The Blue Suitcase

"What's the code to the blue suitcase?" My brother asked from outside the toilet door. Sitting and passing stools (a very medical term for it). "797" I said automatically, because I knew that code. I had used that suitcase for my journey, when I first went to Princeton, and probably before that when I went on holiday to Paris at age 16, the trip that paved the way for my eventual acceptance to Princeton UniversitY. Now my brother was on his own journey, a journey to the land of his ancestors, where his mother was born. The journey will probably force him to grapple with his competence in bulgarian and drive him to become more conversant, while dusting off the cobwebs on this part of his identity. The code to the blue suitcase, the way of transition, my transition from one place to another, one school to another since grade 1. I am in transition whether or not I am sedentary or not, I envision myself as moving from one place to another and the blue suitcase symbolizes this.

"What's wrong with this one?" Picky, my brother asks, as I implore him to not unpack the clothes from the suitcase they are already in, the large grey black one that Amanda Howard gave to me not so long ago, softmore year. "It's a good suitcase" I say, pointing to the grey one, since it did save me after I missed my plane softmore year. But my brother was bent on transfering his possession to the blue suitcase. Transfer possessions or funds from one country to another, my sister wiring money to my account, me asking for my photos back from the carrel in Lewis Library. International flows of people, money and knowledge, across the world wide web are intertwined with the person I am today. Now why is he obssessed with transfering, like I was when I left Princeton, moving stuff from one suitcase to other, so late at night (or early in the morning), because I would not have those suitcases be heavy, not like when I first came and they weighed 25 kg (55 lb) each. The suitcases where light at the airport when I left, easy on the hands, not extoling much energy. There I was happy, though I left so much behind.
I wanted him to study, that's what I wanted, so then he would do well and go to a good college and live happily ever after in this construction of a sucessfull human being that now reigns in the developed world. But no, he had to unpack and repack.

Is it because I regret not having studied, enough. Not having eaten, enough. Not having travelled enough, no that I is no regret of mine. Though, travelling from this place to that, United World College to Princeton, back to Namibia, what for? Is there a purpose or it perpetual, meaningless transit. I do love transit, make no mistake. That is why I wondered up and down the moving floors, made of escalator material, in Frankfurt airport and JFK.

The Blue suitcase is my way out, an escape from the infidelity of my father that stinks up our home, from the initial lack of oppportunity to study what I want, from the fear of having to explain why I don't have a girlfriend, up to now.

The color blue is the color of salvation, apparently, I watched long ago, about how the Blue light was seen by those facing imminent death during Holocaust. Blue Star of David, the blue dress of the Virgin. Rays of blue light emmanate from the sky for my eyes to perceive.
There is the blue suitcase and I hope it breaks. Spero che si rompa. So that I may live for the now and not for the then or when.
Amen