In my closet at home is a Rag-Bag. It's just a garbage bag stuffed on a shelf, sagging against boxes and crates. But sometimes I'll take it down and open it, and fabric spills out onto the carpet, bright cottons and frayed satins and faux furs and thin polyesters, brawn paisleys, red polka-dots, hideous tutt-fruity hearts, lavender, yellow, turquoise, tangerine. I'll survey the spill delightedly, reveling in the worthless mass of color and texture unfurled around me. Perhaps I'll find a piece big enough to make something semi-useful, a scrunchy or a satchel from left-over curtain fabric, or perhaps I'll mix clashing patterns together for a pair of patchwork pajama pants. Or perhaps I'll make nothing at all, realizing again that the waves of material delight me only in their potential to become something else.
