now picnic

my disco fever: broken

I found this huge disco ball (24" diameter?) on the street one evening
near a campus building in Ann Arbor. It was glittering (glistening?
twinkling?) in the twilight, and I swooned at its super shininess. I
picked it up to take it home with me. It was slightly broken, as though
it'd been dropped, so one quarter of the sphere was unattached.

People walking by tended to have one of three reactions (or lacks
thereof): 1) no notice whatsoever of girl carrying large disco ball, 2)
beaming smiles! It's not everyday you see a smily girl bouncing along the
street carrying a large broken disco ball for no reason! or 3) a glance
and then a quick look in another direction, as though it would be impolite
to stare. It's OK, people in category 3! I am proud to carry this disco
ball across campus! No need to avert your gaze!!

It was styrofoam on the inside, hollow, with the little square mirrors
glued directly to the styrofoam. I had grand ideas about what I might do
with my very own disco ball -- not to fix it and hang it from the ceiling,
but to take off many of the mirrors and to glue them to something else, or
to break the ball into more pieces and put them around the room in the
corners to reflect the light from the central overhead lamp onto all the
walls of my room.

For the two years that I kept it, I had the pieces on a shelf near the
window, so that the light would stream in, in the evening, and it would
hit the ball and scatter across the room. This, I liked very much. When I
moved from Ann Arbor, though, I thought it was time to free the
disco-pieces -- to give them to someone else who might also appreciate
them. I left them on the curb outside my house, and I hope that someone
else has found them a home. I probably should have placed a bizarre
craigslist ad: "Free to a good home: broken disco ball" or a barter
ad offering to trade my broken disco ball for something totally incongruent:
"Will trade broken disco ball for manila envelopes ... or ipod mini."

I originally took this picture for the Mirror Project -- if you're
unfamiliar, check it out!