There is a wonderful novel entitled Austerlitz by W.G. Sebald. Dr. Naas had the French program read this last spring, and we even went around Paris and found re-discovered the places where Austerlitz dined and spent the night. For our final meeting we dined in the ruinous part of Austerlitz station and discussed the book in the workers break room. We discussed it the way the book was written, that is we discussed it nomadically. Moving from one concept to another, and referring to themes that ran across the whole of the book in a deja vu (as it happens, Dr. Naas figured out that the four names, two adopted and the two given at birth, of Austerlitz formed the word deja).

One such theme was Austerlitz's backpack that always carried the work and life of Austerlitz from one train station to another. My friends and I could relate, all of us were always carrying a satchel or backpack of some kind. This thing, which always carried more things, was another part of us. I can't think of a time when we were without our bags for any extended period of time. I also remember traipsing all over Paris for what seemed like four hours, all to find the bar that contained the missing bag of a friend who lost it in a very drunken haze.

My own bag had been with me since my 18th birthday. It was a large, red Dickie’s bag that my mom bought me with matching red Chuck Taylor's. After four years of constant use it developed large holes, and was stained with booze, smoke, commuter filth, spilled soda, and God only knows what else. It has carried all my books since my senior year of high school up until this week of my senior year of university. That bag has seen me change as much as my friends, from the patches which once covered it to the books I chose to carry in it. This past week, as if to make our move to Chicago somehow more real, I bought a new bag that was, for the moment, clean and whole.

There is a IKEA commercial where some yuppie buys a new lamp and throws her old one out. The camera position and the music cause a feeling of pity for the old, unwanted lamp which stops abruptly as a Swedish man laughs at the silliness of feeling sorry for a purely material thing. I always hated that commercial precisely because the message was, "Your things don't matter, so throw them out and buy new ones." Not that I would want to be a slave to my possessions (I surely am) and always worry about them, but the way I used that red Dickie’s bag meant something. It was used, and I depended upon it being used. It, in a very silly way, gave me a very special gift of usefulness. As silly as it sounds, I am very thankful for that bag.