out for yourself): denim jacket (I know have a leather jacket that I bought 12 years ago; I wear this in transit as it’s too bulky to go in my bag); silk wrap ra-ra skirt, denim shorts (this collapsed in an exhausted heap after 15 years of wear in Paris in September; replaced with a pair of silk shorts); bag of “fancy things” (two silk singlets/shell tops, etc, that I wear to work events and social things), Gortex jacket, heels (the ones I’ve had for 8 years); headband/eyemask; Salamon hiking shoes (my silk inner sheet, which I travel with everywhere, stuffed into one of them), undies (three pairs) and bra; I Quit Sugar market bag (very old and faded); white things - Bassike pants (these died late last year); linen shirt, yoga singlet; leggings; shirt I pulled from a friend’s rubbish bin that I use for hiking (I replaced it with one I got in a thrift store in Mammoth two years after this picture was taken); sports bra; cap; thin wooden top; another singlet; sports shorts (these are about to walk away from me; I was gifted them when I was at Cosmo, 16 years ago); laptop; a book; brush; flight travel bags filled with medications, beauty products*, power cords and external hard-drive.

• Obviously not pictured here is what I’m wearing to take the photo/travel in. Mostly I travel in my bulkier gear, a heavy jumper wrapped around my neck or waist.

• I now also travel with two small podcast microphones. And reading-bloody-glasses. Oh, and the linen. It still all fits so long as I wear the bulky stuff.

• This is not a packing tip, but a travelling-when-you-land tip. When I have my 10kg bag only, I jump on a shared bike out of the train station. Travelling with a suitcase? I put it on a shared scooter (placing it sideways across the platform, one foot on top to stabilise it, the other at the back of the platform). Fun, but not for everyone, admittedly.

• Live in places where living like a snail is de rigour. Hence, Paris. The city fits 2.2 million people into a space that can be crossed in 2 hours on foot. And it can do this because most people live in apartments under 40m2…which means they, too, must live light.

I’m buggered and need to go walk and buy a SIM card. I will schedule this for the Australian morning.

More coherent thoughts soon,

Sarah xx