Reality, Up Close

The fun really started when a small and delicate watercolour on paper, pasted on board, required to be investigated because of some holes that had appeared on the paper. I turned it around and found that the board too had several holes (B). Taking several things into account we decided to chip the board off the painting. We did not anticipate what emerged as we broke the board off in small pieces. The board was no longer solid; it had turned to sawdust, and the chips that we removed were patterned with lines and grooves (B).

That is when I reached out for my macro lens with the excitement of Neil Armstrong landing on the moon. My nose almost touched the sawdust as my camera investigated what lay before me and I fell back in horror when my lens focused on hundreds of dead insect eggs. My flesh crawled but I clicked nonetheless. (C. Colour inconsistency of photographs because of artificial light in C and D). The reality of my eyes did not see what the reality of the camera saw; so minute were the eggs. Without that lens I would have swept the sawdust away, ignorant of the infestation of an innocent painting.

Particular beetles and termites that attack wood lay their eggs in a moist, suitable environment. All living things, after all, require moisture. Eggs hatch into larvae, the ones that do the eating, the conversion of wood into sawdust and the boring of the tunnels (D). Adult beetles and termites only reproduce and distribute. Eggs die because of dehydration, which is what happened to those found in this painting.

I wonder about the many realities. There is first, the important one that the eye sees and which is the all-pervasive one as our lives revolve around it. There is the mysterious reality that the camera or the microscope sees and which only comes to us through the intervention of science and technology. Virtual reality, the artificial reality of the computer (and technology) will most certainly consume us in the near future making us experience sensations we do not today think possible.

The ultimate reality is the most precious, the one that seeks universal truth and looks for answers beyond the material world.