If this were a traditional travel blog I might have taken a moment at the beginning to inventory my bag. I’ve seen backpackers do it. And international travelers. I’m not sure it would have been a particularly enlightening post. The list of things I packed wouldn’t look like either. It was, at the time, more like-
Imagine the sole occupant of a rented house wakes to find his room on fire. He is inebriated, melancholic, and half-asleep. A list of items he would be most likely to collect on the way out, thinking that his world was ending- that’s more representative of what I had in my bag when I left.
There was no literal fire in my case.
Given how little of what I brought was useful on the road, given the number of times I’ve crashed a vehicle or fallen down a hill with my duffel in tow- the number of items I’ve had to sell and barter- the contents of my bag have changed a dozen times over. It’s become a tighter, less nostalgic pack. Lighter in a lot of ways and more valuable, actually, though only in the opinion of niche markets.
The only item that is both original to the pack and effectively worthless is a heat-deformed VHS copy of a PG-rated animated film called The Transylvania Travesty. A piece of pure nostalgia.
I worry that the nostalgia and the deformation have become intertwined, somehow, so I’m relieved when ‘The Tape Set’ returns The Transylvania Travesty, still warm with remaking, and I feel better about having carried it with me.
‘Only six of the twenty original iterations of ‘The Tape Set’ remain functioning. A handful were stolen, a few were taken apart for study, but most simply succumbed to a tape too far gone, each boiling with liquid plastic. The survivors exist on a constant, mysterious tour, buoyed by a splintered network of film hipsters who are (rightfully) afraid that ‘The Tape Set’s’ tendency to pour plastic onto the waiting hands of visitors during atypical tape reformations is cause for local governments to have them retired.
In 2019 a massive new machine labelled ‘The Tape Set Set’ appeared in Bradley, North Carolina. By all accounts, it is capable of repairing any of its broken predecessors, assuming one is placed entirely inside. It radiates heat and smells like an easy-bake oven and nobody dares use it.’
-traveler
