The Bag

August 27th, 2014

It was a bright and early morning, and the skin of the girl was moistened with dew droplets from the night before. The smell of wet grass and a deeper pungent scent of growing fungi and mold seeping into the ground filled the air. This last scent was almost unidentifiable and yet it was there, like a footprint left in sand. The girl, Ellie, lay sleeping in the yard. Her limbs strewn in various ways, fragile and tender in the waking light. Her eyes dreary with sleep, could not be opened, perhaps a side effect from the night before. Yet, as the birds chattered in the trees, her heart sped up and her eyes jumped forward. She woke up, examining her tattered clothes and the dirt stuck onto her skin like glue.

She looked around and turned in the sunlight, her eyes adjusting to the bright colors that were swathed around her. Colorful red, orange, and yellow hues blanketing her legs in an ankle length skirt, ripped at the bottom, and muddied by her fall in the park. Her crocheted shirt was held around only her neck by two thin bare strings and she realized with a start, just how little it actually covered. Her hair was done up with beads and braids, twisted under a dyed bandana, makeup smearing, and smoky eye shadow melting onto her cheeks.

It was then that she remembered all that had happened, the night before, the trip to the antique store, a non-existent pill latched into her brain, changing the patterns in her mind. It was only now that she realized the vintage handbag was not draped by the side of her body and was nowhere in sight. She drank this thought in, relief pooling in her feet and ecstatically filling her brain with regret and joy that it was over.

August 26th, 1968

Violet stood in the dorm room, facing herself in the mirror. She stared at her blank face, her makeup removed, the braids in her hair stringing and pulling apart. She stared at her thin skin, the lack of sleep in her eyes, and the red nose, holding in mucus from hours of crying. She stared at her thin white dress and tried to breathe in, through the panic, through the sadness, but it came out heavy. A sound burdened with pain and sadness.

The night before, her boyfriend, the one she had trusted most in her life after her parents divorce, had left her. He had sat her down on her bed, looking at her with those same wispy eyes, for once they were not clouded by narcotics and psychedelics. A sober Samuel was a sight that Violet so rarely saw in the days around the protests. On the days spent parading through the streets and sitting in the parks humming, he sat aloft in a cloud of smoke and perfume, feeling little but bliss and overwhelming joy.

Violet had known something was wrong when he sat her down like this, when he looked at her and held her hand. That one part of his eye that usually glowed with laughter, dimmed and diminished.

“I’m breaking up with you. I simply don’t have time for a relationship anymore, I can’t love you or choose you like I have. So I think this is simply goodbye.”

That's what he had said to her, and the audacity of the man to face her and act as if he had ever chosen her and put her first drove her into a fit. She screamed and clenched the blankets in her fists, pushing away at the man who had once said he loved her and always would. She pushed him out and pushed him away, telling him she never wanted to see again, while underneath desperately wanting to pull him back. Yet she didn’t.

He left unhurt and apparently unfazed, a blow that would be felt ever so slowly for weeks. Instead, she curled into a ball and sobbed, losing herself in the darkness of the night, only falling asleep as dawn reached the horizon.

So with thoughts lingering in her mind; a sense of failing, betrayal and loss, she covered herself in layers of smoky eye shadows and strong perfumes. The pills stashed under her desk, falling into her open palm, and splashed down her throat with warm water. She pulled on a colored bandana, striped socks, and decorated herself in what would come to be known as hippie attire.

Then she stared at the nail on her door, the hanging bag, her only possession of worth. It was Samuel who had bought it, picked out the brown leather, the hanging blue tassels. A bag lined with cow fur, something she otherwise would have been horrified by. The bag hung still, crinkles in the leather from past years. A token and a testament to their relationship, with its threads pulling away from the seams and scratches from nervous fingernails.

She stared at it, anger boiling deeper and deeper into her spine, a frantic urge to get rid of it overcame her, the onset of a panic attack or maybe the aftermath of one. This bag contained too many memories and too many feelings, her chest ached for him but she had walled off her mind to thoughts of his touch, or his smoky breath against her ear, or his fingers playing with her hair. She grabbed nothing but the bag, and found her finger sliding around the familiar handle, the shoulder strap swinging in the static air of her room. Her feet shuffled towards the door, and soon she was leaving, away from confinement.

She started out of her dorm, leaving the door unlocked and descending down the rickety wooden stairs. The breath of hot New York air blew in her face just as it melted the sticky black tar on the roads. Men dressed in business attire stared and narrowed their eyes at her, while the few neighborhood kids grinned, pointing chubby fingers at her, giggling and running away. None of these people even noticed the bag, yet the presence of it seemed to burn her finger tips. She vaguely knew this could have been narcotic effects, lack of sleep, or simply something she was making up as she walked, yet it was real all the same.

She walked down into the antique store that functioned as a dump for hippie clothes, borrowed and returned in the summer months of 1968. Inside were vast amounts of garments, hand bags and lamps, t-shirts, scented candles that were only burned halfway and discarded, and beads and bundles of sage. Her vision narrowed as she passed through the door, her legs disconnected from her body, her mind whirring in front of her. The woman at the counter stared at her, a swath of smoke clouding around her like a mushroom.

“Please take this from me, get rid of it, toss it into the back of your shop or burn it away. Too many memories have seeped into this bag and cling to it, I only wish to get rid of it,” she said, the words coming out of her mouth, before she had even thought of them.

