extravagant objects in the curiosity shop

the allure of the extravagant object... long after it's use has passed into forgetfulness, the ritual lost in a rush for the next great idea...

... useful things, tools, totems, or maybe something with a charge of its own?

When I was in the Arizona desert, I saw strange little regularly shaped nuggets lying in the sand. I picked them up.

It is against the law to collect pottery shards or arrowheads, but these were just oddly formed rocks. They had form, they were 'whole' unto themselves. It turns out that those rocks were also valued and collected by Native American Shamans, and for the same reason. They stood apart from the forms man made, they were of the desert, and so they had a pull, a strange attraction... power.

Coprolite, fossilized rodent scat, which accounts for the perfectly formed round, piled effect.