Friday, February 22, 2008

If I Were a Bag

My favorite part of Zora Neale Hurston's How It Feels to Be Colored Me was the end.
She compares herself, and others, to bags. Paper bags of different colors with a mish mash of contents.
That got me thinking about how I would be, if I were a bag. Here's what I've decided:

If I were a bag, I'd be creamy colored and smooth papered. Not the rough texture of your average lunch sack, but rather the plasticy coated feeling of expensive wrapping paper.
I'd have a large amount of contents. I'd also have to be like Mary Poppins' tote to fit them all.
For example, I'd have a tree.

I'd also have a fake sterling silver ring with the varnish wearing off and the copper showing through.
I'd be full of glitter.
And cupcake tins.
I'd have two brightly colored paper clips.
A strawberry.
A small figurine of a bullfrog named Jeremiah.
A knee-high sock with alternating stripes.
A pair of broken sunglasses.
A blue button.
Pieces of green thread.
A toy army soldier.
A polly pocket.
A brooch of a butterfly.
A miniature origami crane.
An orange highlighter.
Bits of glass.
Tinkly glass beads.
A paintbrush.
A piece of silky fabric.
A book with all the pages ripped out.

There's more, I'm sure.

But it's an interesting thought, isn't it?
Try looking at someone, a stranger, and try to figure out what the contents of their bag would be.

1 comment:

ECF said...

I like how you've taken this and done your own. I'm going to have to steal that idea as an assignment the next time I teach this essay. Thank you for doing this; I can't help but think that there's a poem in there.