The woman eyed the bag, her face greedy with desire, for she knew the worth just as much as Violet did. Then her face softened as she looked back at Violet, watching her anguish. The drugs could have simply made her more empathetic or created this fake connection, but she sympathized with this woman. An abstract desire to help her, just like a child begging on the streets for food.

“I will give you ten dollars for the bag, I could pay you less and I know you would take it but I see it in your eyes, this pain.” the woman replied.

So it was then that it was over. A simple transaction, a bag of greater emotional burden then she realized traded for only numbers on a piece of paper. Violet felt lost in the world, how could people be so attached to things and let them go so easily. That bag had brought her through dates, meetings with her emotional distant parents, kisses and goodbyes, and yet was cast out and exchanged in seconds. It may have been for the better or it might have been a rash decision but it didn’t matter now. Violet could only think of the good and the bad as objects. A simple weight removed from her chest, zipped and locked in the bag, maybe nobody else could feel it like she could, but it was a relieving thought to be free of this heavy object.

August 26th, 2014

Ellie had already walked through much of New York city by midafternoon when she stumbled upon a tiny quaint antique shop. She had already walked through so many thrift stores, sipped coffee from expensive market stores, and walked past department stores filled with cheap labor clothing. It was only now when she turned onto a small street named Grove, that a very small sign caught her eye. She looked at the window, in fading colorful letters, explaining its history. She read the swirling letters and pictured a time of hippies and people parading half naked in the streets. A wispy fantasy of peace and a strange feeling pulled her into the shop, regret and longing, full of haunting memories.

The place was filled with garments colored and printed on, fabric weathered by sun and summers of dry heat. Her fingers touched the fabric, and pulled her in deeper and deeper. In the back of her mind she knew she was only romanticizing this experience, and nothing had truly called out to her, yet she ignored this pressing thought. Instead she looked at the bags hanging in the corner, and seemed to sense the time and weight that they carried. Years spent waiting for some new owner to prize the leather over any other possessions.

It was then that Ellie noticed the hanging leather bag, and pulled the leather strap, the capsulated scent of vanilla and bergamot perfume inside. Ellie looked at its vintage tags, without knowing the worth it had once carried, so many years ago.

She carried the bag, and as she brought it to the counter, paying in cash, and watching the blue beaded tassels swing from the carried motion, she felt a change under her skin. Her head and legs detached from her body and seemed to be suspended in time. They carried her away and into the city. Waves of emotion collided within her chest, conflicting passions and seeping memories that weren't hers seemed to fill her. Inexplicable joy and love, excitement, tension, pain and grief, fighting anger, nostalgia, and panicking loss.

Ellie was carried back to her dorm by these thoughts and stared around at her fellow classmates, noticing for the first time each of their prized possessions, things they didn’t know how connected they were to. Car keys adorned with charms, an anklet bracelet tied with love by a dying best friend. Ellie felt as though she was lifted by a cloud, a side effect of the drugs that entered through her from the bag. Yet she didn’t enter her room, instead she slid through the halls and found the girl at the very end. The girl who seemed to know all the best parties yet carried a free spirit, as though she belonged in the 60s.

Ellie watched her from the hall, moving throughout her room, dancing with her own headphones plugged into the ipod in the pocket of her jeans. She paused here, watching the beauty of letting go, feeling suddenly inspired by the emotion that Sarah carried with her.

Ellie found herself dancing into this other girl's room and losing herself in the music. She could feel this other girl's eyes watching her twirling curls yet this embarrassment felt like only a single ripple in her freedom.

Together the two of them spent the afternoon together, high on narcotics, and high on each other's own layers of tasteful grief and bliss until Sarah led them through the halls and into the falling sky. Ellie carried her leather bag, dressed in Sarah’s own colored clothing while she was led by Sarah out into the night sky and down into the basement of a neighboring apartment.

Ellie danced under these lights, she watched as women and guys washed away their pain, filled with alcohol that made them lose their own feelings. Feelings suppressed, drunk away and tucked under the folds of the body's memory. She felt herself intoxicated and something dawned in her mind at this point, just as it had to so many others over the past centuries.

It was an inexplicable feeling, a wonder how things could ever be the way there were. How could we let go of ourselves and free ourselves like this, when so much demanded our attention. We could detach ourselves from reality and feel happier and sadder than we had ever before, and never find what it was we were truly ever feeling. She thought of how people could lose their memories into objects, tuck them into stores and into our clothes. This ability to release and sacrifice objects and token of emotional burdens onto the hands of others. She noticed all the feeling packed into these prized possessions, a cord pulled in opposite directions, fighting between our own pain and the world’s joy. She wondered how people could ever be such simple minded creatures, only pretending to be more than we are, pretending to not desperately want the love of others and more than that, but to love our own souls. Souls fighting for release from societal layers that bound us to gifts and bags and bracelets.

It was here that Ellie came back into her body, and glimpsing the world around her, with no memory of the hours of dancing, that she stumbled out the door. Sarah had disappeared into the seas of lonely people and panic was sweeping down into her bones. She stumbled out and through the night, watching the man in the moon weep upon the earth’s empty souls. Souls that were sacrificed for the love of another.

A bag split from her shoulders, something that was only vaguely important to her, but the thought drifted away into the night.

In a dizzying haze of feeling and smells she tripped into the park. She crawled through the grass, tearing her skirt, and waiting for some sort of peace to settle in her troubled mind. Yet she felt less and less real, like the husk of a shell that was always an emotional burden to the people around her.

So with that final thought, she slipped all the way into the ground, and lay in the grass, her body and mind finally at rest with the easy darkness around her, sweeping her away once again.