Globe Lamp

The shape of a sphere in your hand, in the palm of your hand; an almost iridescent, glowing, beautiful thing, mysterious and inexplicable. You are in a small building atop a hill; the sky is heavy and grey and rolling like waves. The ground has the appearance of swelling, into the shapes of valleys and hills, purple, green and beige, up and down and the same again, punctuated by craggy rocks, some serious angles contending with the curves. You get the impression these shapes have evolved and are evolving; moving, slowly. Wind rushes past outside, invisible but making sounds and making things move, making things sway from side to side and in circles and in jagged shapes, making the window frames shudder and shake. And you think, the world is alive. It is very much alive.

And the shape in your hand is the shape of it, has the name of a representation of it, is a three-dimensional scale model of it, is beautiful, but, you think, barely even a start. Because the very real stuff is outside the window, on the streets you walk down, the buildings you sit in, places others have sat, and in the vast, vast, sky.