Paul Fussell, Man of War

Last semester, once a week, I carried a heavy black bag with me down to Philadelphia to teach an English class at the University of Pennsylvania. The bag in question is a bike messenger sack, the kind you carry across your back, with a strap that latches smartly, with a little sealtbelt-like buckle, at your sternum. It’s big to begin with, but like Snoopy’s doghouse, or maybe Dr. Who’s Tardis, it’s bigger on the inside than on the outside; or at least, always somehow heavier than itself and the sum of its contents. To boot, it distributes its weight awkwardly across my upper body, so that when I returned home from Philadelphia, two train rides later, to what city down-staters mistakenly call “upstate New York,” my spine felt gently but persistently misaligned, like I’d followed up an invigorating yoga class by field-testing a torture device—though only just up until the moment I smiled, the absolute minimum quantity of mettle proven, and cried “Uncle.”