‘A division contrast between two things that are or are represented as being, opposed or entirely different’

I pulled my laboratory seat closer to the microscope and gently placed my eye to the ocular lens, my fingers of one hand on the focussing mechanism and the other on the microscope ‘stage’ where the slide was positioned. The play was about to start and I settled in my seat. It always intrigued me how my brain could perceive the images presented, when they were in fact invisible.

I was observing the frame with the intention of finding clues to a mystery that had unfolded at a customers’ site. It was an evidence gathering exercise.
When preparing the scene to be viewed in this way, there are meticulous steps to be taken not least to ensure the absence of cross contamination of the evidence. The drama unfolding must be clear and free from ambiguity.

But like any storyline, when dealing with situations that can morph in size, shape and composition at the slightest change in external parameter, interpretation of the picture presented required a practiced interpreter, and I loved my job.

For over forty years these tiny novels had been my library, my knowledge platter from which I formed whole menus of evidence-based conclusions to the ‘who-dunnit’ industry of pharmaceutical production.
On this particular day I remember focussing on the bright, almost iridescent inhabitants of the world within the eye piece, and observing that during the necessary preparation of the slide, the entities had seemingly arranged themselves into Continents, grouped countries surrounded by a colourful sea of microscopy stain.

They were no longer alive due to the fixing and staining techniques employed, but were frozen in time like an atlas to an unknown world and this view took me to another time, a time when microscopic entities were merely the stuff of nightmares. All eyes were instead firmly set on the night skies, the stars and the planets.

I could imagine the excitement of discovery that the ‘telescope’ forged and I shared this moment with ancestors who had peered romantically through eye pieces, but at planets of no conceptual size, just like me, pondering over the meaning.
It occurred to me that this microscopic sample, so infinitesimally small, could resemble something so vast as a planet, and it was not lost on me that like my predecessors in science and engineering, I too appreciated the art of the moment and this fascinating ability to observe it.