Marbles are wonderful and mysterious. They are simple, fit in any pocket. You can take them with you wherever you go and start dreaming.

You see, in this marble I hand to you today, there is a whole world. If you can’t imagine that, if you object: ”But it’s much too small, how could there be a whole world in it?”, I would answer: “Just ask yourself how our planet Earth looks like for a voyager in space, like the astronauts of the Apollo Mission who eventually landed on the moon.”

Small. Perfectly round. Mysteriously blue. From the distance our planet is a beautiful marble in space. You wouldn’t know of the uncountable stories that take place there every day, so serene and peaceful does our planet look from not all that far away.

Yet you know better. Think of all the things that happen to you every day, add all those that you know happen to your friends and family, and their friends, and go on, and on, until you think of over 6 billion people, the whole population of this amazing, beautiful planet, until you get quite dizzy and confused with trying, and then you will have an idea how relative the words large and small are.

So, if you feel lonely, or bored, or if you have to write about something for school but don’t know where to start, or if you want to write or think about something no one else has thought about before you, or if you just desire to dream yourself far away from everything, take this marble, roll it in your hand, feel its pleasant weight, hold it against any source of light, a lamp, sunrays coming in through the window on a November morning, the full moon in a bright winter night, and you will find your story right there in your marble.

And it will be uniquely yours for that is the mystery of marbles: like humans from a distance they seem the same but upon closer inspection there are not two that are exactly alike.

And more, even if you cannot look at the little glass orb, after a while you will be able to imagine it, and the stories will come to you through the window of your open mind, from far away, from the gleaming galaxy of the marbles, way out there, right inside you.