My handbag contains everything required to survive an ordinary day—and several emergencies that have never actually happened.
Three lipsticks in almost identical colours. Sunglasses, even when it is raining. A charger that is never compatible with the device that needs charging. Receipts from places I barely remember visiting. A pen that works only after being threatened.
There is usually something I have been looking for at home for days.
It is not a bag. It is an independent territory with its own laws, climate and archaeological layers.
Every few weeks, I decide to organise it.
I remove everything, throw away the evidence, arrange the essentials beautifully and promise myself that this time it will remain civilised.
Within forty-eight hours, the chaos has returned.
But perhaps that is precisely its purpose.
A handbag is not supposed to represent the life we have perfectly organised.
It carries the life we are actually living: hurried, unpredictable, slightly excessive and prepared for possibilities that may never arrive.
Including, apparently, three different shades of nude lipstick.
Somewhere beneath them, I am almost certain, are my keys.
Silvia
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