The Weight of Small Things

There was a jar of glass marbles on my grandfather’s desk, cold and heavy, each one holding a trapped, frozen swirl of color that never moved. I used to think they were planets, or perhaps tiny, solidified breaths of the people who had owned them before. When he died, the desk was cleared, the papers filed away, and the jar vanished into the quiet machinery of an estate sale. I do not know where those marbles went, or whose fingers now roll them across a wooden floor, but I feel the weight of them missing. We collect these small, bright objects as if they are anchors, hoping they will hold us to a moment, a place, or a person. We believe that if we gather enough of them, we can build a wall against the inevitable thinning of our lives. But objects are merely vessels for the attention we give them. When the attention shifts, what remains of the color? Does the glass grow cold when it is no longer held?

Masrur Ashraf has taken this beautiful image titled Colorful Beads. It captures a vibrant collection of trinkets that seem to hold the same quiet, heavy potential as those marbles from my childhood. What do you see when you look at these small, bright things?