A Family Photo Album
Beth Lapides
Sometimes you’re born into a family, sometimes you marry into one and sometimes you find your family in a room filled with sweaty headstanders. But whether you are bound by blood, love or belief, family means family photos. Usually the family comes first. But recently I discovered a part of my family I wouldn’t have known about without the pictures: Orbs. Frisky quanta of ight, bouncing around
my pictures.
According to Wikipedia, Orbs are “just a symptom of new digital camera tech, capturing previously sub-visible particles.” Where’s the ‘just’ in ‘previously sub-visual’? Debunkers claim they are dust specks, moisture or appear as a digital effect. But I have pictures of orbs
I shot with an oldfashioned SLR during the day. I didn’t notice the orbs in those shots at first, maybe because I wasn’t looking for them. But my own semi-scientific experiments suggest that consciousness more than humidity is at play here.
Orb 1
My first orb shot ever happens to feature Felicia Tomasko, the beloved editor of LA YOGA Magazine. I was telling her I’d seen orb photos and was feeling like, Why don’t I get any orbs in my photos? Then I snapped this picture. Seek and ye shall find? I notice that the orbs like it if I demand they show up, but they don’t seem to like it if I whine. They also like it when I feel loving, or when there’s music or art around. They like it when I’m playing with friends. They also seem to like my garbage can. Hmmm.
Greg shot this of me while I was mid-toast at our dear friends John and David’s wedding. The orb is the same color of John’s head. Oh, those orbs have a good sense of humor and clearly are in favor of equal marriage rights for gays. Or they’re possibly angling for a sip of my champagne.
Greg took this shot of me under one of the olive trees in our back yard. We love this tree and consider her to be part of our family. There are always orbs around her. Now the orbs are starting to feel like part of our family, too. And while we don’t totally understand them, there are lots of our human relatives we don’t understand either. Greg is partial to the theory that the Orbs are bio-photons of some enormous intergalactic being(s) of love. I’ve heard some entities call the orbs, flocks. And angels. And signs in the skies. Signs of what? The human species evolving from Homo sapiens to Homo luminous?
Orb 2
Do you have orb photos? Write us at: edit@layogamagazine.com
Beth will be performing her show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” on Sunday, July 19, at Writers Boot Camp in Santa Monica. For tickets, info, more on the Orbs, or to contact Beth:bethlapides.com.
By Beth Lapides
Beth Lapides is the creatrix and host of UnCabaret. You may know her from her LA Yoga My Other Car is A Yoga Mat column, as the author of “Did I Wake You, Haiku For Modern Living”, from her appearances on Sex & The City, NPR and Comedy Central or from her writing in O Magazine, Elle Decor and Los Angeles Magazine. She teaches her workshop The Comedian’s Way privately in LA and annually at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health. UnCabaret is her long running comedy show in which she asks the very best comedians working what is going on with you now. The show is known for being uniquely about the present and every Sunday a completely unique experience unfolds. In the past two years Beth has collaborated with Mitch Kaplan, both on the music for her New Agey comedy show “100% Happy 88% of the Time” and at UnCabaret where Mitch is Musical Director. Adding music to the comedy is like adding an out breath to the in, a vowel to the consonant. UnCabaret is intimate, conversation, idiosyncratic and fun intentional.