PANIC!
The situation has become dire. Confusion, darkness, and the unknown surround you. You dig deep into your bag, hoping for something useful, knowing that the bag will give you whatever fate decides.
Will you find help?
Will you find confusion?
Will you find glazed nuts?
This is the chance you take with BOTTOMLESS BAG!
Close your eyes
Reach inside
FROM WITHIN
This grouping was selected at random from a communally generated master list of four hundred. It is my hope that these ten items can be used as a forecast or guide to your week ahead. You can also use a ten sided dice to turn each weeks items into a miniature oracle. Whether you choose to take these items literally or metaphorically, it’s up to you to find how these things may help. For a more thorough overview go to Introducing Bottomless Bag and Bottomless Bag 01.
Item 141
#86: DANCING FIGURES
Artificial grace
Item 142
#370: ANT HILL
Obscured complexity
Item 143
#70: SKING
To feel and protect
Item 144
#123: MATCHBOOK
A flock of fire
Item 145
#166: KEYCHAIN
For keeping it all together
Item 146
#68: SOUP
To put everything in the pot and see what comes out
Item 147
#390: A KITTY ASLEEP ON HIS FAVORITE BLANKET
Warm and comfortable
Item 148
#177: LOBSTER
All armor and claws
Item 149
#286: PLASTER
To smooth and conceal
Item 150
#84: OPEN DOOR
Do you pass through?
DIGGING DEEPER
For DIGGING DEEPER a 10 sided die is rolled and I explore whichever item it lands on. Sometimes this section will explain different dimensions of the item and other times it will be a rambling story about what an item means to me personally. The thing I’m trying to do here is show that even the simplest item is multifaceted and has far more definitions than I can ever explain. Every item is it’s own world, it’s own entity.
The item we’ll be doing a deep dive with this week is:
#123: MATCHBOOK
I quit smoking 5 years ago, after 15 years of the habit. I don’t think I was alone when I say that I was rather particular in what I used to light my cigarettes. My preference was torch lighters because you could get fire in almost any condition. Just after that was a regular butane lighter. Trusty little things. Not always the best in the wind but still good. Behind that sat wooden matches. Harder to light, weak to even the slightest breeze, useless if even mildly damp. In absolute last place?
Matchbooks.
The matches in matchbooks aren’t reliable. Maybe the sand strip on the back of the book is a little too smooth or the cardboard stick is too weak and it rips as you try to strike the match. Could be that the phosphorus head got wet or the company used too cheap of materials for the thing to be useful. Most matchbooks seemed like nothing better than novelty business cards. I hated them, save for one useful feature.
The single benefit I could find in matchbooks was this: being able to light a bunch of matches at once. Matchbooks are one of the best things I’ve found to light kindling for a fire or touch off a burn pile. Those little cardboard matches are incredibly useless when used in the singular but when you light off 20 little phosphorus heads at once that communal force can be a powerful thing.
It burns brighter and stronger.
A flock of fire made better by being kept together.
That’s all for now. Come back next week for another dig into the BOTTOMLESS BAG.
As always:
SEE WHAT’S INSIDE
DIG DEEP
AND
HAUNT ON
ABOUT ERIC J. MILLAR
Eric is the artist and writer behind Outlet Press. He has published over 20 books over the last four year with VACA: Outlet Illustrated, Volume 5 being his most recent publication. He is also the creator of The Disruption Generator, the randomly generated bibliomantic oracle, and The Impossible Game, a cleromantic oracle, both published in partnership with We The Hallowed.
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