Circles, Spheres, Orbs, and Me (84)

I didn’t even notice it until we went to an antique and consignment shop last May.

We don’t usually take time anymore to go to this type of shop but we were passing by one Saturday, the front window display was appealing, and we had a little time to kill, so we dropped in.  It was one of those shops with a combination of consignment items for resale but the owner also happens to be an antique sales person.  They are, sometimes, interesting places and sometimes they are full of, and I hate to word it this way but it’s true, junk.

We looked around and it seemed like a pretty nice place. It was full of lots of things we used to own but don’t anymore, and some things we wanted in the past, but don’t anymore.  I was thinking we would just leave without any purchases when my husband said, “Are you sure you don’t want to add to the collection?” 

My first thought was, “Which collection?” but I didn’t say it.  Instead, I turned to him and asked what, in particular, was he referring to?  He pointed to a sphere, about 6 inches in diameter, enameled with deep blue background and gold and red stars. 

Until that point, I hadn’t noticed we collected spheres.  As I thought about it, I realized, my goodness, yes we do.  We must already have half a dozen or so on display, mixed in with our other nick nacks and keepsakes.  Then, as I thought more, I realized we have even more than that.  All this time we had been adding spheres to our ‘stuff’ and I hadn’t even known it.  They just seem to call out to us when we are shopping.

There was one time I did think about it cognitively.  We, in St Louis, live near active fault zones, particularly the New Madrid fault.  There was a time when I was arranging things on our shelves and in our china cabinets with the possibility of a medium level earthquake.  The spheres were on my radar then because I thought they could do some major damage in a big trembler. I imagined them all breaking loose from their various domains and rolling like bowling balls, taking out masses of other nick nacks along the way. With that in mind I took some time to stabilize them and make sure none were near anything of too much value, just in case.

But, beyond that, I had never really done a ‘head count’ of the spheres and never really thought of them as something on my radar list to collect. They seemed to self collect, silently reaching out to me as I walked by them in a store or flea market. It all seems very mysterious to me now. Are they spheres or should I be thinking of them as orbs? The word ‘orb’ is used sometimes to suggest a range of supernatural paranormal phenomenon without varifiability (as in the unexplained dots or lights you might see in a photograph). In scary movies, you might see an orb or two following a person through a house or chasing them down a stairwell, certainly trying to harm them or scare them to death. They indicate spooks, ghosts, energy from the ‘other world,’ spirits, or–maybe even angels.

If I have to think of this not-intentionally-collected collection as a group of orbs, I am hoping they are of the energy ball type or maybe even, if I am very lucky, angels.