Move Beyond

Text and photos by Elena Siemens, CC-BY-NC 4.0 2024

A neon advertisement in the window of a luggage store on Robson in Vancouver. I recognize myself in this ad: a carry on is my only luggage. My backpack is for incidentals, the assorted “what if” items. Between Cartier-Bresson’s “decisive” and “indecisive” moments (Cartier-Bresson), I tend to chose the latter option.

Torn by similar indecision, Andy Warhol kept things in cardboard boxes. He gave this advice: drop everything in a box, label it, keep it for a month, and then “send it over to Jersey” (Warhol). But his “other outlook,” he reveals, was to save things “so they can be used again someday” (Warhol).